MacRobert Award

UK engineering prize

The MacRobert Award is regarded as the leading prize recognising UK innovation in engineering by corporations.^[1] The winning team receives a gold medal and a cash sum of £50,000.

The annual award process begins with an invitation to companies to submit entries, by the end of January. The judging panel for the awards, which includes several Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering, then selects a shortlist of six to eight candidates. Following site visits, the judges produce a shortlist of three or four candidates for visits by the whole judging panel.

The judges consider three key criteria when assessing entries:

Innovation
Commercial success
Benefit to society

The guidance for submissions explains that "All three criteria may be interpreted broadly to reflect the very diverse nature of engineering and its role in every aspect of society".

In 2019, the 50th anniversary year of the awards,^[2] Royal Mail issued a series of postage stamps marking "the marvels of British engineering", with a new set of 10 stamps that featured, along with other engineering achievements, three past winners of the MacRobert Award.^[3]

History

The award is named in honour of Rachel, Lady MacRobert (1884–1954).^[4] It was established in 1969 by the MacRobert Trust. In 1979 the Royal Academy of Engineering took on the administration, supported by the Worshipful Company of Engineers and industry sponsors.

The criteria for judging entries have changed over the years. The original remit was to reward “an outstanding contribution” made “by way of innovation in the fields of engineering or the other physical technologies or in the application of the physical sciences, which has enhanced or will enhance the national prestige and prosperity of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”. The first rule change was to include commercial success as a criterion. This was done to exclude entries that failed to have any lasting impact in the marketplace.^[5]

Winners

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1969 - Freeman Fox & Partners - for the superstructure of the Severn Bridge and Rolls-Royce - for the Pegasus Engine (Joint Winners)
1970 - British Petroleum - for new surveying techniques
1971 - The Gas Council - for innovative manufacturing processes
1972 - EMI Limited - for advances in diagnosing Brain disease using X-rays
1973 - Dunlop - for the Denovo tyre
1974 - ICI Limited (Agricultural division)
1975 - Westland Helicopters "For the semi-rigid rotor system and conformal gearing of the Lynx helicopter" and British Railways Board "For developments in railway vehicle suspensions" (Joint Winners)
1976 - No award.
1977 - Royal Signals Research Establishment and Malvern Instruments "For the Malvern Correlator which measures the movement of particles or molecules" ^[6]
1978 - Pilkington Brothers Limited "For the Triplex Ten-Twenty laminated windscreen for cars and aircraft"
1979 - Post Office Telecommunications
1980 - Johnson Matthey Group
1981 - Lucas CAV Limited
1982 - Kaldair Limited
1983 - Ruston Gas Turbines
1984 - Netlon Limited
1985 - The National Institute of Agricultural Engineering and Rolls-Royce (Joint Winners)
1986 - Oxford Instruments Group
1987 - Renishaw plc
1988 - Quantel Limited
1989 - British Gas
1990 - The Science and Engineering Research Council
1991 - Rover Group and Defence Research Agency and GEC Sensors (Joint Winners)
1992 - BP International
1993 - ICI Klea
1994 - Soil Machine Dynamics
1995 - British Gas plc and Gill Electronic R&D
1996 - Rolls-Royce plc - for the Trent aero-engine
1997 - Whipp & Bourne (A division of FKI plc)
1998 - Norton Healthcare Limited
1999 - Buro Happold - for the Millennium Dome design
2000 - Johnson Matthey
2001 - Sensaura
2002 - Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) − for light emitting polymers
2003 - Randox Laboratories
2004 - IBM − for the WebSphere MQ
2005 - CSR plc
2006 - Optos plc^[7]
2007 - Process Systems Enterprise
2008 - Touch Bionics for the I-LIMB bionic hand^[8]^[9]^[10]
2009 - Arup for the Beijing National Aquatics Center^[11]
2010 - Inmarsat for its Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN)^[12]
2011 - Microsoft Research Cambridge for the machine learning work on the human motion capture subsystem of Kinect^[13]
2012 - Jaguar Land Rover for design and innovation building Range Rover Evoque
2013 - RealVNC for the innovation of VNC Remote Access Software
2014 - Cobalt Light Systems for the innovation of Insight100 airport security liquid scanner
2015 - Artemis Intelligent Power for the innovation of Digital Displacement hydraulic transmission.^[1]^[14] The judging panel was chaired by Dame Sue Ion.^[15]
2016 - Blatchford for the world's most 'intelligent' prosthetic limb.^[16] The judging panel was chaired by Dame Sue Ion.^[17]
2017 - Raspberry Pi "for its inexpensive credit card-sized microcomputers, which are redefining how people engage with computing, inspiring students to learn coding and computer science and providing innovative control solutions for industry."^[18] ^[19] ^[20]
2018 - Owlstone Medical "for its ReCIVA Breath Sampler, the first device capable of capturing breath samples for analysis in a robust and reproducible way" ^[21]^[22]
2019 - Bombardier Aerospace for its resin-infused advanced composite wing that minimises an aircraft’s environmental impact by reducing weight and fuel consumption in flight, and waste during manufacture.
2020 - JCB "for developing and manufacturing the world’s first volume-produced fully electric digger (19C-1E), with zero exhaust emissions, improved productivity, outstanding noise and vibration characteristics and emission-free at point of use for use inside buildings."^[23]
2021 - DnaNudge "for its pioneering genetic testing technology that enables consumers to shop more healthily – nudged by their DNA plus lifestyle"
2022 - Quanta Dialysis Technologies "for creating a compact and portable dialysis machine, allowing more flexible and accessible care for patients with renal failure"^[18]
2023 - Ceres Power "for its pioneering clean energy technology, including fuel cells for power generation and electrolysers for green hydrogen"^[18]

