November in Newcastle has seen engineering excellence of many forms celebrated. Our new cohort of Fellows and Engineering Executives were awarded recently at the Newcastle recognition ceremony.
We also awarded the prestigious winners of the John Monash Medal, for Engineering Heritage and the David Robinson Award for the ITEE college.
Alongside the celebration of engineering achievement in Newcastle we held our annual straw towers competition for budding engineers in Years four to six at school.
Newcastle General Manager Helen Link said it has been really special to be a part of both events.
“Engineers are integral to the Newcastle community and every year it is so exciting to recognise some of our best as Fellows, Engineering Executives and with our prestigious learned society awards.”
“To get to have these celebrations alongside exciting workshops with Newcastle’s engineers of the future has been really heartening. It's been an exciting year for engineering in Newcastle and these events have been a wonderful opportunity to recognise that.”
Ms Link would like to again congratulate the newest Fellows and Engineering Executives in Newcastle, Colin Duck FIEAust, Hossein Rashidi FIEAust CPEng NER, David Warren FIEAust CPEng NER and Fernando López MIEAust CPEng EngExec NER.
The winners of our prestigious Engineering Heritage and ITEE college awards are:
At the recognition ceremony we were lucky to have a presentation from Newcastle 2023 Professional Engineer of the Year, Tanja Rosenqvist as well as Engineers Australia Executive General Manager Sarah Jenkins to present awards.
Congratulations are also due to the winning teams from Newcastle School Straw Tower Competition, two Thornton primary school teams took away first and second place in the competition and the team from Tighes Hill Primary School were awarded the innovation prize.
Over 110 students took part in the competition from eight different schools. Each team had to create their towers out of straws in the weeks leading up to the competition day.
On the day the student’s towers were loaded with weights until they broke. Towers were judged by the weight held, as well as how heavy the towers were themselves.
“During the process as towers began to buckle and fail, students learned about structural engineering knowledge points that explained why joints were failing and what could be done to improve on the design,” Ms Link said.
“Engineers Australia would like to say a great big thank you to our straw tower judges David Sparkes, Jo Lever and Tim Mclennan who made the day a great success, as well as all the teachers who facilitated the project and the excursion.”