Celebrating our STEM Champions

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As 2022 draws to a close, Rolls-Royce would like to celebrate our wonderful colleagues who have worked tirelessly to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in our communities during the year.

Through their generous volunteerism, we have been able to engage with children and young adults from all segments of the community. In Singapore, we participated in seven volunteer events, with 48 colleagues contributing their time to show the applications of STEM and inspire young people on the future possibilities with STEM capabilities.

As a global technology company with a strong engineering heritage, Rolls-Royce believes in the power of technology to help address many of the challenges the world faces today. With Southeast Asia being one of the fastest growing regions in the world, we believe STEM education to be vital for the region’s continued economic success as well as the building of a sustainable future.

“STEM is critical because we rely on these subjects to improve our quality of life and create a better world,” said volunteer Lim Kee Leng, Embedded Firmware Capability Lead at Rolls-Royce Electrical - Singapore.

Key highlights

Most pleasing about our work in 2022 was the variety of initiatives designed to inspire tomorrow’s scientists and engineers. These ranged from workshops, presentations, and discussions to school visits, campus tours, exhibitions, and even an innovation competition. This diversity of opportunities ensured our initiatives were inclusive and there was something that appealed to everyone. But to capture people’s imaginations, particularly young people, it was also imperative that we offered fun, as well as education.

Building and coding with our STEM kit

Building and coding with our STEM kit

As one example, we were pleased to launch our very own Rolls-Royce STEM kit. Each kit contained items such as Raspberry Pi computer, sensors, power bank, modules, and building blocks. They were designed to be engaging for young people and to teach them key scientific concepts through practical and intuitive problem solving.

Together with our community partner, Glyph, we ran workshops for 6-11 years-old, encouraging learning and creativity with participants building models such as a streetlamp, cooler fan and a car using our STEM kits.

Our STEM kit was also the star of the National STEM Championship 2022, a science competition for secondary school students organised by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Science Centre Singapore and MediaCorp. Rolls-Royce hosted the semi-finals challenge at our Seletar campus, where competing teams of students were asked to build an electrical power-driven vehicle using our STEM kit. These vehicles then competed in a timed race around a designated course. This was broadcast on Singapore’s Channel 5 to a national audience.

Engaging the local community through STEM

We were pleased to return in-person to Changkat Changi Secondary School in October this year for the school’s annual Aviation Day. Our STEM ambassadors spent the morning working with the students to build and programme an autonomous vehicle to run on the obstacle course. Our volunteers also showed the students how to use water bottles to make their own rocket model. Through this experience, the students were able to gain a deeper understanding of coding, electrical and aerospace concepts.

We welcomed students from Singapore Polytechnic, CHIJ St Theresa’s Convent and NUS Aviation Club, to tour our Seletar Campus where they had the opportunity to get up close with our Trent engines. They were also exposed to the advanced technologies of an aerospace engineering operation and the STEM skills required.

In October, several colleagues participated in the inaugural UWS Stem Festival, organised by United Women Singapore. We had fascinating conversations with students, parents and educators around the work we do at Rolls-Royce and on pursuing a career in STEM. Similarly, our volunteers shared their experiences with young, aspiring aviation enthusiasts at the Girls in Aviation Day organised by the Women in Aviation International Singapore earlier that month.

Lim Li Khee, Manufacturing Engineer at Rolls-Royce, had volunteered for several STEM activities throughout the year. She shared, “It is important to expose students to STEM and how these concepts are being used to solve problems today, as we will need to rely on them to solve the problems of tomorrow. The children and youths we interact with during STEM activities like to ask “why” and “why not”, and I often find myself learning from them too!”

Making a deep and wide impact

Yet another exciting programme our colleagues supported was the Mission Discovery Singapore organised by ISSET Space. The five-day programme saw students on a mission to design microgravity experiments that would benefit mankind with guidance from NASA astronauts and engineers. The students also learnt research, communications, collaborations, and critical thinking – essential for success across any profession and industry.

Finally, we wrapped up the year with our partnership with the Science Film Festival organised by Goethe-Institut. This two-month long festival aimed to introduce the wonders of scientific discovery and promote scientific literacy to a young, regional audience, across Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. It featured 91 insightful international films on science and technology from 27 countries, alongside educational workshops and talks.

The collaboration on the Science Film Festival exemplified what our partnerships can achieve, as we expect to reach more than 300,000 people throughout the Southeast Asia region and help inspire the next generation of STEM talent.

Appreciation

We are grateful that our colleagues based in Singapore have been so generous with their time and have made a genuine, long-lasting impact they can all be proud of.

Globally, Rolls-Royce has set itself an overall target of reaching 25 million people through quality STEM education by 2030. To date, we have achieved a third of that goal, with over 8 million people reached since 2014.

Lakshmi Pathiyil, Programme Manager at Rolls-Royce@NTU Corporate Laboratory, is one of our STEM ambassadors based in Singapore. She said, “STEM is important for children and youths today because they are going to be future pilots, doctors, engineers, mathematicians and physicists, and they are going to help us solve a lot of real-world problems out there. So it is very important to make them part of this inspiring process today.”

Thank you to all our colleagues who have supported us on this journey. We look forward to doing more to inspire the next generation in 2023 and beyond!

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Rolls-Royce develops and delivers complex power and propulsion solutions for safety-critical applications in the air, at sea and on land.