The fourth-year student received a trophy and £500 prize for her promotion of electronics and engineering to young people through STEM outreach.

UK Electronic Skills Foundation CEO Stew Edmonston said: ‘If we are going to really tackle our skills shortage we need many more undergraduates like Joanna – highly capable and with a passion to learn and make a difference.’

Joanna designed and led a number of projects in primary schools through the Women in Engineering student society. This included working on Digimakers at science centre At-Bristol.

She said: ‘I really enjoy doing outreach activities for the University as there is such a shortage of engineers in the UK, especially female engineers. It's important to get more diversity into engineering and tech industries as more diversity helps company productivity; people from different backgrounds have different views and opinions. When brought together they can develop new creative and innovative ideas.’

Winners of the award must also demonstrate a significant contribution to their sponsoring employer during their work placements. Joanna worked at Imagination Technologies on silicon processor development from design to test, including optimisation of power usage in processor designs, implementing analysis tools to speed up product development, and working on test benches with next-generation cores. 

Joanna added: ‘It was really good to utilise and develop the skills I learnt in my degree and to learn more skills in a workplace environment. It meant that when I came back to university, especially after my first summer, I was more motivated as I could see the real world application.’