An innovative vision of engineering in the future has secured a University of Aberdeen student a prestigious award.
Santiago Halle, who is in his fourth year, studying engineering at the institution, was a category winner in a national poster competition held at the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Conference - Innovate to Survive: Engineers for a One Planet Future.
The competition ran alongside theICE’s flagship conference which brought together over 200 experts from the built environment sector to discuss the crucial role of engineers in the battle against climate change.
The competition challenged students from across the UK to prepare an engineering design concept or solution to meet the challenges of a low carbon future.
Entries were invited in four categories: water, energy, transport and built environment.
Santiago was awarded the top honour and a prize of £100 in the water category of the competition for his poster entitled An experimental study of flow-plant interactions at leaf and shoot scales in relation to water quality and security.
The poster reported the key results of Santiago’s honours project which has been a part of the Leverhulme Trust funded study Biophysics of flow-plants interactions in aquatic systems.
The primary goal of Santiago’s project has been to find physical and biophysical methods to control vegetation populations in rivers.
The completed project provides new insights into the understanding of the flow-plant interactions at shoot and leaf scales.
This information is of particular importance for water resource management, flood protection and control of invasive species.
The project, supervised by Professor Vladimir Nikora and Drs Ismail Albayrak and Oliver Miler, reflects the growing research-driven teaching at the School of Engineering.
Santiago beat off entrants from 15 UK universities.
The ICE Innovate to Survive conference took place in Westminster, London from 28-29 June.