Donald Dalli (left) with the Europe Young Member representative Kathryn Bjärkvik.Donald Dalli recently placed first in the international final of the Speak Out for Engineering (SOFE) competition held in Christchurch, New Zealand.
In the competition, contestants from all over the world present their engineering research projects, is coordinated by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, a global professional engineering organisation.
Dalli was representing Europe in the final, and competed against five other contestants representing the Americas, the Middle East, northeast Asia, southern Asia and Oceania who delivered presentations on subjects such as computational fluid dynamics, thermoacoustic refrigeration, aerial grasping from drones, autonomous vehicles and sustainable transport. Before reaching the final, Dalli competed and placed first in the Local SOFE competition as well as in the European Regional Heat held in Seville, Spain in which he beat competitors from Germany, Spain and Palestine.
In the final, Dalli delivered a biomedical presentation about the hip joint simulator that he has been developing as part of his PhD work that he contributed towards the Maltahip project. The hip joint simulator is intended to act as a testbed to provide University of Malta researchers better insight on the corrosion-wear performance of hip implants. It is planned to use the simulator to test a novel total hip joint replacement implant design.
The project is funded by the Malta Council for Science and Technology through Fusion: The Research and Innovation Technology Development Programme 2016.
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