PhD students converge on Alstom for Energy Yes competition

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Alstom's Rugby site played host to groups of energy research PhD students from around the country as part of national Energy YES competition.

Organised by The University of Nottingham Haydn Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Network of Energy Doctoral Training Centres the competition aims to develop entrepreneurial skills of researchers while also solving some of the energy industrys very real challenges.

The three-day workshop saw members of the Alstom team acting as mentors, judges and guest speakers.
 
Iain Rutherford, Unit MD at Rugby, said: Rugby is the spiritual home of R&D for Alstom Power in the UK, where we have been inventing and designing products for the energy sector for over 100 years, so it was great to see so many bright and enthusiastic students gathered together on the site participating in the 2014 Energy YES competition.
 
The UK needs to encourage more young, innovative and passionate engineers and scientists if it wants to meet the social, economic and environmental challenges of the future and we hope that in hosting the event we have been able to encourage more young people to consider careers in the power industry.
 
A team from the University of Bath won first prize in the competition with their idea for a cheap, lightweight composite material to replace heavy steel used in the walls of shipping containers. The winning team were Heather Parker, Emily Hayward, Stephen Wood, Will Mahy and Jon Wagner, all from the universitys Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies.