Sci-fi gets sci-real: Festival celebrates the engineers helping to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges

Launching on UN World Youth Skills Day, the first UCL Festival of Engineering will run from 15–20 July 2024 at sites across several London boroughs, from the main UCL campus in Bloomsbury to the UCL East and Here East campuses at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford.

The Festival celebrates 150 years of pioneering engineering education at UCL that spans traditional disciplines, saw the introduction of the first engineering teaching laboratory in the UK, and has reimagined how engineering is taught globally.

The programme – built around the four themes of climate, healthcare, data, and inequality – has been designed to be highly interactive, with opportunities to do rather than just see. An augmented reality app, which festivalgoers can access on a smartphone or tablet, will help to bring the environment to life.

The main family days will be on 19 and 20 July in Bloomsbury, with an industry showcase on 18 July. Activities for schools will take place at Here East on 15 July and UCL East on 16 July. Events will also take place at UCL PEARL, a unique facility to explore how people interact with their environment, in Dagenham on 17 July.

The Festival will feature over 80 demonstrations and workshops, 22 spotlight events, and 20 labs will be open to school groups.

Some of the highlights of the Festival include:

• The opportunity to drive a Mars rover at the Mission to Mars event, which will also show how to create heat shields to protect spacecrafts on re-entry and how to grow food in Martian soil. On 19 July, organisers will attempt a live link to the International Space Station and attendees will have the opportunity to meet NASA astronaut Dan Tani and broadcaster Kevin Fong.
• The chance to join ‘Bakeneer’ Andew Smyth, creator and judge of Netflix's Baking Impossible, in an edible exploration of the engineering that helps us safely travel around the planet.
• An exploration of what would a fully recyclable world look like with materials engineers, including Professor Mark Miodownik and Associate Professor Helen Czerski.
• A look forward to the future of medicine, from vaccines to medical imaging to AI-assisted surgery.

Alongside the interactive events will be a series of talks aimed at the general public, from big questions like ‘Can Engineers Save the World?’ to quickfire presentations by current UCL students on their area of research.

Professor Clare Elwell, co-organiser of the Festival from UCL Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, said: “Engineering at UCL is all about solving real-world problems. We are led by the challenges that need to be met, whether they be in medicine, sustainability or computing. It goes way beyond what people may see as the traditional engineering disciplines, really it covers all of life.

“We are delivering the Festival to engage a range of audiences with how engineers are creating future worlds, both physical and digital. We want people to see that engineering is fundamentally collaborative. It’s about working with end users to create new solutions for the most pressing issues facing humanity.”

The Festival is about the engineers of the future in more ways than one. There will be sessions on the recently launched Foundation Year in Engineering and on apprenticeships. Both of these initiatives are designed to provide multiple entry points into engineering, particularly for communities underserved by further and higher education.

Professor Elpida Makrygianni MBE, Head of Education Engagement at UCL Engineering, said: “We’re delighted to welcome young people from East London and beyond to the Festival to experience a fully interactive programme of events built around creating a happier, greener and fairer society.

“We also want to break down barriers that might prevent young people from seeing engineering as a possible career, whether that’s because they didn’t think it was for ‘people like them’ or just because they didn’t realise the wealth of opportunities that are on offer. Like any creative discipline, diversity of thought and experience is key to invention. We hope to inspire the engineers of the future.”

Across the week, the Festival will engage a wide range of groups who influence and are influenced by engineering. There will be a launch event on Monday 15 July for policymakers and industry celebrating UCL Engineering’s role in innovation and impact.