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Engineering and Technology (IET) Innovation Awards

Lord Sainsbury of Turville,  Former Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Science and Innovation
IET, Savoy Place,  11 October 2006

I’m delighted to be here to welcome you to the 2006 IET Innovation in Engineering awards. I’m delighted because this occasion gives us the opportunity to demonstrate, particularly to young people, the exciting things happening in engineering today.

When faced with a fall in the number of young people taking Physics ‘A’ Levels or a decline in engineering undergraduates, it is very easy to say that it is due to young people today not liking to tackle difficult subjects or to the fact that engineers don’t have a high status in our society. But I don’t believe either of these explanations. There are often simpler explanations like a lack of Physics teachers in our schools, a problem which we are now tackling. I do, however, worry that we don’t communicate to our young people that there are today exciting and rewarding career opportunities in sectors such as aerospace, opto-electronics, nanotechnology, mobile communications, energy and bio-engineering.

That is why it is encouraging and exciting to see the innovations in engineering short-listed for awards tonight. They demonstrate both the range of challenges that engineers face in our society today and the creativity and technical skill needed to solve them.

To make the same point about the exciting developments taking place in engineering today, I would like to mention another important development taking place in our economy. In the last ten years an amazing cultural change has taken place in our universities. In response to incentives we have given them for knowledge transfer, universities have started to energetically exploit the research they do, and we have seen a remarkable increase in the number of spin-off companies, licenses, patents and research for industry.

In the last two years 20 spin outs from UK universities have floated on the stock market with a combined value of £1.3bn. The point I want to draw to your attention tonight is that 9 of the 20 involve engineering in one way or another. For example, Wolfson Micro design and supply mixed-signal semiconductors that have the capacity to process highly complex digital information into signals that the real world can hear. To date, they have created more than 80 products for the digital market, which are essential to consumer audio applications such as digital televisions, set-top boxes, hi-fis and DVD players.

Another of the companies, Andor, has a portfolio of over 400 products and accessories, which are employed in fields as diverse as drug discovery, toxicology analysis, medical diagnosis, food quality testing and defence. Their range of world-class cameras and detectors fall within product sectors such as Research, Instrumentation or Space and Surveillance, for applications such as Imaging, X-ray or for microscopy systems.

And earlier this week I shared a platform with Dr Stephen Ladyman of the Department for Transport at the Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress. We announced a new joint initiative in which DTI, DfT and EPSRC are each providing £3m to projects to address the challenge of future intelligent transport systems.

This work is being taken forward under the Intelligent Transport Systems & Services Innovation Platform, one of two pilots developed by the Technology Strategy Board, to address societal challenges and influence government procurement opportunities.

Finally, I am delighted to be able to announce this evening that we have agreed a new Electronics Knowledge Transfer Network, recommended by the EIGT, to be managed by the new UK Electronics Alliance. As I hope you can see there are many opportunities opening up for creative young engineers.

That is why I think we can say to young people today- ‘If you want to help meet some of the most difficult challenges in our society, if you want to be creative and make a difference, and if you want a well-rewarded career, then engineering is for you.’

That is why I am also delighted to be here this evening to celebrate these Innovation Awards and the exciting and valuable developments taking place in engineering today.