ERA Foundation marks 25 years of supporting UK engineering
8 October 2025 
The ERA Foundation – which supports the UK’s high-technology engineering and manufacturing sectors by promoting and encouraging engineering, innovation and skills development – is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Since its foundation in 2001, it has funded of hundreds of projects, together worth more than £20m.
For more than two decades, the Foundation has shaped engineering opportunities in the UK, from funding 55 industrial fellowships and more than 100 Arkwright Engineering Scholars, to helping establish the Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub, which itself has supported more than 600 researchers and entrepreneurs and contributed to nearly 6,000 jobs.
Over the years, the Foundation has collaborated with a variety of partners, from STEM Learning and EngineeringUK to the Smallpeice Trust. It has also embraced digital platforms such as Born to Engineer, connecting new generations with careers in engineering.
At an event at the Royal Society in London to mark the Foundation’s anniversary, Sir John Lazar CBE FREng, president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said that “equity, diversity and inclusion is a vital thread through all three goals [of the Academy’s strategy] because we can’t talk about delivering positive outcomes for people without talking about how engineering designs for all of society, and how engineers therefore need to reflect all of society.”
At the event, the four winners of this year’s Clark Prize were announced. The prize – named after former ERA executive secretary, Dr David Clark – recognises teachers for their commitment to bringing engineering into the classroom. The winners were: Lucy Hart of Caroline Haslett Primary School in Milton Keynes, and Tracey Ellicott of East Wemyss Primary School in Fife, who won the primary category; and Clare Doherty of St Mary’s College, Derry and Dewi Thomas of YGG Bro Edern in Cardiff, who won at the secondary level.
Each of their schools receives £12,000 over three years to support their STEM engagement projects, with the teachers also receiving awards. Andrew Everett, the Foundation’s current executive secretary, described the winning teachers as “outstanding; it is quite overwhelming to see the amount of work they devote to connecting engineering and manufacturing with school pupils”.
ERA Foundation chair Andrew Churchill OBE FREng told the 130 guests: “We are very privileged to be custodians of a foundation that has the means to support such an array of brilliant projects right across the spectrum, from big investments like the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Enterprise Hub, which has funded over 600 entrepreneurs, to the primary schools of teachers such as Lucy Hart and Tracey Ellicott, who infectiously share the excitement of engineering with school children from a young age.”
Royal Academy of Engineering CEO, Dr Hayaatun Sillem, added “We congratulate the ERA Foundation on its inspiring work to promote and enable future engineering innovation and skills over the last quarter of a century. I am delighted to be able to work with this far-sighted organisation, which has played such an active role in supporting the work of our Academy and particularly our successful and growing Enterprise Hub.”
