Newly Retired Laura Stephens Wins Award for Pool Engineering<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When Laura Stephens decided to retire from swimming, she didn't move far from the pool in an engineering career studying pool sustainability.\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/newly-retired-laura-stephens-wins-award-for-pool-engineering-plan\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Newly Retired Laura Stephens Wins Award for Pool Engineering Plan\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When Laura Stephens decided to retire from swimming, she didn't move far from the pool in an engineering career studying pool sustainability.\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:url\" 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{"id":625546,"date":"2025-10-30T19:11:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T02:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=625546"},"modified":"2025-10-30T19:11:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T02:11:14","slug":"newly-retired-laura-stephens-wins-award-for-pool-engineering-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/newly-retired-laura-stephens-wins-award-for-pool-engineering-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Newly Retired Laura Stephens Wins Award for Pool Engineering Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newly Retired Laura Stephens Wins Award for Pool Engineering Plan<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Laura Stephens<\/strong> decided to retire from swimming this year<\/a>, she didn\u2019t step far away from the pool.<\/p>\n

The Olympian has begun a career built around the sustainable engineering of pools, for which she recently won an ASHRAE UK Technology Award.<\/p>\n

Stephens was recognized for her as-yet unpublished dissertation, \u201cRetrofit Decarbonisation of UK Swimming Pools,\u201d a project she was working on at Loughborough University while training there.<\/p>\n

\u201cMentally how I felt finishing my career, it couldn\u2019t have been a smoother transition really,\u201d Stephens told Aquatics GB<\/a>. \u201cTo be able to say that I genuinely felt like I gave it absolutely everything and no stone was left unturned, has made this process a very satisfying end to an incredible chapter of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephens, 26, won the world title in the 200 fly<\/a> at the 2024 World Aquatics Championships in Doha. She made the Olympic final of that event, finishing eighth, and she won a silver medal in the 200 fly at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.<\/p>\n

She received her undergraduate degree at the University of Plymouth, where she was studying when she qualified for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, then relocated to Loughborough to begin her master\u2019s degree studies in 2022.<\/p>\n

Always drawn to math and physics, she pursued engineering, specifically mechanical systems and how to optimize them for sustainability and efficiency. Applying that lens to swimming pools was a natural meeting place of her abiding interesting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I do want to be able to link the two worlds together,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it just happens that there is an issue with swimming pools at the moment which is related to literally what I was doing in my degree. It seemed like such a shame to pass up on that opportunity and to also hopefully give something back to the swimming community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephens began working with Dr. Mahroo Eftekhari<\/strong> at Loughborough. She hopes her work can ease some of the pressures felt by owners of competitive and training pools. She was recognized with the \u201cYoung Engineer of the Year\u201d award at the recent ASHRAE UK Technology Awards.<\/p>\n

Aquatics GB and the Home Nations face a challenge to keep facilities open to offer water safety instruction and swimming opportunities to the next generations of would-be swimmers.<\/p>\n

In that way, Stephens is helping those younger than her directly follow her pathway.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking sure that the next generation have the equal opportunities that we’ve had in terms of being able to go down to your local pool for a swim is so important,\u201d she said. \u201cIt’s scary that we might be missing out on future generational stars just because they didn’t have a local pool to go to, which would be such a shame for the sport. Equally from a water safety perspective, swimming is a lifesaving skill that everyone should have access to enable them to be safe in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the full interview with Stephens at Aquatics GB<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"