References

^ ^a ^b "'Massive leap' wins engineering award". BBC. Retrieved 17 July 2015.
^ "50 years of engineering innovation".
^ "Royal Mail celebrates British engineering with set of special stamps". Royal Academy of Engineering (Press release).
^ MacRobert Trust
^ "50 years of engineering innovation".
^ "Winners 1969-2015 - Royal Academy of Engineering". Winners 1969-2015 - Royal Academy of Engineering.
^ Seeing into the Future Archived 2012-02-12 at the Wayback Machine, Ingenia Magazine, March 2007
^ BBC NEWS, Bionic hand wins top tech prize
^ telegraph.co.uk, World's first commercial bionic hand
^ "Palme d'Or, Ingenia Magazine, September 2008". Archived from the original on 2011-10-02. Retrieved 2008-12-02.
^ "Top prize for Chinese water cube". BBC News. 2009-06-09. Retrieved 2009-06-09.
^ "Inmarsat grabs the MacRobert engineering prize". BBC News. 2010-06-08. Retrieved 2010-06-08.
^ "Back to the future: MacRobert Award 2012 launches by looking back 40 years". Royal Academy of Engineering.
^ McArdle, Helen. "Edinburgh firm scoops £50,000 MacRobert prize for innovation shown to cut fuel consumption by up to 27 per cent". Herald Scotland. Retrieved 17 July 2015.
^ "Artemis Intelligent Power wins MacRobert Award". RAEng. Retrieved 17 July 2015.
^ Austin-Morgan, Tom. "World's most intelligent prosthetic limb wins MacRobert award". Retrieved 24 June 2016.
^ "World's most intelligent prosthetic limb wins UK's top innovation prize". Retrieved 24 June 2016.
^ ^a ^b ^c "MacRobert award". Royal Academy of Engineering. Retrieved 2 July 2017.
^ "Chips that changed the classroom". Ingenia. Retrieved 2018-12-04.
^ Cellan-Jones, Rory. "Raspberry Pi scores UK's top engineering award". BBC. Retrieved 2 July 2017.
^ "Breath Biopsy platform scoops the UK's most prestigious award for engineering innovation". Royal Academy of Engineering (Press release).
^ "An easier way to diagnose disease". Ingenia. Retrieved 2018-12-04.
^ "The winner of the 2020 MacRobert Award: JCB". Retrieved 23 July 2020.