Two weeks left to enter prestigious engineering award

Entries close on Monday 31 January at 5pm - companies who choose to enter will be competing for one of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s most distinguished prizes, with a gold medal and a tax-free £50,000 prize at stake for the winner.

Previous winners have helped to transform the world we live in, delivering outstanding innovation, commercial success and tangible social benefit. Since 1969, the MacRobert Award has established an enviable track record of spotting step-change innovations that have gone on to be highly successful as well as beneficial to society. 

Many of the UK’s best known companies have won the award during its 50+ year history, from Rolls-Royce and Jaguar Land Rover, to mini-computer pioneers Raspberry Pi and structural engineering experts Arup and Buro Happold. The 2022 winner was Quanta Dialysis Technologies for its innovative approach to a portable dialysis machine, inspired by the design of a fast-food drinks dispenser.

Chair of the judging panel Professor Sir Richard Friend FREng FRS explains what he looks for in entries: “The MacRobert Award is for innovation in engineering and we really want to see that innovation. Something that you didn’t expect to see but when you do it makes you think ‘my goodness that is clever’. There is no particular formula for a winning product. But when you see it, you know it. 

“The innovation needs to be commercially successful, and if you look at the previous winners of this award, they include everything from emerging companies right up to large multinational businesses. 

“Common to all winners is the quality of the team. The award is for a team and they need to work together in a special way. The diversity of groups is the magic. You need disparate skills and diversity of thought to understand how to manufacture, how to find who the customers really are and what they want to buy.”