Brilliant designs vie for top prize

Industrial Design students from UNSW's Faculty of the Built Environment have demonstrated their outstanding creative capabilities by taking out five of the 13 finalist places for the James Dyson Award, the tertiary student division of the Australian Design Award.

The five designs to make the cut, from an original field of 92 entries nationwide, cover fields ranging from sustainable transport and water purification to safety for big wave surfers.

Head of FBE's Industrial Design program, Associate Professor Oya Demirbilek said the result carried on a tradition of high achievement for FBE students in the awards.

"I think we do quite well every year in the Dyson competition because here the students learn to design for real needs and they use design to solve real world problems," she said.

The five UNSW finalists are:

- Grant Humphries with mAIRine - a safety rescue jacket specifically for big wave surfers in extreme conditions;

- Roy Hareguna, with the Squad Firefighter Positioning System - a device that allows firefighters to be located and find members of their team in low-visibility indoor fire situations;

- Anton Grimes, with the Link Urban Scooter System - a network of public rental, light pole-mounted rechargeable electric scooters for travelling in city environments;

- James Wansey, with the Ugo automatic safety brake for prams - a system which stops prams accidentally rolling away from parents.

- Jason Lam, with the SolAqua water disinfection unit - a water purification unit which uses only the rays of the sun, designed for use in rural sub-Saharan Africa.

The winner of the James Dyson Award will be announced at a presentation night in Melbourne on Friday, May 29.

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Media Contact: Peter Trute | 02 9385 1933 | 0410 271 826 | p.trute@unsw.edu.au