School of Computer and Engineering students standing and holding certificates for winning a competition as part of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers Champions 2022 initiative.
School of Computer and Engineering students standing and holding certificates for winning a competition as part of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers Champions 2022 initiative.

UWL student team wins Royal Academy of Engineering Frontiers Champions 2022

Intro

A team of students from the University of West London’s School of Computing and Engineering has won a competition as part of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers Champions 2022 initiative. Frontiers Champions aims to bring together engineers from around the world to tackle key global challenges; in this case, reducing domestic water and energy consumption.

Main body

In 2020, the United Nations issued a warning that extreme weather events are making global water resources more scarce, contaminated, and unpredictable, and across Europe, people are currently living with extremely challenging energy prices. So, since taking showers accounts for around 40% of all water and 30% of all energy used by households, a tool to monitor and regulate consumption could be a great way to ensure better management of resources.  

UWL PhD students Cristiane De Fatima DondeGirotto, Farzad Piadeh, and Daniel Egyir, who are supervised by Dr Kourosh Behzadian, developed an Internet of Things (IoT)-based appliance they call an AWARENESS kit, which stands for: Appliance for Water consumption management in showering by using Arduino kit, Energy NExus and SensorS. 

Kourosh explains:

For the competition, we partnered with Malaysian university Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) who had already secured funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering. They opened it up to teams anywhere in the world, so we were competing with student teams from Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa.” 

The UWL students’ prototype device uses sensors to measure the water temperature and flow, and a battery-powered LCD screen to display real-time water and energy use.

Kourosh continues:

With nothing like AWARENESS currently on the market, there's potential for exploring future commercialisation. Going forward it would be great if we could enter more of these Royal Academy of Engineering competitions.” 

Taking part was a positive experience for the student team members, who impressed the judges with their professional approach to the project.

Daniel says:

This gave me with invaluable insights into the innovative and cutting-edge uses of the Internet of Things. I also have a better understanding of collaboration and teamwork and it has opened new possibilities to continue learning and growing."

Christiane adds:

This was a rewarding experience that motivated me to learn about programming and data publication. It also provided an opportunity to collaborate and learn from a diverse international community of academics and students, all with the common goal of improving our environment." 

School of Computing and Engineering

We offer a wide range of industry-focused, innovative courses designed to give you an edge in your career. Our civil engineering courses are ranked 6th in the UK and our construction, surveying and planning courses are 12th in the UK overall (Guardian University Guide, 2024).

DO NOT USE

Related news