(President and COO: Shuichiro Takahashi) and hosted by Rolls-Royce Japan K.K. (President: Susumu Kaminaga), held the "Rolls-Royce Science Camp 2022," an engineering education program for high school students nationwide. (President: Susumu Kaminaga), an engineering education program for high school students nationwide.

Rolls-Royce is committed to STEM education to nurture the next generation of scientists and engineers, and is developing STEM outreach activities at its sites around the world with the goal of encouraging interest in STEM fields among 25 million young people by 2030. In Japan, the company has been holding science camps for middle and high school students since 2017, together with LIVANES, and this year will be the fifth such camp.

Forty-six teams from across the country entered this year's program, creating original hovercrafts. The five schools that passed the qualifying round spent the next three months improving their hovercrafts so that the movements of the aircraft could be controlled through programming, and then competed in the finals on August 18. At the finals, 30 high school students from six teams from five schools gathered at the Center of Garage in Sumida-ku, Tokyo, to compete with each other on the results of their development. On August 19, the second day of the program, the students also participated in a tour of the JAL SKY MUSEUM and hangar near Haneda Airport to see real aircraft and engines, thanks to the cooperation of Japan Airlines.

The six teams from the following five schools made it through the preliminary round.

The final was judged in two parts: presentation and driving demonstration. The judging began with a shout-out from the four judges, followed by the presentation judging, in which the teams that passed the preliminary rounds introduced their hovercrafts, which they had built through trial and error. They presented to the judges their specialties and the points they put special emphasis on in their development. In the driving demonstration judging, the teams raced for 5 minutes on a course with a weight on the aircraft, and each team was given two chances to run back and forth. The venue was filled with excitement and the judges and the audience were very excited.

The contest results are as follows

In his critique, Mr. Kaminaga said, "You can do anything if you want to. I hope you will continue to study and work hard at what you want to do." The other three judges said, "Even adults fail at 99% when they try something new. What will you do when you fail, what will you think about, and how will you work as a team? The feeling of never giving up is very important.

Comments from participating students:
We found great satisfaction and enjoyment in thinking for ourselves and creating our own products.
I learned the importance of engineering and the fun that comes from actually experiencing it.
I learned a lot about engineering and wanted to make the most of it in the future.
I have gained the ability to try and figure out what is wrong and what is the cause of the problem.

Impressions from teachers who supported the participating teams:
This is very good learning and research for the students.
There was growth that I did not get in the class.
The students are getting better and better at what they couldn't do before. They try things by trial and error. They explore issues. I felt it was a very wonderful program.

*This program was conducted in a sanitary manner, with thorough attention given to disinfection of hands with alcohol and the wearing of masks except during commemorative photo shoots as a measure to prevent infection by the new coronavirus.

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