Sustainability The Sonardyne Foundation Sonardyne’s engineering education activities began in 2009 when Sonardyne’s founder, John Partridge, was approached by his alma mater, the University of Bristol Engineering faculty, to support ‘engineering outreach’. University lecturers go into Bristol schools to engage young children in engineering projects, and being experts in designing buildings to resist earthquakes, the children were naturally asked to design their own model building structures. These were built from dry spaghetti and Meccano type tie-plates, fixed with a hotglue gun, and had to resist the vibration of a small ‘shaker table’ simulating a scaled-down earthquake. The project’s grand finale was a ‘robot wars’ type of contest in which many schools sent teams with their model structures to the University’s giant shaker table, normally used to test full-size buildings to destruction. That convinced John to support an electronics Outreach programme by Bristol with John hoping electronics education could match the excitement the earthquake engineers had generated! A major opportunity for local education support appeared in January 2011 when John was invited to attend a fund-raising event for building a new ‘Engineering and Design Technology Centre’ at Alton 6th Form College. John and his wife contributed to the appeal and the Board of Sonardyne agreed to match their personal contribution. Then John decided to set up a Sonardyne-funded charity, dedicated to engineering education, and so The Sonardyne Foundation charity was formed. With Alton’s fund raising progressing too slowly, John decided the Sonardyne Foundation should underwrite the whole building project. This saved at least a year, and the building was ready for a new intake of students in academic year 2013-2014. The new building has been named the Sonardyne Centre and was opened by Lord Winston on 28th November 2013. A new venture in collaboration with the University of Bristol soon followed. A new wing was to be added to the Queen’s Building, home of the Faculty of Engineering where John began his studies in 1959. An electrical teaching laboratory was equipped with funding from The Sonardyne Foundation. Is it possible to teach inventiveness, or is it a gift? What we do Energy - Oil & Gas Energy - Renewables Defence Science Explore Case studies Publications Events News About Why Sonardyne Our history Our leadership Our group companies Join Sonardyne Contact Support Product knowledgebase & manuals Contact support or raise a ticket Support videos Get in touch Warranty and repair Sustainability Carbon neutrality HSEE policy Quality statement ROHS compliance The Sonardyne Foundation The Shark Trust Ethics Message from the board Supplier code of conduct Employee code of conduct Modern slavery statement Anti-bribery policy Conflict minerals Legal information Gender pay gap Sign up to our newsletter Sign up to our mailing lists and get the latest news & announcements straight to your inbox. First name* Last name* Email address* Everyone at Sonardyne is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy, and we’ll only use your personal information to provide you with goods and services you requested from us. From time to time, we would like to contact you with communications including; relevant content, event invitations and offers that may be of interest to you. We need your express permission to allow this. I agree to receive other communications from Sonardyne* I consent to the storage of my data according to Sonardyne's privacy policy* © 2021 Sonardyne Privacy and cookie policy Acceptable use policy Terms of website Made by Code23 English (UK) English (US)