Alliance celebrates success of young people in aerospace

Citation

(2007), "Alliance celebrates success of young people in aerospace", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 79 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2007.12779bab.026

Alliance celebrates success of young people in aerospace

Alliance celebrates success of young people in aerospace

The importance of young people to the future of the aerospace industry was the central theme of a major awards event staged recently by the North West Aerospace Alliance (NWAA).

For the first time since their inception seven years ago, the NWAA's Sir Frank Whittle award for university undergraduates and the Irene Short Award for the region's best young apprentice were presented together at a special celebration event.

The Sir Frank Whittle Award, sponsored by Rolls-Royce plc and awarded to commemorate the achievements of the jet engine pioneer, went to University of Manchester student Mark Gannon, aged 21, of Wetherby, Yorks.

Mark, who is in his final year of a masters degree in engineering, won the prestigious award with his submission “power generation from vibrations for a wireless sensor” which the judges singled out for its relevance to unmanned vehicles or platforms, currently a major focus for research within the aerospace sector.

Mark received a £1,000 cash prize from sponsors Rolls-Royce together with other mementos including the impressive Sir Frank Whittle Award trophy, an etched section of a Roll- Royce wide chord engine blade.

Top apprentice James Capstick, aged 17, who works at the Rolls-Royce Barnoldswick facility, received the Irene Short Award, which is awarded annually in recognition of the contribution of “apprentices champion” Lancashire County Alderman Irene Short to the North West aerospace industry.

James, whose off the job training was provided by Training 2000, Blackburn, received the prestigious Irene Short Award trophy – a model of a Rolls- Royce jet engine – £250 prize money and other mementos.

The award for the North West University contributing most to the North West aerospace sector was awarded to the University of Manchester and received by Stephen Tran, who was also commended in the Sir Frank Whittle Award.

Guest speaker Sarah Pullen, current Young Woman Engineer of the Year, said she was delighted to be able to encourage more young people to consider becoming engineers at “the cutting edge of technology”.

Sarah, a crew systems engineer with BAE Systems said that only 8 per cent of students in UK universities currently studied engineering and just 4 per cent of those actually went on to work as engineers.

Her sentiments were echoed by NWAA Executive Director Martin Wright, who thanked the event sponsors Rolls-Royce, University of Liverpool and the Lancashire Learning & Skills Council.

He said: “The emphasis nowadays seems to be on softer skills, but it is vital that we encourage more young people into this strategically important industry. We have an established industry that we need to keep, and we need to attract more young people otherwise the industry will decline and we could lose it, which would be absolutely disastrous.”

“Working in aerospace today can be likened to working in a Formula 1 workshop, it's clean and exciting and we need more people to realise that. We need to dispel the old myth about aerospace engineering being based in dark satanic mills, because it is no longer like that” he added.

Runners up in this year's awards were: Sir Frank Whittle Award; James Minto, of the University of Manchester and equal runners up in the Irene Short Award, Philippa Wilson, of BAE Systems and David Ross Shaw, of BAE Systems Barrow.