German University races to the finish line to win Formula Student

Winning Team - TU Munich

Technical University Munich speeds to success at Europe's biggest student motorsport event

Budding Engineers in the Technical University (TU) Munich team competing at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers' Formula Student (FS) 2010 event are celebrating after being crowned winners last night at the four-day event at Silverstone, Northants.

FS is Europe's biggest student motorsport event which challenges young Engineers to design and build a single seater race car from scratch. The top prize in Class 1 was presented to TU Munich at an award ceremony in front of thousands of students, while ETH Zurich University won the Class 1A Category for low carbon vehicles.

The international competition, now in its 13th year, smashed records attracting more than 2,500 students to the event.  FS 2010 saw the largest number of entrants than ever before, and was attended by Formula 1 legends including former F1 driver David Coulthard, Bob Bell, Managing Director of Renault F1 Team, Andrew Shovlin, Senior Race Engineer at MERCEDES GP PETRONAS and Nick Wirth, Technical Director of Virgin Racing.

Chief Judge, Richard Folkson, said of Munich's efforts: "Congratulations to a team and car that fully deserved to win. They were consistently outstanding throughout the competition in a very hard fought and close competition. The team were exceptionally professional and well presented."

On the University of Hertfordshire taking the highest ranking British spot he said: "Hertfordshire, like Munich, were fully competitive throughout. With a third of entries from the UK, they staved off a lot of stiff competition from some of the best Universities in the world. The team also entered cars in Class 1A and Class 2 (Design) and the commitment of the students was incredible."

The students' cars were put through their paces in a series of dynamic events over the weekend including Acceleration, Sprint, Skid-Pad and Endurance. The idea behind FS is for each team to work as a phantom company seeking to produce a commercially viable car. Cost, design and presentation were also judged.

Graf Georg-Friedrich, team leader of the TU Munich team (left), said: "It's great that our car has performed so well as everyone in the team has been working incredibly hard. It's been our best year ever and we've had a fantastic time at the event."

University of Stuttgart picked up the Class 1 Runner Up prize with Monash University collecting third place at the award ceremony. There were a number of other awards up for grabs last night at the highly competitive event including the Shell Most Fuel Efficient Class 1 Car which went to the University of Aberdeen, Best Class 1 Newcomer prize awarded to the University of Padova and the Autodesk Class 1 Design Winner which went to DHBW Ravensburg.

FS also ran its Class 1A category for the third year, in which entrants had to develop new and novel low carbon powertrain technologies, for which they were judged on sustainability rather than cost. The category, which is sponsored by the UK's Centre of Excellence for low carbon and fuel cell technologies, Cenex, focused on the sustainability of the design, and looked at how much energy was used and the amount of CO2 released during the manufacture of the car. Hertfordshire again, scored highly.

Gradcracker goes to Silverstone!

Think we would have come last?!

We were really pleased to be invited by The IMechE to attend the Formula Student event at Silverstone this weekend.

Teams of mechanical engineering students took the single seater racing cars that they had designed and built to the famous race track to compete in various events over the course of four days.

Heriot-Watt put the finishing touches on their car

We went on Saturday and saw teams compete in a sprint event and a figure of eight event - take a look at our videos!

We were lucky enough to get the opportunity to talk with many of the teams in the garages and hand out some copies of our new careers guides, webcards and some T-shirts.

Team Aberdeen University were very pleased with their Gradcracker T-Shirts and put them on straight away for a photo opportunity with Angela!

Beautifully Engineered - Team Aberdeen University (and Angela)

Students and visitors were also given the chance to take part in a time trial with Shell to change a formula one wheel. We watched as Cranfield students Klementina Gerova, Timothy Chambers and Daniel Byrne took part.

Klementina Gerova, Timothy Chambers and Daniel Byrne get their instructions from the expert

Sponsors of the event included Gradcracker advertisers E.ON, Airbus, National Instruments and Shell. 

To view all the photos from the day, click here.

National Instruments Design Contest 2010

Are you using LabVIEW in your project? If you are an undergraduate student why not enter your application into the National Instruments Student Design Contest showcasing the most innovative student applications. With the chance to win £500, the opportunity to present at NIDays and be published online on ni.com, all you need to do is submit your completed projects, high resolution photos and a video or Academic poster.

For more information and to download the author packet visit www.ni.com/uk/studentdesign.

