Jason Ford, news editor
This week sees the announcement of the third recipient of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, the biennial award that celebrates an engineering innovation that has benefitted humanity on a global scale.
The first £1m QEPrize was jointly awarded to five pioneers of the internet including the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners Lee. Two years ago it was the turn of Dr Robert Langer to step forward and accept the prize for developing a range of medical innovations via materials science.
Estimated to have had an impact on two billion lives, Dr Langer’s achievements include the use of polymer capsules to slowly deliver large-molecule drugs inside the body over a long period of time. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor has also developed artificial skin and wirelessly controlled electronic drug implants.
The Engineer noted on the day of Dr Langer’s award that the QE Prize was created as a way to celebrate engineering, promote the profession to young people and highlight Britain’s pre-eminence in the field.
Two years is a long time between awards and it had escaped this author’s mind that the organisers don’t issue a short list of possible winners.
Back in 2014 Alec Broers was chair of the QE Prize judging panel and he told The Engineer: ‘We have decided not to [create a shortlist] because we don’t want to have losers. If you look at the Nobel prize, very often the people on the shortlist one year almost certainly come through in future years… But if you have a shortlist then those who don’t get the prize are sort of thrown away and it’s more difficult the next time to bring them forward and say “this is the one this year”, when it was only third last year.’
It should go without saying that The Engineer will be covering the QEPrize this Wednesday and giving it the prominence it deserves, but can we say the same of the nationals and broadcast media? If previous awards are anything to go by then coverage will likely be kept to a minimum in terms of airtime and column inches.
To a non-technical audience, the inclusion of Tim Berners Lee in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics probably did more to bring him into the public’s consciousness than any award from his peers.
If the organisers of the QEPrize want to push engineering that little bit further into the public domain then maybe they should rethink the shortlist strategy and consider the sort of news it will be competing against when the winner is announced on Wednesday.
Sadly, I very much doubt many will notice – if only because engineering’s leaders are far too passive when they should speak out more on public spending horrors such as HS2..
Why isn’t it done every year?
There is the annual MacRobert Award. It isn’t the same – it is for engineering rather than an engineer – but it does illustrate the challenge that any organisation faces when trying to get the media to take any notice.
Every year the Royal Academy of Engineering comes up with a piece of really neat and important engineering. But media coverage is dismal when you compare it with the acreage given over to trivial awards.
Shortlists are one way of drumming up interest. The Nobels don’t need them because the coverage comes automatically. I’m with Jason.
In a society where, to the popular? meja the shoes and trousers of a PM seem more important than the fate of thousands forced to leave their homes to avoid civil wars..and the cult of celebrity that believes reporting the antics of overpaid under-educated, un-necessary ‘stars’ is critical to life as they know it…..what possible value is there in promoting the actual wealth creators and innovators?
One way that the organisers might try to push the prize into the public domain ,is to actually select something that has an edge of controversy so allowing debate. I see that one of the criteria is (wikipedia warning)
“In what way has this innovation been of global benefit to humanity?”
Well that is potentially open to debate. There is infact no clear definition of a global benefit for humanity and it reduces the prize to a lowest (highest?) common denominator that keeps all happy, offends no one and gets largely ignored. Maybe a ‘sub prize’ for a controversial category might be picked up by the media, stimulate debate and allow the prize winners (and judges) to be brave and defend their decision.
This isn’t just about creating controversy for controversy’s sake, but allowing the public see that engineers in fact do not all ‘speak with one voice’ can argue their various corners and gain respect for it.
The Three Gorges Dam? DDT?