UCD EWB Challenge Team Reach Finals

Two UCD Students, Cormac O Meadhra and Amy O’Keefe, attended the EWB -Habitat for Humanity Vietnam 2013 Coventry Finals after taking part in the EWB Challenge through their engineering course in UCD. Below Cormac discusses their day.

Cormac O Meadhra & Amy O’Keefe with their prototype at the EWB Final

The EWB Habitat for Humanity Final took place in Coventry on the 13 of June 2013, which my team-mate Amy O’Keeffe and I were lucky enough to be selected to attend. The event opened with talks given by the Dean of Engineering and Computing in Coventry University and by a graduate civil engineer from Cambridge University. Both of the speeches placed a strong emphasis on the opportunity we have as engineers to make a fundamental difference to peoples’ lives. For example, the Cambridge Graduate described her experience working with in rural communities in earthquake prone regions, demonstrating construction methods to make structures more resilient.

While the teams presented throughout the day, the organisers ran a role-play to simulate the working environment for a humanitarian engineer. After the judges had finished deliberating, the winners were announced and the head of EWB-UK then gave a few words. His words complemented those of the earlier speakers and describe what should be a primary of the engineering profession: our duty to apply our skills in order to solve the problems humanity faces.

Cormac OMeadhra