Create the Future

If you’ve ever stared up at the night sky with curiosity and a sense of wonder, then this week’s episode of the Create the Future podcast is for you. This month, two huge engineering achievements are being celebrated. The first is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission, where engineers rescued astronauts from sudden disaster; the second is the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Sp...

Whether you're streaming your favourite TV show, video conferencing with colleagues, posting a photo of your food on Instagram, or helping to build a to a global, community-driven supercomputer – you need the internet. Throughout history there have been several feats of engineering that have forever changed the way that we communicate, and how we see our world – inventions such as the printing pre...

If you’ve ever heard of Schrödinger’s cat, watched Avengers: Endgame, or binge-watched The Big Bang Theory, then a branch of physics called quantum mechanics may sound familiar. Quantum mechanics (or quantum theory) is one of two theories in physics that work to describe the fundamental properties of the universe, the other being Einstein’s theory of relativity. Science fiction has wrapped quantum...

Bringing a touch of Hollywood glamour to Create the Future this week, we interview two visual effects (VFX) engineers whose companies have, between them, received Oscar nominations for visual effects on the Lion King, Gladiator, Life of Pi, the most recent Jungle Book, and won an Oscar for the hugely successful World War 1 movie, 1917.  Unlike special effects – explosions, animatronics, and a...

Earthquakes provide a complex challenge for engineers; they are difficult to predict, difficult to withstand and, subsequently, difficult to recover from. But that’s not all – as seen by the 2004 Indian Ocean and 2011 Tōhoku earthquakes, these events can also trigger unforeseen secondary disasters such as tsunamis and nuclear meltdowns, increasing the scale of the disaster several fold. According...

Opened over a century ago, the Panama Canal is widely considered to be one of the greatest feats in engineering history , and a contender for the ‘eighth wonder of the world’. Not only did its construction produce the biggest earth dam in the world at the time, but it also, consequently, produced the largest artificial lake. The Panama Canal allows ships to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pa...

Today we take our navigation for granted. Just a few moments using our phone and we’ve got our quickest route home, the scenic drive to work, and directions to the nearest coffee shop. But have you ever stopped to wonder how it actually works, or who made it? For a special sixth episode of the Create the Future podcast, we spoke to the winners of the 2019 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering afte...

From swimsuits and coffee cups to quantum computers and medicines, materials science – the “middle of the Venn diagram between chemistry, engineering, and physics” – enables all the products, substances, and general ‘stuff’ with which we interact every day. But what makes for a good material? What makes a material ‘smart’, for that matter? And, while new, more advanced materials can help to power...

The fourth episode of the Create the Future podcast focuses on artificial intelligence, a topic often found at the centre of modern ethical discourse, and one that frequents both the cinema screens of Hollywood, and the pages of science fiction. Joined by experts Dame Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton; and Azeem Azhar, technology entrepreneur and producer o...

In this episode, we explore the origin and potential impact of smart cities . We look back on the technological and economic successes of the 2012 Olympic Games; debate the use of people’s data to improve city infrastructure; and highlight the need to ensure that smart city technology is developed to be inclusive, not a commodity.  Joining us in this conversation are Dr Larissa Suzuki , senio...

In this episode, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, we talk with Apollo engineer Dr David Baker and then traverse the surface of Mars with Airbus ExoMars rover engineer Abbie Hutty. New episodes of ‘Create the Future: An Engineering Podcast’ every other Tuesday. www.qeprize.org/podcasts Follow @qeprize on Twitter , Instagram , and Facebook Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pr...

In this inaugural episode we talk with Lord Browne of Madingley, engineer, business leader and Chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation, about the profound impact that engineering has, and continues to have, on the world around us. New episodes of ‘Create the Future: An Engineering Podcast’ every other Tuesday. www.qeprize.org/podcasts Follow @qepri...