We asked Matthew to tell us about winning I’m an Engineer, and here is what he said…

Thank for voting for me as the winner of the Water zone! I’m an Engineer has been a really enjoyable experience for me. Even after having read some of the previous engineer’s comments about how fast questions came in I still felt surprised by the sheer volume of questions that we got. It felt like I didn’t stop typing for the whole time and the thirty minutes went by very quickly. I was really impressed with the range and depth of questions asked and I could tell some of the students were really thinking about different aspects of the project; could I use my work to help people in other countries where water quality is poor? Does my process produce any harmful by-products?

Another common question I was asked was if I always wanted to be an Engineer. The answer to that was no, mainly because when I was younger I didn’t really have a good idea of what engineering was. I suspect that I would have really enjoyed an event such as I’m an Engineer when I was younger and I think that it’s an excellent way to introduce the concept and various disciplines of engineering to school pupils.

With my £500 winnings I’m really looking forward to designing my table top treatment works. I have already spoken to my sponsor company about branding the model with their logo and my plan is to bring it into schools to continue the outreach activities. In my head it will be quite fun to use, pressing buttons to turn on UV disinfection lamps and switches to operate stirred tanks.

Lastly, I would like to say thank you to the organisers for the opportunity to take part. I really enjoyed my time taking part in I’m an Engineer and I was surprised and incredibly pleased to be chosen as a winner. I will recommend the competition to others in my office and at my university.

I would also like to say thank you to all the students who took part with such interesting questions. In fact, a lot of the questions let me reflect on my own work and in the end this provided me with some inspiration; research can be frustrating sometimes but when I sat back and thought about where I started my engineering journey I felt motivated to keep moving forwards. I hope that the reverse is also true and the competition gave some motivation to students to investigate further into the world of engineering.

Kind regards,
Matthew