Awards Program

Awarding industry achievement and our next generation of engineers is a big priority for our Foundation.

It is its people which make everything tick and our metals-based industry sector is no different. It is also often said that engineers who make up most of our industry drivers are not good in communicating. Therefore, they often forget in their technology focused one way street about the importance of blowing their own trumpet as means of enhancing the industry’s feel-good factor and success.

At the Foundation we want to support our people development with currently two award programs the student awards and the Keith Smith Memorial Award for Distinguished Service.

Student awards

Every person starts its professional career with education. Encouraging a career in metals engineering and setting the professional aspirations high is the aim of the wide student awards program run by HERA.

The HERA Foundation supports this HERA student award program by providing rewards usually in the form of prizes for Final Year Student Projects in metals engineering related disciplines. Here are some of the winners of the last years.

FY 19/20 Student Awards

Our student awards grant supported final year mechanical engineering student project events for both the University of Auckland (UoA) and Auckland University of Technology (AUT). It is pleasing to see metals engineering continues to be a topic of choice for our students.
At AUT the HERA prize was awarded to Amjad Mohideen, Kurt Russell and Wen Jun See for their project “TIG Welding of Boron/Boron Free Steels”.

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HERA research engineer Hafez Taheri presenting the HERA Prize to AUT’s Wen Jun See on behalf of his team

At the UoA’s Department of Mechanical Engineering Final Year Project Displays the HERA prize went to Ravindra Anurithan and Joseph Tildesley for their project on “Design and Manufacture of Compliant Structures for in-road Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging Solutions”. Their project focused on Soft Magnetic Composites (SMCs), which are made from ferrous metal powder and polyurethane resins and assessed on their suitability for in-road inductive power transfer application developed by the University of Auckland’s Power Electronics Group.

FY18/19 Student Awards

Our student awards grant supported University of Auckland Final Year Projects for Mechanical Engineering.

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With around 180 students and 90 projects on display – our prize was specifically offered for projects involving metals. This year awarding students Nancy Zhou and Mildred Wong with our ‘Best Metals Project’ for our sponsored category. Great to see two female students winning our award and you can read up on this award in the November MetalBase.