Students can win £30,000 with the James Dyson Award and here’s how you can enter right now

Bet you wish you’d studied engineering or product design now


Listen up – here’s how you could win up to £30,000 with the James Dyson Award. Run by Dyson’s charity, the James Dyson Foundation, the award is looking for problem-solving ideas from design and engineering students and recent graduates, who have game-changing inventions to improve our planet.

The James Dyson Award is an international design award that celebrates the next generation of design engineers, and is looking for young people who have ideas or inventions that tackle the world’s problems. With prizes of up to £30,000, applications are now open!

That all sound great? Here’s how you can apply:

So, all you need to do is design something that’s an effective and clever solution to a real-world problem – whether it’s a day-to-day frustration or a huge global issue.

Entrants must be, or have been within the last four years, enrolled for at least one semester in an undergraduate or graduate engineering/design related course. You can also enter as part of a team.

In your application you should explain what your invention is, how it works, and your development process – the best entries show evidence of prototypes and have supporting pictures and video.

Enter here via the James Dyson Award website. The deadline to apply is 19th July.

Debra Babalola and Shefali Bohra, the 2022 UK National winners for Dotplot, an at-home breast health monitoring tool designed for women to conduct self-checks with confidence and flag abnormalities in breast tissue

Each of the 30 participating countries, including the UK, will have a national winner (who gets £5,000), as well as two runners-up, chosen by an external panel in collaboration with Dyson. These go through to the international shortlist, where Founder Sir James Dyson himself selects the global winners who receive £30,000.

The prizes:

• Global winners will get £30,000 to put towards the next phase of their invention’s development. International runners-up win £5,000

• And national winners will receive £5,000 to put towards developing their idea

• As well as money, you can expect high-profile recognition for your idea and media attention that could help get your idea off the ground

• There’s also a network for past winners, with events and networking opportunities to meet past winners and get their support

Apply to the James Dyson Award here now!

Swaleh Owais and his business partner Yang Cheng, 2022 James Dyson Global Sustainability Award winners for Polyformer, an open-source machine that turns used plastic bottles into 3D printer filament

Previous winners have gone on to do huge things, and you could be next

Imperial and Royal College of Art graduate Ryan Mario Yasin won the UK National Award in 2017 for his sustainable clothing design. And he’s just opened a shop in Battersea Power Station, no biggie!

Ryan created 500 prototypes of his design Petit Pli, a range of childrenswear that’s made to grow through seven sizes as a child grows, aimed at tackling the waste of the fashion industry. He was inspired after sending his baby nephew some clothes, but by the time they arrived he had already outgrown them. As well as the shop, Petit Pli are increasing their collection to include a wider range of clothing such as maternity wear.

“Taking the plunge and pursuing a problem-solving idea can really pay off and initiatives like the James Dyson Award provide a platform to propel these inventions out into the world”, Ryan said.

Could you be next? Apply to the James Dyson Award here now!

Ryan now, in the studio for Petit Pli – his sustainable clothing design that led to his award as UK National Winner in 2017

In 2014, Loughborough University grad James Roberts won the International Award and £30,000 with his mOm Incubators design – low cost, inflatable incubators designed to reduce the number of premature infant deaths in the developing world. The company has recently sent more than 60 incubators to Ukraine and believes it has impacted the lives of over 1,000 babies, saying: “We would not have reached this position without the James Dyson Award.”

The James Dyson Award has already awarded prize money to 390 inventions and, like Ryan and James, over 70 per cent of past global winners have commercialised their winning inventions.

The award is run by the James Dyson Foundation, an engineering-education charity which is funded by Dyson profits. It encourages aspiring engineers and problem solvers to apply their knowledge and discover new ways to improve lives through technology, and to date has given £140m to charitable causes.

Applications are now OPEN and close on July 19th – apply to the James Dyson Award here now.

For more information, check out the Dyson Newsroom here.