Nuclear-21 Associate Partner Ross Peel has spent two days volunteering at events at the University of Sheffield. Ross provided career advice and feedback from an industrial viewpoint on student team projects.
Each January, the University holds two week-long projects for undergraduate engineering students. Over the course of a week, diverse student teams from different engineering disciplines and backgrounds work together to solve real world projects.
During the Global Engineering Challenge, first year students undertake projects directed towards providing innovative solutions to problems in a third-world community. Many projects are part of the Engineers Without Borders Engineering for People Design Challenge.This year, the projects focused on Kibera, a large informal settlement in Kenya. Projects included:
The University has produced a video of highlights from the 2018 Global Engineering Challenge.
Meanwhile, during Engineering – You’re Hired!, second year students work on more industrially-focused projects. Projects include:
Ross worked with students on the Nuclear Desalination Plant project. In this project, the students’ task was to design a concept for a seawater desalination plant for a small island nation. The students had to select a Small Modular Reactor from a set list to power the desalination plant. Ross was able to bring technical and economic insights, as well as encouraging students to consider the political and regulatory factors in their project. The University has produced a 5 minute video of highlights from Engineering – You’re Hired. Ross appears very briefly providing input to students 40 seconds into the video.
During both weeks, Ross spent time networking with students from the Faculty of Engineering. Dozens of students wanted to discuss careers in the nuclear industry. For those who approached Ross at the event, he volunteered his advice in future whenever they felt it could help them.
Nuclear-21 strongly believes that industry has a responsibility to foster development of the next generation of engineeers, scientists, and other specialists, both technical and non-technical. We would like to thank the University of Sheffield for the opporunity to speak to students and be involved in helping to deliver the Faculty Project Weeks.
