What do you think?
The brief directions couldn’t have been more open-ended: Design something that solves a problem.
For most of us, such a vague set of instructions would be a challenge that would leave us spinning in circles, but twenty-seven-year-old Carvey Maigue, an engineering student at Mapua University had a vision. He saw an announcement for The James Dyson Sustainability Award on Facebook and was drawn to the idea of working and thinking on a bigger scale, “Was the problem I was trying to solve something that other people, globally, also thought was important?”(1)
Like all good ideas, Maigue’s concept has gone through a number of changes as he developed it over the years. In its most recent state, the system he developed (called AuREUS) is actually a material that allows other devices to harvest ultraviolet light and convert it into electricity. What makes AuREUS even more interesting is that this system upcycles the crops of farmers that were hit by natural disasters (typhoons, hurricanes).
There were over 1,500 entries into the James Dyson Sustainability contest, from countries all over the world. The field was narrowed down to 20 finalists and judged in part by the inventor James Dyson whose foundation sponsored the contest. Dyson, famous for his no bag Dyson vacuum invented in the eighties, stated that he made over five-thousand prototypes of his vacuum before he found the correct design. He claimed that he thought failures were more important than successes and suggested that school children be evaluated on the number of failures they’ve had. “The child who tries strange things and experiences lots of failures to get there is probably more creative.” (2)
The James Dyson Foundation
The James Dyson Foundation was founded in 2002 with the mission of supporting design and engineering education and inspiring young people to become engineers. The foundation supports a number of engineering programs in schools and universities and supports a number of different medical research projects.
The James Dyson Award was developed to help young engineers and inventors have a platform to launch their ideas. The award is given annually and is open to current or recently graduated students of engineering or design in 27 countries. (2)
AuREUS and the Future
Because of financial challenges, it has taken Carvey Maigue more than ten years to graduate from Mapua University. He has paid for his education by working on prototyping other students’ projects and helping others with their thesis. But Maigue sees all of the work and experience as helpful in his own personal goals. “I was able to expand my horizon of what I know. So there are a lot of learnings that I got, especially in terms of design, and how it would affect the user, and on the business side of things.”(1)
To that end, Maigue is taking what he’s learned and seeing how to apply it for future projects. This includes creating fabrics that will be able to harvest ultraviolet light and convert it into electricity and the development of curved plates for use in electric cars, airplanes, or boats. “AuREUS has the chance to bring solar energy capture closer to people. in the same way computers were only used by the government and now the same technology is in our smartphones, I want solar energy harvesting to be more accessible.”(1)
