An engineering student from Edinburgh has won a competition to create the trophy for the 2015 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. Euan Fairholm won for his design called The Golden Crown, which will be developed into a final form and presented by the Queen to the winner of this year’s competition.

The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering “rewards and celebrates the engineers responsible for a ground-breaking innovation in engineering that has been of global benefit to humanity”.

As well as having his design ‘3-D printed’, 20-year-old Mr Fairholm, who is studying mechanical engineering at Glasgow University, won £2,000 in cash.

He said: “It is a great honour to have my design selected to be the trophy for The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. I am both humbled and delighted that something which I contributed to will be used to recognise important achievements in engineering.”

The general public was asked to view the nine short-listed designs and vote for their favourite on Facebook. Their vote counted as the seventh judge on a panel that included Ian Blatchford, director of the Science Museum, and materials-scientist broadcaster Mark Miodownik.

Mr Blatchford said: “Once again, this competition has shown the creativity of young people in the UK. Cutting the entries down to nine finalists was not easy; nor was selecting the winner. However, the judges are all agreed that Euan’s design best met the brief.

“We felt that his work illustrates our dependence on engineering and technology and demonstrates the fact that modern engineering builds on the work of the past. He has produced a trophy that represents all that the Queen Elizabeth Prize stands for.”