The sad thing for me is that these sorts of projects, run by major seats of learning, are leading to, potentially, a generation of young engineers for whom "marketing" and "media" now take primary position, way out in front of actual engineering foundations.
When i did my engineering degree, we had no multi-media bulls**t to distract us, you just got a load of old, dry, dusty and un-appealing reference text books, and reams and reams of black-board based tuition, but because of that dull but necessary work, you got the "real" engineering right. Today, it's much more "fun" for students to get involved in these high profile, high media content projects, and as a result, they aren't really interested in learning how the basic engineering works.
You can imagine the conversation with their tutor:
"who wants to be involved in a project to help save poor peoples lives"?
"I need some students to come up with some ideas, film some soundbites, make us look good"
"Make some models, do some virtual design, make some stuff that looks futuristic"
And they did ALL that, but forgot to actually check if the device in question was practicable and viable, you know, the boring, dull bit of being an engineer. The hundreds of hours doing "The Math" and working out if the laws of physics support your concept..... But the students are reliant on their tutors etc for direction and support, so it's not their fault.
In my experience, the best engineers i've ever worked with are the natural ones, the ones who spent their child hood taking stuff apart to see who it worked, who were always questioning other people assumptions and statements, who were always reading, learning, gathering input and forming their own opinions, rather than just being "yes" people. They didn't need to dress it up with pretty pictures, video presentations and the like. Today, we try to make engineering degrees more appealing to more students, but in doing so, i suggest we are also losing the ability to actually do engineering as a result........