2021-2022

The year of transition

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020-2021 academic year was held entirely online, students were unable to meet on-campus, and lectures had to completely transition into online learning.

Through all of this hardship, the Ramsay Society kept connected through the First Year Hackathon, Online Social Events, and even an Online Frank Morton over the 2020-2021 academic year.

Things were now about to change as we approached the 2021-2022 academic year, restrictions were lifted, and although a few students remained in Red-Listed countries, joining us online, the majority of the cohort was finally able to meet on-campus.

The Freshers Hackathon was still hosted Online, however, events such as Frank Morton, Year 2 Gathering, Paintballing, Football, and Shell Guest speaker events were finally held in-person.

As winter break approached, another lockdown resulted in many in-person event cancellations, COVID-19 cases were on the rise again.

However, with the start of 2nd term came new hope, as London began to lift COVID-19 restrictions. We could finally host the much sought for Paintballing and Football events in-person, alongside a field-trip to Newcastle University for Frank Morton Sports Day.

This year we were also able to welcome our new sponsors from Shell plc

Perhaps the most unique annual event, which distinguishes Chemical Engineering from all other Engineering disciplines is the annual Frank Morton sports day.

Held in-person at Newcastle University on Monday the 21st of February 2022, with over 500 undergraduate Chemical Engineers from across 29 UK and Ireland universities participated during the 40th edition of the annual Frank Morton Sports Day.

Over 44 students from the UCL Chemical Engineering department attended this event, organised by the Ramsay Society.

The event provided students with the opportunity to spend three days exploring Newcastle upon Tyne, meeting Chemical Engineering students from across the UK and Ireland, and engaging with industry-specific career fairs.

The overall outcome of the trip was incredibly positive, with UCL students securing 1st place in Table Tennis, 2nd place in Football, and 3rd place in both Chess and Badminton.

This partially-subsidised trip was made possible through the generous funding of the UCL Chemical Engineering Department and our industrial sponsors at Shell plc.

The UCL Engineering Ball is the annual ball hosted by the UCL Engineering Society with joint funding from the UCL Engineering Coalition.

Although Ramsay Society was unable to sponsor the event this year, Chemical Engineers comprised a significant part of the night!

The 2nd edition of our First-year Hackathon brought together first-year Chemical Engineering  students, providing an open-ended research question, with the objective of exposing students to pressing global challenges.

The event boasts extensive participation from industry judges, with previous iterations hosting guest judges and speakers from Beyond Meats, Jellatech, and Food Forward Ltd, all of whom are leading specialists within Chemical Engineering, finance, and biosciences. Our panel of judges also comprises leading academics, who assess and provide feedback to the team’s 5-minute elevator pitches.

In light of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the rise of vegan diets, and our changing climate, our most recent 2021 Hackathon tackled the broad scope of “Overcoming the challenges facing food security”.

During the 2021 Hackathon 42 students learnt about elevator pitch elaboration; the industrial processes, scale-up, and chemical engineering behind vegan meets, and the success story behind Jellatech, a US-based vegan-gelatine start-up.

Many proposals were brainstormed, these included circular-economy approaches to food packaging (BioBox), innovative recycling of packaging (Scrap2Wrap), a new data network and integrated technology system to optimise plant-based diets (Plant Munch), and an innovative proposal of aquaponics, merging agriculture and fish farming initiatives.

This years paintball event brought together 50 undergraduate students to the wonderful venue at Delta Force Upminster Alpha, near Essex.

The event unexpectedly became a competition between the enthusiastic 2nd-years, against the hybrid 1st and 3rd-year teams.

The day was great fun and brought lots of long-lasting memories!

Most recently, our society hosted two inter-connected Shell events, contemplating Powering Progress developed by Shell, with the goal of reaching Net-Zero emissions across their energy portfolio by 2050. To the event we welcomed Ben Taylor, Strategy Manager for the Energy Transition Implementation.

During this 1-hour open Q&A session, Computer Scientists, Mechanical Engineers, and Chemical Engineers, had the opportunity to discuss with Ben and Jack Powell (past-UCL alumni and HEFA Feedstocks Digital BD Lead) the challenges arising with the management of Scope 3 emissions, the means through which data analytics can be harnessed and employed towards optimising the energy transition, the importance of a nature-based business strategy (promoting carbon offsetting, alongside the growing importance of carbon credits and trading), and finally the growing trend towards sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) within the UK.

This talk harnessed extensive discussions on business strategy and the importance of engineering and data science for the successful implementation of the energy transition and the Shell Power Progress initiative.

Being an undergraduate Chemical Engineering student is no easy task! Our days are long, and our work only gets more complex with the passing of time. For this reason, we aim to engage undergraduates in fun activities, these include Paintball and Football!

With pandemic restrictions softened during the first semester of 2022 two Football events with the Civil and Mechanical Engineering departments!

Our first event of the year! The Halloween Party hosted by the UCL Engineering Coalition in partnership with the Ramsay Society. A night of incredible fun and spookiness!

Committee Handover - At the end of every academic year the time comes when the old committee must step down and a new committee rises up to the incoming challenges. This year, we were once again able to host the 2021 committee handover in-person, following two years Online due to the pandemic. During our Annual General Meeting (AGM), students had the opportunity to vote democratically on their representatives. The 2021 committee was happy with the engaging format of the hustings, the several questions asked by Chemical Engineering students within the room, and to invite un-biased moderators to validate the vote-count.