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17/11/2011
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A £1million prize aimed at encouraging innovation in the UK and raising the profile of engineering is being launched today by Prime Minister David Cameron.
 The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering will be awarded biannually to an individual or team of up to three people for a 'groundbreaking advance in engineering which has led to significant international public benefit'.
As well as recognising and celebrating the best, the prize will provide an opportunity to demonstrate how engineers and engineering are making a real difference across the world.
The Royal Academy of Engineering will deliver the accolade, which will be overseen by a charitable trust chaired by former BP chief executive Lord Browne.
Leading engineering companies such as defence giant BAE Systems, oil producer Shell and drugs company GlaxoSmithKline are providing the funding.
"Engineering underpins every aspect of our lives," commented Browne. "As the bridge between scientific discovery and commercial application, engineering feeds and clothes us and enables us to work, travel and communicate.
"But too often the engineers behind the most brilliant innovations remain hidden. The Queen Elizabeth Prize aims to change that."
Industry bodies are hoping the prize will inspire young people to study engineering and generate pioneering new ideas. Cameron said he hoped the award would carry the same stature as the Nobel Prizes.
"High skilled, high value manufacturing and engineering should be a central part of our long term future," he said. "I hope this prize will go some way to inspire and excite young people about engineering, so they dream of becoming engineers as they once did in the age of Stephenson and Brunel."
Stephen Tetlow, chief executive of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), added: "This prize is timely and symbolic. Engineering has been in the shadows for far too long. You can have as many Oscars and Nobel prizes as you want, but unless you have engineers, the essentials of life fail.
"We need a new generation of great engineers more than ever. The Queen Elizabeth Prize will inspire the new wave of leading engineering minds we so urgently need."
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Author
Laura Hopperton
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