The Engineering Council would like to congratulate registered engineer, Andrew Garrad CBE PhD CEng FIMechE FREng, one of two winners of this year’s Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (QEPrize).

Congratulations also go to his Danish colleague, Henrik Stiesdal, with whom he shares the prize. Both have been jointly rewarded for their innovative wind turbine technology.

The QEPrize celebrates visionaries of the engineering world, inspiring young minds to consider engineering as a profession and help solve future challenges.

Andrew Garrad pioneered the Bladed computational design tool which “allows engineers to model a complicated turbine system in its entirety and to predict its behaviour with the confidence needed to permit manufacture of these huge machines.”

Henrik Stiesdal is recognised for his role in designing the three-blade turbine in 1978, which has been described as the ‘Danish concept’ and has “significantly enhanced scale and efficiency of modern turbines”.

Andrew Garrad and Henrik Stiesdal were presented with the annual prize of £500,000 during a ceremony at London’s Science Museum on Tuesday 6 February.

The winners of last year’s prize were Martin Green, Andrew Blakers, Aihua Wang and Jianhua Zhao, for the invention and development of Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell (PERC) solar photovoltaic technology, which has underpinned recent exponential growth in high performance, low-cost solar electricity.

For further information and the full announcement, please visit the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering website.

For press enquiries:   
Helen Potts, Engineering Council – hpotts@engc.org.uk, 020 3206 0568

The Engineering Council holds the national Register of Engineering Technicians (EngTech), Incorporated Engineers (IEng), Chartered Engineers (CEng) and Information and Communication Technology Technicians (ICTTech). It also sets and maintains the internationally recognised standards of competence and ethics that govern the award and retention of these titles. By this means it is able to ensure that employers, government and wider society, both at home and overseas, can have confidence in the skills and commitment of registrants. For more information visit: www.engc.org.uk