Aug 14, 2025

Rebecca Young

Innovator

Billy Perrigo

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Correspondent

In the middle of winter, temperatures in the Scottish city of Glasgow can drop as low as 17 degrees Fahrenheit. For anybody unfortunate enough to be sleeping on the streets, those conditions could quickly become deadly. That fact was on Rebecca Young’s mind when the schoolgirl, then 11 years old, was asked during a club at school to come up with an idea focused on helping people.

Young’s design—a solar-powered backpack with an electric blanket inside—ended up winning an engineering award in a U.K.-wide competition with 70,000 entrants. It wasn’t just an idea: Young researched different types of solar panels, wiring, and batteries, and drew up a detailed blueprint. The engineering firm Thales, which sponsored the competition, subsequently manufactured 30 of the blankets which were distributed to a homeless shelter in Glasgow earlier this year, Young says. There are plans to make 120 more. “I’m very proud,” says her mother Louise.

The homelessness problem won’t be solved with blankets alone, but for 12-year-old Young, the experience was a first taste of how engineering in practice. “It helped me see a different aspect of engineering, and how it could actually help people,” she says. “That definitely helped inspire me.”