There are four winners of the RAEng Engineers Trust Young Engineer of the Year competition, awarded by the Academy with support from the Worshipful Company of Engineers.
Each will also receive a £3,000 prize from the Royal Academy of Engineering to recognise their exceptional contributions to their respective fields, which will be awarded at the Royal Academy of Engineering’s AGM on 23 September.
The 2025 Young Engineers of the Year are (in alphabetical order):
- Jack Biltcliffe, R&D Lead, The Washing Machine Project
- Andrei Feraru, Founder and CEO of Feraru Dynamics Ltd
- Miguel Martinez Paneda, Principal Structural Engineer, Arup
- Dr Calvin Tsay, Associate Professor, Department of Computing, Imperial College London
Luke Logan, FREng, Chair of the Academy’s Awards Committee, said:
"I warmly congratulate this year’s Young Engineers of the Year. Their pioneering work shows how engineering continues to have a positive impact on society and the environment. These exceptional individuals are not only solving real-world challenges but also inspiring the next generation to explore the vast possibilities of an engineering career."
Jack Biltcliffe, R&D Lead, The Washing Machine Project
Jack started his engineering career at Dyson and Elvie, before joining the Washing Machine Project. They manufacture hand-cranked washing machines for use in places where people don’t have access to electric washing machines, which is thought to be around 60% of the global population.
In this role, Jack set up manufacturing lines, organising teams of volunteers to build machines. He is passionate about co-design, returning to meet users in Kenya and India to understand how machines are being used and the impact they have on daily life.
He now leads a team of engineers developing the next generation of machines, with the goal of scaling up manufacturing and making them widely available. Jack has already developed the design to increase production from tens to thousands of units. His work spans the full product lifecycle, from early-stage research and design through to manufacturing and impact assessment. He is passionate about solving problems that have meaningful impact.
Andrei Feraru, Founder and CEO of Feraru Dynamics Ltd
Andrei Feraru has developed and commercialised advanced wearable technology that has protected nearly 1,000 workers around the world from hazardous vibrations exposure that leads to Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS). The Health and Safety Executive has updated official guidance which now allows for vibration measurements at the palm of the hand.
He got the idea for the technology during a placement at Rolls-Royce Aerospace and devised a vibration exposure measurement device, which became the foundation of Feraru Dynamics, the company he founded before graduating. His invention is patented in the UK, USA, Canada and Europe and has attracted £1 million in private equity investment.
Andrei’s innovative approach has led to multiple awards, from the British Safety Industry Federation Innovation Award to Highways England “Big Idea” Award. Andrei has shown exceptional leadership and team building-skills, fostering a high-performance culture and has successfully grown the company from a research-driven startup to a commercially viable enterprise.
Miguel Martinez Paneda, Principal Structural Engineer, Arup
Miguel is an expert in structural dynamics, earthquake and wind engineering and has worked for two of the UK’s top design firms: Foster + Partners and Arup. His path to becoming a structural engineer was unusual in that his first degree was in Architecture.
He has been involved in creating prize-winning designs for a series of iconic tall buildings around the world including BDO Unibank HQ in Manila, the new MOL Campus HQ in Budapest and China Merchants Bank Tower in Shenzhen.
He has made innovative contributions to research at Imperial College London that have led to the development of a new damping system for tall buildings. Awaiting patent approval, the approach mobilises part of the building’s own weight as damper mass to enable more efficient and resilient designs. He has also convened academics from within the disciplines of Civil Engineering and Aeronautics with practitioners from industry to consider these new approaches to the design of tall buildings.
Dr Calvin Tsay, Associate Professor, Department of Computing, Imperial College London
Calvin is a leading interdisciplinary engineer at Imperial College, building new computing tools in optimisation and machine learning. He is deploying these tools to tackle large-scale problems in energy systems and sustainability.
He leads an independent research group that contributes industrially relevant research such as OMLT, an award-winning open-source software, and tools for green hydrogen system design. He has authored 50 peer-reviewed publications and collaborated with industry on energy flexibility and AI security and privacy.
Calvin is an exceptional ambassador for engineering education, lecturing in the Girls Who ML programme and volunteering with the Great Exhibition Road Festival.
L-R Miguel Martinez Paneda, Jack Biltcliffe & Andrei Feraru (photo by Rob Lacey)
Notes for editors
1. RAEng Engineers Trust Young Engineer of the Year award: with the generous support of the Worshipful Company of Engineers, the Royal Academy of Engineering makes five awards of £3,000 each year to UK engineers in full-time higher education, research or industrial employment, who have demonstrated excellence in the early stage of their career (less than ten years since graduation from their first degree in engineering or equivalent qualification).
2. The Royal Academy of Engineering creates and leads a community of outstanding experts and innovators to engineer better lives. As a charity and a Fellowship, we deliver public benefit from excellence in engineering and technology and convene leading businesspeople, entrepreneurs, innovators and academics across engineering and technology. As a National Academy, we provide leadership for engineering and technology, and independent, expert advice to policymakers in the UK and beyond. Our work is enabled by funding from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, corporate and university partners, charitable trusts and foundations, and individual donors.