Engineering Uncovered at the University of Liverpool

Pictured above from left: Jackie Leyland (Careers and Employability Centre, University of Liverpool), Rachel Mutters (Gradcracker), Imandeep Bual (Centrica), Nigel Coburn (BAE Systems), Stuart Scroggie (BAE Systems), Callum Littlejohns (BAE Systems), Lewis Johnson (BAE Systems), Beejal Shah (National Instruments), Nnamdi Anya (Areva), Harikaran Visvanathan (Areva), Angela Lockhart (Gradcracker) and David Kirby (Areva)

Gradcracker organised another one of our ever-popular Employer Presentation days at the University of Liverpool. On this occasion, we were accompanied by Areva, BAE Systems, Centrica and National Instruments. We always try to take a good cross section of industry sectors to enable the students the opportunity to perhaps consider a particular sector for the first time. This time, we had experts from the Energy, Defence and System Testing sectors.

The presentations were well attended and the students listened closely and attentively to each speaker. After the presentations a mini-careers fair was held and this provided an excellent opportunity for individual students to have an informal chat with the speakers.

The students came from a wide variety of engineering disciplines, and each was of course presented with a Gradcracker t-shirt.

The event was considered to be a success by both employers and students and we look forward to returning to the University of Liverpool soon. (Employers who wish to attend similar events should contact rachel.mutters@gradcracker.com. Universities wishing to arrange an Employer Presentation should contact angela.lockhart@gradcracker.com - there is no charge to employers or Universities.)

You can see some photos from the day in our gallery.

Bioengineering Day

Last week Gradcracker sponsored the Bioengineering Day at Imperial College London where we met students studying Bioengineering at both the University of Oxford and Imperial College London.

The day was an opportunity for employers (and Gradcracker) to get a better understanding of what bioengineering is and how students studying this subject would be ideal employees in industry.

There were a number of companies represented at the event including National Instruments, GE Healthcare, Imperial Innovations and Laerdal.

Bioengineering is one of the most diverse engineering disciplines that we have come across. It covers Maths, Physics, Mechanics, Electronics, Computing, Anatomy, Physiology, Cell Biology and Genetics (and that is only the edited list!).

We had the pleasure of hearing from two guest speakers; Leonard Fass, Academic Relations Director for GE Healthcare and Oliver Sexton from Imperial Innovations. Both presentations were really interesting, discussing the impact bioengineering has in medical industries and how students can launch their ideas and innovations in to the world of business.

Not only did we hear from the professionals, we also got to hear from some of the students. They discussed their projects and their career plans and also simplified bioengineering by using Iron Man as the analogy!

We also got the chance to test our knowledge with an interactive quiz. Did you know that the first non-friction artificial hip was invented in 1960's? In 1896 X-rays were invented and Insulin was first discovered in 1921. We were presented with images of the first brass tools engineered for surgery and saw future technologies designed to make medicine more readily available to the patient and more time-and cost-effective in treatment.

After the presentations students and employers mingled over refreshments and we had the opportunity to see some recently completed projects by final year students. The projects were further proof of just how diverse and complex bioengineering is. One project was about a component for a car, another about new technology for improved vision!

We got to meet over 60 students at the event. They were all so enthusiastic about their chosen degree and proud to be Bioengineering students. We asked a number of the students why they choose this degree and the majority commented that it was because it was such a diverse subject it gave them the opportunity to work on many different projects and have wider prospects upon completing their degree.

Gradcracker is now busy encouraging more employers of bioengineering students to advertise on our site.

Hannah Wade, Academic Field Engineer for National Instruments really enjoyed attending the event and said "It was informative and engaging, and it was great to hear so many engineers so passionate about their chosen subject area.

The event opened my eyes to the wide spectrum of engineering topics a bioengineering/biomedical engineering student covers (and as a result the incredible workload that they must learn to balance), along with the growing need for qualified engineers in this area.

Although National Instruments doesn't have a need specifically for bioengineers/biomedical engineers, based on the students I spoke with during the event, these students would definitely be a good fit academically for our engineering leadership programme."

Gradcracker presents 'Engineering Uncovered' at Brunel University

Pictured above from left: Rachel Mutters (Gradcracker), Rob Warham (National Instruments), Beejal Shah (National Instruments), Dave Green (Foster Wheeler), Phil Curtis (Foster Wheeler), Louis Koonjeen (npower), Angela Lockhart (Gradcracker), Mike Grey (Placement Officer, Brunel University), Raj Sidhu (Careers Consultant, Brunel University).

Gradcracker regularly hosts seminars at Universities where we introduce some of our employers to the engineering students.

Two weeks ago we were at Kingston with Alstom, AREVA and Lloyd's Register. This Wednesday, we hosted a seminar for over 120 engineering students at Brunel. Here, we were accompanied by Gradcracker employers, Cummins, Foster Wheeler, National Instruments and npower.

If you're a Gradcracker employer who would like to be involved in future events contact Rachel. If you would like Gradcracker to attend your University contact Angela. (There is no charge to Gradcracker advertisers or Universities.)