Faculty of Natural Sciences launches the Make-a-Difference Impact Challenge

The Faculty of Natural Sciences has launched its Make-a-Difference Competition, searching for innovative student ideas to contribute to society.

The competition, running for the first time this year, challenges all undergraduates in the Faculty of Natural Sciences to harness their creativity to develop solutions that could bring real benefits, under the theme ‘healthcare and well-being’.

The competition, which will take place in three stages, seeks to identify the best student ideas for a low-cost technology with a positive social impact and develop them from idea to inception.

The top three teams decided by the judges will be given access to facilities to develop their project to a proof-of-concept stage over eight weeks this summer, each student receiving a bursary of £1,500 to cover their costs.

 Last Tuesday’s launch, which was attended by staff, students and competition judges, outlined the scope of the competition and the various stages of the challenge. The launch also featured a short talk by Dr Duncan Casey who, as part of an Imperial student team, won the national ‘Dragons Den’ style DTC Den competition in 2010 with a proposal for a handheld, disposable device to analyse mixtures outside the lab.

The Make-a-Difference organisers and judges

Competition organiser Professor Ramón Vilar from the Department of Chemistry said: “We want to encourage students to use their creativity, ingenuity and imagination to tackle challenging problems – the problems they find challenging and interesting.

“What’s important in this competition is that it’s not just about providing ideas and suggesting possible ways to solve them, but through the period of the competition we want to go from the initial idea to seeing its implementation.”

The teams will then submit a detailed summary of their findings and give a presentation of their project to a panel at an event open to staff students and the general public.

The competition will be judged by a panel of experts comprising of Professor Lord Winston, Professor Sir John Pendry from the Department of Physics at Imperial and Professor Lesley Yellowlees, President of the Royal College of Chemistry and Vice-Principal and Head of the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Maggie Dallman, Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences said: “With this competition we want to give our students the space and the opportunity to come up with those amazing ideas we know they’re capable of, in an environment outside the restraints of their normal curriculum.

“We know that, whilst we teach in disciplines, some of the most exciting discoveries happen at the intersection of these disciplines and this competition is a chance for students to engage with students from across the whole faculty, coming together to solve the real world problems that we face.”

For more information on the contest and how to enter see: //www3.imperial.ac.uk/impactchallengecompetition