The annual award celebrates outstanding ideas, research and best practice.
The ICE has announced the winner of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) heat of The Princess Royal Award for Emerging Engineers 2026.
The award, which was renamed last year in honour of the ICE’s royal patron, celebrates the communication of outstanding engineering ideas, research and best practice in projects and design.
Candidates from across the world are invited to submit synopsis papers to compete in regional heats. Three finalists then face off in the overall award final in October.
The competition is for ICE students, graduates and apprentices, including those professionally qualified as Incorporated Engineers or Engineering Technicians.
This article will be updated as regional winners are announced throughout the year.
2026 regional finalists
Jesús David De Oliveira, ICE graduate member and structural engineer at Robert Bird Group in Dubai, UAE, has won the MENA heat of the Princess Royal Award for Emerging Engineers.
His winning paper was titled Influence of hybrid manufacturing on the buckling behaviour of slender beams.
De Oliveira showed how steel 3D printing can be used to strengthen the structural components of buildings more efficiently than traditional methods.
He investigated a hybrid approach, adding wire‑arc additively manufactured (WAAM) steel stiffeners to standard hot‑rolled beams.
This offers a practical alternative to fully printed components, helping to overcome challenges around cost, scale and certification.
His results show that targeted WAAM stiffeners significantly delay buckling and increase moment capacity (how much bending the beam can handle), while using much less material than simply increasing beam size.
Overall, De Oliveira's work highlights how hybrid manufacturing could support more efficient and sustainable structural design in the future.
Runners-up
- 2nd place: Ali Khamees, student (Heriot-Watt University Dubai, UAE), Optimising urban traffic intersection performance using artificial intelligence: A reinforcement learning and genetic algorithm approach in Dubai
- 3rd place: Sara Aljarwan Alshamsi, graduate (Roads and Transport Authority Dubai, UAE), Applying the Movement and Place Framework: Flexible Street Design for Sustainable Urban Mobility in Dubai
- 4th place: Mariam Ehab, graduate (The British University in Egypt, Cairo, Egypt), Life-Cycle Cost and Carbon-Based Decision-Making for Bridge Rehabilitation
- 5th place: Shwetha Ravi, graduate (Parsons Corporation Dubai, UAE), Ticket to Green Gulf: Landscape Strategies for Climate-Resilient Transit Infrastructure
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