The competition, now in its second year, was launched in September and was open to all students and staff attending Scottish universities. The competition has generated a number of extremely high quality and innovative proposals, underlining Scotland’s global and historical reputation as a centre of excellence for engineering.

The winner of the £25,000 first prize went to the University of Edinburgh, for a proposal from Dr. Ben Panter relating to a ‘real-time novelty filter to detect improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from reconnaissance imagery’. Dr Panter also won the £5,000 personal prize associated with the winning entry.

Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen claimed the runner-up spot worth £2000 with a team consisting of Dr Laura Muir, Prof. Ian Richardson and Abharana Bhatt.

Third place, worth £1,000, was won by Xuexing Zeng and Prof Tariq S Durrani from Strathclyde University in Glasgow.

Last year’s competition focused on the area of laser technologies and was an outstanding success, with the University of Strathclyde securing first prize. Since then Thales has pursued three of the ideas with the winning entrants and plans to agree on funded projects that will bring their ideas into reality.

David Lockwood, Managing Director of Thales UK’s optronics facility in Glasgow, says:

”We are extremely proud to continue to foster the spirit of innovation within the Scottish engineering community. The scope of the competition and its prize fund are truly unique in the history of engineering in Scotland and the results have clearly generated ideas which have an encouraging future.”

Some 700 of Thales UK’s 8,500 work force are based in Glasgow and the company is an important source of high-tech, high-skill employment in the region. The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is the main customer for Thales’s activities in Glasgow, with the local site being a world leader in night vision technology; delivering equipment and services to the MoD since 1888 when the company was formerly known as Barr & Stroud.

Thales UK supports science and technology projects across the country. With a high proportion of its 8,500 staff involved in science, technology and engineering, the themes of technology and education are at the heart of the company. Thales believes that activities such as The Thales Scottish Technology Prize are crucial in raising the profile of engineering in the minds of young people as an exciting career for their future.