Engineering students to present 54 ideas for a better world
As many as 250 engineering students from different study programmes at Aarhus University have spent a semester inventing patentable ideas for technological solutions to three of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The inventions will be presented at a major event on 14 May.
How do we solve the world's problems within energy, health and food? As many as 250 engineering students will present a total of 54 solutions to these problems on 14 May 2019, when the Department of Engineering at Aarhus University holds its first "invention pitch".
The engineering students will present their own patentable proposals for ground-breaking technological solutions to some of our biggest challenges to companies, researchers and other invited guests. And later in the day, the best pitch will be announced at an award ceremony.
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In other words, it's like the “Dragons’ Den” of engineering, but focus is on the three Sustainable Development Goals: health technology, food technology and renewable energy technology.
The many students have spent the last four months inventing and developing something that will create disruption based on the three Sustainable Development Goals. The actual event is thus the culmination of the ninth semester course Innovation & Entrepreneurship, where students have worked together in groups across five very different study programmes.
This means that chemical engineers have worked together with structural engineers and software engineers, for example, and this type of interdisciplinary approach strongly promotes innovation, according to Thomas S. Toftegaard, head of department:
"Engineering is about translating deep theoretical knowledge into solutions to real issues, and I see this solution-oriented approach again and again from our students. I’m so pleased to see how quickly they can familiarise themselves with an interdisciplinary problem and find a solution to it. This is the quintessence of engineering, and we need this mindset to make the world greener," he says.
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Aarhus University's “invention pitch” will take place on 14 May at the Department of Engineering's new, experimental research facility in Skejby. The event will start at 13:00 for invited guests. The doors will be open to the public from 16:00.
The address is Deep Tech Experimental Hub, Skejby Nordlandsvej 301, 8200 Aarhus N.
Contact
Henning Sejer Jakobsen
Senior scientific assistant
Mail: sejer@eng.au.dk
Phone: +45 27851369
Jesper Bruun
Communications Partner
Mail: bruun@eng.au.dk
Phone: +45 42404140