By Claire Reilly

Entries for the James Dyson Award have opened for 2012, with young engineers, product designers and industrial designers being called upon to “design something that solves a problem”.

The awards are run by the the James Dyson Foundation – a charitable trust that was set up in the UK 10 years ago to encourage young people to pursue engineering. The trust also supports scientific and medical research, and design and technology programs targeted at educating young people.

This year’s competition is open to product design, industrial design and engineering university level students (or graduates within 4 years of graduation), and will be run across 18 countries, including Australia and New Zealand. It is open to individual students, or student teams of up to four members.

Entrants are whittled down to a shortlist of 10 in each country, selected by a local panel of experts, including designers, engineers and design critics. These national winners are then judged by a panel of Dyson engineers who select the top 50 across the world.

Finally, “an international judging panel of high-profile designers, engineers, academics and journalists pick 15 international finalists” before the wonderful wizard himself, Mr James Dyson, personally names the winner and two runners up.

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The international winner will receive £10,000 (for the individual or team) and a James Dyson Award trophy, while their university department will also receive £10,000. Cash prizes of £2,000 each are available to two international runners up, while national winners will be awarded £1,000 each.

Last year’s winner, Australian Edward Linacre, won for his design of the ‘Airdop’ irrigation system, which extracts water from surrounding air before delivering it to plant roots.

“Winning the James Dyson Award means I can develop and test the Airdrop system,” said Linacre. “The extensive publicity for my design has also opened a lot of doors for me. Airdrop has the potential to help farmers around the world and I’m up for the challenge of rolling it out.”

Entries close on 2 August 2012, with the final winner announced on 8 November. Check the James Dyson Award website for full details.

The winner of the 2011 James Dyson Award – Edward Linacre's Airdrop irrigation system.