On 15-16 September 2015 the Chinese Academy of Engineering will be hosting a major international summit in Beijing on Global Grand Challenges, a series inspired by the NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering , 14 ambitious goals identified by some of this generation’s leading technological thinkers and doers that are believed to be both achievable and necessary to help people and the planet survive.
Teams from the three host nations of China, UK and USA will compete in pitching entrepreneurial ideas with the aim of addressing one or more of the NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering. To prepare the UK teams for this summit Think Up were invited to develop and present a student workshop at the Royal Academy of Engineering in May 2015.
During the briefing day students took part in a range of exercises that helped them develop their conceptual design skills. The aim was to enable teams to generate ideas for a proposal that they could then further develop in the weeks before the summit. They were also encouraged to consider how they might deliver the presentation of their unique and innovative proposal at the summit in China.
The day was presented by Oliver Broadbent, Peter Ayres, Ed Holloway and Ben Godber.