Current Students and Staff

// University News

7 Mar 2018

Loughborough engineering student wins innovative Siemens challenge

Last week, a Loughborough University student travelled to Sheffield to take part in the 48 hour Sir William Siemens Challenge: MindSphere Live.

Rebecca McGrother, a Mechanical Engineering student, teamed up with students from Sheffield and Birmingham to ultimately win the top prize. The team used their combined skills in electrical and mechanical engineering, robotics and computer science to create an incredible beating heart device.

Aiming to creatively challenge and inspire the countries most talented university students, across a variety of engineering subjects, the competitors worked in multi-disciplined teams. Their challenge consisted of being given a set of data collected from the Diamond Building's MindSphere installation and using their programming skills to analyse the data and build a mechanical/electrical device.

The winning team has their creation permanently displayed at the University of Sheffield, as well as being offered the opportunity of an internship with Siemens. 

The judges – a team of senior managers and engineers from Siemens – deemed their design to be the most deserving against the criteria of collaboration, adaptability, problem-solving, data, engineering and creativity.

Simon Roberts, Talent Acquisition Manager for Entry Level Talent commented, “MindSphere Live has been a truly exciting and innovative way for the Talent Acquisition team and Siemens as a whole to engage with the next generation of future makers.  It was especially fitting to run such an event in what is the Year of Engineering, helping to showcase just how amazing engineering is!

“The students’ enthusiasm, focus and commitment to the challenge over the 48 hours was amazing to see! As well as offering a year-long or summer internship to all members of the winning team, we were so impressed by the talent on show that we are going to be offering immediate internships to nearly half of those attending and we hope to see this rise over the coming year.”  

Rebecca commented, “I didn’t know what to expect with my team coming from a range of Universities. We soon realised that we had some good ideas and started to work well as a team. I really wanted to develop my skills as an engineer and Mindsphere Live gave me the opportunity to do things that I wouldn’t have had the chance to do in my degree.

“The challenge has excited about the opportunities at Siemens and I am looking forward to undertaking my year placement with Siemens in the coming months. I would definitely recommend the challenge to fellow students. It challenges you so much, but you get a huge amount from it! Thank you to the University and Siemens for choosing our idea as the winner!”