A young chemical engineer from the University of Surrey has been recognised by Bosch for her vision of how the Internet of Things (IoT) might transform our lives.  

The award for Maz Chowdhury came in a competition run by Bosch to explore opportunities presented by the IoT, which connects sensors, software and services, using internet-enabled devices

Maz, who is  studying Chemical Engineering at the university, was recognised for inventing  an automated watering system for lawns, which uses ground-based sensors to ensure that lawns and plants receive exactly the right amount of water they needed. 

She was one of three winners  of the competition. The others were Sophie Spooner, studying communications engineering at Aston University in Birmingham, who imagined the use of front and rear window-mounted micro-cameras that could record video footage in the wake of unauthorised entry into a vehicle, and Ka Man Wong, an engineering student at the University of Bath who envisaged a multi-sensory recycling container that could classify the type of waste that consumers were recycling.

Steffen Hoffmann, President of Bosch in the UK, said: “At a time of chronic skill shortages within engineering, the competition provided a platform for women to demonstrate the ambition to solve problems and ideas to change the world.

“We challenged the brightest young female engineers to think about how the IoT might transform our lives, and they certainly delivered.”