The James Dyson Award, the international design and engineering competition for students promoted by the James Dyson Foundation, has opened registration for 2024, challenging inventors from around the world to propose novel projects that address a real-world problem.
Young inventors for a global impact
Open to all engineering and design students and recent graduates, the award seeks ambitious projects that tackle a global problem, from cancer diagnosis to natural disasters. With global recognition given to one international winner and one sustainability winner, past winners include an off-road trailer ambulance to rescue the wounded from conflict zones, a paint job made from recycled glass that significantly reduces the need for air conditioning, and a device to control bleeding from stab wounds.
Established in 2005, the competition has supported over 400 young inventors with prizes worth over a million pounds; more than two-thirds of previous global winners have gone on to commercialize their ideas. The international winner and the global sustainability winner will win £30,000, while £5,000 will be offered to each national winner across the 30 markets where the award takes place.
Sir James Dyson, founder and Chief Engineer of Dyson, said: “The world needs more doers, problem solvers, not rabble-rousers, and who are ready to tackle the problems of our time. Every year the James The Dyson Award gives young people a platform for their inventions in medical, environmental and much more. It is their ‘wrong thinking’ that leads to discoveries, whether it is the development of a new sustainable material, or of applying intelligent engineering principles to help improve people’s lives. I can’t wait to see what new inventions the Prize will bring in 2024.”
Italian projects over the years
Over the years, young Italian inventors have proposed innovative projects in various fields: from Cloud of Sea (Italian winner 2020) by Matteo Brasili (NABA), a special fender that allows each sailor to do their part, triggering a virtuous circle that starts from the bottom, for example Argo (Italian winner and international finalist 2022) of the Bigon-Campanale-Labidi trio (IUAV), a wearable device to increase the autonomy of swimmers with visual impairments, signaling the turn and orientation in the pool with vibrations; from Roadfix (Italian winner 2021) of Grosso-Migliozzi-Puleo (Polytechnic of Milan), a tool to promote the efficiency of road asphalting, a X-Tile (international finalist 2020) by Manuel Ibba (Polytechnic of Turin), a tile capable of dissipating heat with thermo-chromic properties given by a paint that repels or retains heat. And then the Italian winner 2024Simone Perini (IUAV) with his invention D-Pulpwhich aims to improve the current process of generating myoelectric prostheses for upper limbs thus ensuring halved times and costs, lighter and more sustainable customizable materials, repeatability of the process and the mitigation of the risk of injuries during manual processing of the arm artificial.
Success stories
Previous winners of the award have achieved great success thanks to the global media exposure and injection of funds that the award offers. Previous international winner Yusuf Muhammad presented his Automist invention in 2009, which tackles house fires with an ingenious water misting mechanism that uses 10 times less water than a traditional system. Today, Yusuf runs a successful company that has installed over 13,000 systems and is currently obtaining international certification for a possible launch in the United States. He said: “Winning the James Dyson Award gave me great confidence and a springboard to success. It allowed me to start a company that turned my design idea into a product that protects homes around the world and it has saved lives. As an internationally recognized award, it is a fantastic vehicle for bringing your ideas to life.”
Other previous winners around the world include:
The Golden Capsule (South Korea) – a hands-free intravenous (IV) device designed for disaster areas, which can be tethered to the patient and is not dependent on gravity. HOPES (Singapore) – a wearable device for painless, low-cost glaucoma testing that patients can take at home. PlasticScanner (Netherlands) – an open-source scanning device that helps fight plastic waste by detecting the type of plastic in an item. BlueBox (Spain) – an at-home cancer screening solution designed to encourage more women to get tested for breast cancer. mOm incubators (UK) – a low-cost portable and foldable incubator, which has been successfully used to save the lives of children in Ukraine.
The top national winners and runners-up will be shortlisted into the global Top 20 by a panel of expert Dyson engineers from different disciplines and finally Sir James Dyson himself will choose the global winners. National winners will be announced on September 11, 2024, and global winners on November 13.