NEWS | ENGINEERING GRADUATE FROM UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH MAKES IT TO THE FINAL OF THE ENGINEERS IN BUSINESS 2022 INNOVATION COMPETITION

Twenty five-year-old Mechanical Engineering graduate Dinul Wijetunge, from the University of Greenwich has secured a place in the final of the Engineers in Business Champion of Champions innovation competition, which will be hosted by TV presenter Rob Bell at the Royal Academy of Engineering on 28 October 2022.

Dinul, who founded UMMACH Ltd, a low-cost, environmentally friendly, 12V air-conditioning device that can be retrofitted to existing fan units, will be pitching his innovation against nine other teams of student innovators in the national final. A sum of £15,000 is up for grabs, providing vital seed money to help the winners develop their innovation.

The winners will also receive mentoring from business leaders who are members of the Sainsbury Management Fellows (SMF) network, plus CV packages from PurpleCV and entrepreneurial books from Cambridge University Press.

The competition is organised by the registered charity, Engineers in Business Fellowship which champions business education for engineers and supports universities by giving them grants to award prizes to engineering students who develop ideas that can make a positive impact on society. The grants enable universities to inspire more engineering and technology students to participate in innovation and entrepreneurship, skills that they take into their careers.

UMMACH has invented a new type of air conditioning unit that offers greater affordability - the technology developed enables the user to retrofit existing fan units and turn them into air conditioning units. This has the added advantage of being environmentally friendly, as it adapts existing equipment and material, rather than making the customer purchase everything from scratch. UMMACH has a working prototype and has over 1,000 pre-orders from a customer who will purchase once the product is ready to go to market.

The concept for UMMACH was developed as a result of Dinul’s desire to provide affordable air conditioning for those living in hot countries, people who are not fortunate enough to be able to afford the current type of units on offer. Explains Dinul, “Currently, there is no A/C system that can run completely off-grid via two DC 12V Solar Panels and does not require the use of a coolant in the form of gas or refrigerant. I wanted to develop a product that could help tackle the health risks and deaths associated with humidity exhaustion caused by the rising temperatures we are seeing around the world.”

The Engineers in Business competition is designed to inspire engineers to study business and innovation. Explains Wijetunge, “Everything engineered should meet customer expectation and will ultimately need to prove its value whether it targets a new or existing marketplace. As we develop products from initial concept, we need to ensure that we keep the needs and issues of those target markets clearly in view at every stage. This requires business skills, skills that are very different to the problem-solving skills taught in the more analytical environment of engineering.”

The dragons’ den style competition will be compered by TV presenter, Rob Bell. Competing against nine other teams, Dinul Wijetunge will have six minutes to convince the judges, through his presentation and Q&A session, that he should be crowned a Champion of Champions and take home a cash prize. Amongst other criteria, the judges will be assessing the potential benefits of UMMACH to both the user and the environment.

The members of the judging panel are:

SMF Caroline Cake, Entrepreneur in Residence at Oxford Science Enterprises

Dr Terri Holloway, Ingenuity Lab Manager, Entrepreneur in Residence, University of Nottingham

SMF Kwok Ng, Strategy Programme Manager, The Crown Estate

SMF Chris Shelley, Chief Executive Officer, SolarBotanic Trees

Commenting on reaching the Engineers in Business Champion of Champions Final, Dinul said, “Reaching this stage of the competition is a massive morale-booster for a one-man-band inventor. It is an honour to be recognised as a good engineer in business, let alone competing in the annual champions competition against the best of the best.”

Dinul will be competing for an Engineers in Business Champion of Champions title against nine other teams from Imperial College London, University of Birmingham (two finalists), University of Oxford, University of Southampton (two finalists), Lancaster University, University of Nottingham, and Queen’s University Belfast.