Meet our 2023 graduates a year after the RCA

Since graduating from our joint MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering with Imperial College London, Yihan Dong, Daniel Hale, William Eliot and Fergus Laidlaw have taken their smart airway clearance device for mucus related respiratory conditions from the RCA’s workshops to the James Dyson Award where they won the 2023 UK prize, and to a television feature on the BBC. Dr Frankie Jackson-Spence, NHS Doctor and James Dyson Award UK National Judge, said the design has “potential to make a huge impact on a population level, with 1 in 5 of us experiencing respiratory disease.”

“It's been a whirlwind year of innovation, teamwork and significant breakthroughs”, Yihan explained. She told us that her RCA experience was not only instrumental in the design aspect of projects like Pleural but for helping her build important project management skills, “from crafting compelling briefs and securing grants to reducing risks and accelerating project realisation, to transforming projects into viable businesses.”

The project also benefited from the diverse experience of our tutors and from our in-house start-up incubator, InnovationRCA. “Our experience is a testament to the power of combining diverse fields to foster innovation—a core principle we learned at RCA”, Yihan said.

Each member of the team is now working on their own innovative projects. Fergus is establishing an AI creative design studio. Will has been pursuing bio-crafting design work and will soon be moving to New York. Yihan works at UCL developing a novel matter levitation device for scientific research. And Daniel is working as a Design Engineer at Shellworks, a sustainable packaging company that also started at the RCA.

Zibo Zhang’s graduate project, ‘Folgelandschaft’ was awarded a Commendation in the Serjeant Award for Excellence in Architectural Drawing category at Part 2, by RIBA. RIBA’s annual awards recognise the world’s best student architecture projects.

‘Folgelandschaft’ investigates the open-pit coal mine in Hambach, Germany. Starting from the physical conditions of an open-pit mine, Zibo proposes a new method of reclaiming these vast extraction sites, while experimenting with sand and mechanical processes at scales and timeframes that go beyond conventional architectural practice.

He was also awarded the MA Architecture Head of Programme Prize from the RCA’s School of Architecture. Zibo describes his time on our MA Architecture as characterised by "the freedom to explore new and radical forms of architecture, while having the creative and academic support to define my own trajectory within architectural practice."

Since graduating, Zibo has been applying his learning at David Chipperfield Architects, a celebrated international architectural practice, where he works as a Part 2 Architectural Assistant, while also continuing his research with exciting personal projects ahead. "This last year has been an exciting ongoing curve of searching, finding, learning, drawing, building."

Since graduating from the RCA, Cyan D’Anjou has been participating in the FOUNDING LAB with Ars Electronica and IT:U in Linz, Austria. As well as working with a new media arts organisation IMPAKT.NL in Utrecht, Netherlands on a collaborative project on human digital rights. Both projects allow Cyan to use knowledge and skills gained at the RCA on the global impact of emerging technologies.

“At Ars Electronica, I’ve worked collaboratively with artists, scientists, and researchers from all over the world to develop a project-based curriculum responding to the rapid development of technology in our societies”, Cyan explains. The time she spent at the RCA was important in building up the independence and confidence in her practice needed to work on these projects. “The RCA fosters a level of independence in directing the research focus of our work that has allowed me to confidently propose projects, knowing what it will take to make it happen.”

Cyan’s project at Ars Electronica shows the advanced level of her digital art practice coming out of the RCA. “Unknowable Certainty” is a twenty foot wall-to-wall projection film and live performance on the role of emotion in data. “As a graduate of MA Information Experience Design, I have been able to contribute my experience in designing future worlds through the lens of speculative design.”

Rong Bao is an artist who plays with our expectations of art. She is the creator of inflatable sculptures that mischievously transform art galleries from spaces for reflection into spaces for play.

“The RCA2023 Graduate Show was an important starting point in my artistic career”, Rong Bao told us. “It gave me opportunities and resources that greatly helped me to achieve what I have today.” Since RCA2023, Rong Bao has taken her inflatables from our MA Sculpture to a London art audience at the Saatchi Gallery.

And she has picked up a number of prizes and comissions along the way including the Gilbert Bayes Prize 2024 from the Royal Society of Sculptors, the Connections Through Culture 2023 grant from the British Council, theCOLAB/Yorkshire Sculpture Park/RCA Award and a commission from Tate Collective.

Her show at the Saatchi Gallery came straight out of RCA2023 when Saatchi’s Exhibition Programming Manager, Lily Waterton saw her work there. “She decided to invite me to become the first Chinese female artist to have my own solo exhibition at the gallery.”

It was the playfulness of Rong’s sculptures that caught Lil’s attention. “When I encountered Rong’s inflatable works at RCA2023, I understood her practice was at a stage of refinement and depth ready for a solo exhibition”, Lily said. “Her mischievous, shaking Alien Babes were a pertinent reminder to me that galleries are not always places to be silent. They are also places to laugh, smile and to be entertained.”

"The one thing that stands out from my time at the RCA is the openness to collaboration across all disciplines”, Summer Chen from MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering team Guerrilla tells us. “It wasn’t just about design work, it was about interacting with peers from diverse backgrounds, challenging each other's ideas and pushing our creative limits."

As part of the Guerrilla team, Summer has taken this openness to collaboration to the market with their innovative drainage systems, a retrofittable solution to stop cities from polluting their rivers with surface water runoff. The team are now part of the InnovationRCA incubator and are testing a roadside drain prototype that could bring the local turbidity of the Thames down by 37% during a rain event.

The innovation design project has attracted funding from outside the RCA too. With current funding coming from the EU Regional Development Fund, InnovateUK, the Ofwat Innovation Fund and the Imperial Enterprise Lab. As Summer told us, "the connections made through the RCA community have opened doors to partnerships and funding opportunities, significantly accelerating our business development."

After graduating from MA Photography last year, Aisha Seriki decided to stay on at the RCA for the MFA Arts & Humanities to further develop her conceptual voice as an artist. Aisha draws on Yorùbá Spiritual Tradition to explore the relationship between the photograph and the self in a body of work that splices contemporary realities.

“The main thing that stands out from my time at the RCA, is my experimentation with materiality and process. I moved from shooting in digital to medium format, which enabled me to have a newfound appreciation of photography and its history,” Aisha told us.

In 2024 Aisha won two awards, the V&A Parasol Women in Photography Prize and the Nikon x Photo London People’s Choice Award. And she also has an upcoming solo show at Doyle Wham Gallery in London.

Aisha told us that RCABLK (the RCA’s Association of Black Students, Alumni & Friends) and our Technicians were the main factors at the RCA that helped her to get where she is today. “With RCABLK, I was able to meet other black students and develop a community of like-minded people. While the technicians at the RCA helped me to evolve my practice past the photographic print.”

Olesea Bortniac, Shahwali Shayan and Tao Xie are using their skills as digital storytellers for Samsara, a new digital residency supported by the Royal College of Art, at Frameless – one of London’s newest immersive art experiences. The residency is all about bringing emerging digital artists to new audiences in a collaborative group exhibition. “Watching diverse audiences immersing themselves in narratives we have crafted has been a truly fascinating and rewarding experience,” Shahwali told us.

The openness of the MA Digital Direction to diverse mediums and cultures helped the team to develop their work. “They helped us to foster an inclusive practice, leverage emerging media's power, and unlock new storytelling possibilities”, Olesea said. And Tao Xie told us, “the RCA has played a pivotal role in my journey, laying a strong foundation for my endeavours beyond academia.” The scope of their exhibition at Frameless encompassing change in a fragile world shows the expansive possibilities of these RCA practitioners.