PM welcomes new prize for engineering

The Prime Minister said yesterday that he wanted children to dream about becoming engineers and welcomed the establishment of a new £1m prize for engineers who have done most to benefit humanity.

David Cameron said that he hopes the award will carry the same stature as the Nobel Prizes in raising the profile of the engineering profession to what it was in the days of Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

The first Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering will be awarded in just over 12 months time to the inventors and designers who have done most in advancing the application of engineering knowledge, said the Royal Academy of Engineering, which helped to organise the prize.

The aim of the award is to demonstrate how engineers are making a real difference to the world, the academy said. The biennial prize is funded by several leading high-tech companies, such as BAE Systems, BP and GlaxoSmithKline, which have each donated money to an endowment fund managed by an independent charitable trust. The judges will be announced in February.