Challenges

To celebrate 2025 NAIDOC Week, the UNSW Young WIE Club challenges you to rediscover and reimagine Indigenous engineering methods for modern-day problems.

With advances in aerospace engineering and space exploration technologies, the prospect of humans living on Mars does not seem as futuristic as it used to. Your challenge is to design a conceptual habitat to support human life on the red planet.

UNSW is celebrating its 75^th anniversary in 2024. Since its opening in 1949, the university has seen many changes. What might the UNSW Kensington campus look like when it turns 100?

For the second time in recent years, Sydney has ranked as the 18th smartest city in the world against 141 other cities in the 2023 Smart City Index. Your challenge is to design a structure or new technology that will improve Sydney's ranking in the 'smart' stakes.

Create a piece of wearable technology for your school uniform that can help solve a common problem at school or in the classroom, and present this in a 2 minute video.

NASA’s Human Research Program has been researching and investigating what happens to the human body in space for over 50 years. Your task is to design an innovative technology that will help maintain the wellbeing of humans in space!

Sport is a huge part of the Australian culture. It helps us build communities and keeps everyone physically healthy. However, every sport has its own challenges from injuries to performance metrics, and it is not uncommon to have engineers come in to help solve them!

Daylight savings has just ended signalling that winter is on its way. Winter means low temperatures, shorter days, wild weather, woolly coats and warm drinks. But along with this, it also brings its own unique set of challenges.

Imagine you are a renewable energy engineer in a rural community looking to improve a public space or community activity. How could you implement a small scale off-grid solar energy system to benefit the community?

Imagine that an elderly family member has started exhibiting signs of dementia. Design a device to help them with a morning task. Present your solution in a short video, imagining that you were pitching to NSW Department of Health, who may fund development of your idea.

Women and children in poor and disadvantaged communities around the world carry the burden of water collection for their families.

Design a water capture and reuse system you could place in your backyard, a park, at school or maybe even on your window? It can be a device or a landscape plan.

Sketch and design a simple but creative desk organiser for your pens and other stationary!

Imagine your friend has a partial hand on her right side. She has a palm but does not have a thumb or any fingers. Her wrist on the side of the amputation works exactly as yours does.