Student showcase

Ruvan Mendis

Ruvan Mendis has been a student on the Young Achievers’ database for some time now. The Royal Society first made contact with him when he participated in the 1999 Genesis Energy National Science & Technology Fair.  While he was still a student at Newlands College he was selected by the Royal Society to attend the Nanyang Engineering School Programme in Singapore and then selected to attend the 2nd APEC Youth Festival also held in Singapore in 2000.

In 2001 Ruvan was extremely fortunate to be offered the chance to study at Cambridge University, England, by way of the Douglas Myers Scholarship. Until graduating in June 2005, he was a student reading Aerospace Engineering at Gonville and Caius College - an amazing and challenging experience, with plenty of opportunities to get involved in a million exciting distractions!

Chief amongst these was a fledgling student run charity called Engineers Without Borders UK(EWB-UK), which became a major part of his life. EWB-UK's goal is to give young engineers a chance to become involved in development work overseas - by offering chances to work on exciting projects abroad, coordinating research work with NGO's in developing countries, and running training courses across the UK for interested students. During my time at university, finishing with a year as co-CEO during 2004/05, EWB-UK grew from being a small motivated bunch at Cambridge into a recognised national charity with 14 branches across the country, dozens of overseas placements all over the world, and over 8000 members.

Ruvan’s work with EWB-UK took him to Nepal in 2003 to work on a project to deliver solar electricity to rural villages - an effort which culminated in further funding and support from the UN - the project is still running strong currently. After graduation, he continued to work in the fields of development and disaster relief by travelling to Sri Lanka to work in tsunami reconstruction. Working as a refugee camp upgrades engineer for Project Galle 2005, Ruvan and his team of 30 local workers were able to make a real difference to the living conditions of hundreds of tsunami victims living in monsoon-flooded temporary shelters.

Ruvan has also been lucky enough to work on some exciting engineering projects in the UK and NZ - he worked as a Patents Engineer on the Gibbs Aquada amphibious vehicle, and spent two weeks doing data analysis for Emirates Team New Zealand in Auckland last year. At present, he is employed by Newton Industrial Consultants, working to solve technical and organisational problems with manufacturing processes at various companies around the UK.

For relaxation, he tries to keep in touch with his guitar playing, and enjoys the occasional session of high performance karting! He also enjoys travelling a lot, and just managed to complete an epic journey from London to Singapore by land and sea before having to start work! He thinks back about NZ with fond memories very often, and looks forward greatly to coming back home at some point in the future.