Vaccine refrigeration and sewage treatment among winning projects in IChemE YEAIS

A SOLAR-POWERED refrigerator to make vaccines more accessible and a process to reduce the environmental footprint of a wastewater treatment works were among the winning projects in the  2025 IChemE Young Engineers Awards for Innovation and Sustainability (YEAIS), which were announced today.

The awards honour outstanding young professionals aged 18 to 30 from across IChemE’s global membership who are helping to engineer a sustainable world. Projects focused on IChemE’s priority topics, including clean energy, water, and food, health and wellbeing. A 42-strong judging panel of IChemE volunteers chose overall winners in four categories, including the new school-age category for 16-18-year-olds, in addition to seven individual category winners.

Students from Imperial College London won the overall undergraduate award for their EcoMed project aimed at making vaccines more accessible in remote parts of Africa. Anam Ahmed, Eylul Akgok, Jungho Na, Daniel Bull and Helen Lee designed a solar-powered, thermoelectric refrigerator with a paraffin phase change material that can keep vaccines cool without harmful refrigerants. Minimising dependence on the conventional “cold chain” in vaccine distribution – brought into focus as a major barrier to the Covid vaccine – the project also won the food, health and wellbeing award, sponsored by Elsevier.

Jungho Na told TCE that he was thrilled to learn their work has been “accredited by a lot of great engineers”. He hopes the recognition “could help us bring our dreams into real life and help people in Africa get better access to vaccines”. Not short of ambition, Na said that the group’s “ultimate goal would be to talk with government officials” to see if they can attract state support for their design.

In the early career category, Will Ryden won for his work at Mott MacDonald Bentley in which he helped develop a process to reduce the environmental footprint of a sewage treatment works in Wem, Shropshire, owned by Severn Trent Water. The project also won the water and sanitation award.

Ryden, who says he had “not won anything before”, told TCE that he was “truly blown away” by winning the awards. Ryden’s work helped in the design of a new activated sludge plant that could meet stricter water quality standards while coping with twice the existing flowrate.

Meanwhile, the youngest age category saw a trio of 16-18-year-old pupils from St Helen & St Katharine Girls School in Oxfordshire win the schools category award. Motivated by the difficulty in recycling “fast fashion” fibres, pupils Priya, Emily and Laura’s winning project focused on using fungi to decompose organic textiles.

After its UK launch last year, this year’s YEAIS were open to entries from around the world and attracted over 100 submissions. Finalists included 25 submissions from the UK, ten from Malaysia, four from Australia, and one each from the US, Saudi Arabia, India, Trinidad & Tobago and Indonesia.

Other awards went to Zhi Ling Chew, a postgraduate student at Xiamen University Malaysia for a study on eutectogel formulation, Ikuni Ebereonwu at Arup for a carbon capture project, a group at Sellafield for their work experience programme, and to Shuya Hou at the University of Surrey for a new process safety framework.

Jo Cox, head of young people and student engagement at IChemE, said: “The volunteer judging panel was impressed with the quality of the entries and it has been inspiring to hear about the ideas and innovations, and to see the skills and creativity which set a benchmark for excellence in the field and help us strive towards a more sustainable future.

“We are looking forward to seeing how these awards will grow and develop in 2026 and hope that everyone takes the opportunity to listen to this year’s winners in the online showcases.”

All winners, finalists and highly commended submissions will present posters at a ceremony on 16 June at the Royal Society in London. From 10-19 June IChemE will also be hosting a series of five free webinars to showcase the successful projects. For a full list of the winners and highly commended, click here.