London Press Service Informs
WOMEN ARE BUSY ENGINEERING NEW SKILLS
Engineering is becoming a high profile career for more and more brilliant, talented and resolute young women in the United Kingdom.
While this area of employment has traditionally been peopled mostly by men, recent campaigns across the country are helping to influence and encourage young women to join the workforces of a wide variety of organisations where engineering and technology are key to future progress.
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Overcoming bias and received ideas on the part of both men and women about job suitability has been part of the drive. The Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003 making discrimination a crime has helped, but also important is the fact that, increasingly, employers are realising that “women make very good engineers.”
Societies, associations, educational courses and awards systems aimed at promoting engineering, science and technology to women have contributed to the drive, and have brought an abundance of inspirational people into the spotlight.
Take the exhibition of portraits of Women of Outstanding Achievement run by SET (Science, Engineering and Technology), and held at London’s Science Museum during March. Sixty-six outstanding women were nominated, and six high-fliers were selected to be photographed to join the first group picked for the collection when it began in 2006. The plan is to add further pictures every year.
Among this year’s chosen few was Julia King who has an international reputation for her research into fatigue and fracture in structural materials, and who holds a CBE for her services to materials engineering. A measure of the regard with which she is held world-wide is seen in awards such as the Grunfeld Medal of the Institute of Materials for achievement by a researcher under 40 years of age, and a Japan Society for Promotion of Science Fellowship.
Her career has included joining prestige British car and aero engine designer and manufacturer Rolls Royce in 1994, as Head of Materials, running a team of 250 engineers so well that she soon became Director for Advanced Engineering, and then Managing Director of Rolls Royce Fan systems, a business with a 180 million pounds sterling turnover.
She achieved further success later at the Institute of Physics. A fervent supporter of moves to get more women involved in engineering, Julia often visits schools to inspire pupils, and is a speaker at events designed to promote the subject.
A portrait of space scientist, Sima Adhya, was also on show. Sima, who works for QinetiQ (a leading defence technology and security company that is also one of Europe’s foremost commercial space technology organisations), holds a PhD in Satellite Geodesy and Astrodynamics. She won a place in the exhibition in recognition of her ability to produce “imaginative solutions to technical problems in the space industry”.
Bright spark: Electrical engineer Katy Deacon, 27, became Young Woman Engineer of the Year
for her work in renewable energy.
A SET schools ambassador, she too is passionate about drawing more women into science and engineering, and spends a great deal of time talking to people of all ages about it in the UK, Asia and Africa.
Happily married mother to four daughters, the ground-breaking Professor Ijeoma Uchegbu also joined the scientific elite photographed for this year’s exhibition.
Even with her busy professional and personal life, Ijeoma still finds time to give motivational talks to London school children, and she is planning to head up a day of celebration of science next year.
A much longer-established event designed to highlight the achievements of women in engineering and encourage others, is the Young Woman Engineer of The Year Award, run by the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), Europe’s largest professional engineering body.
Set up in 1978, it has become a highly prestigious and coveted award, attracting interest from newspapers, television and radio, and helping winners in their future careers.
Winner of the main award in 2006 was Katy Deacon, aged 27, an electrical engineer who is a renewable energy expert, and has worked on a variety of projects in the North of England, including wind turbines and solar power systems for schools and colleges.
One of the chief reasons for her win over four other nominees was the renewable energy tool kit she created to aid architects, engineers and developers to make best use of integrated renewable energy technologies in building development. The kit was nominated for the Best Environmental Initiative of the Year 2006 at the NICEIC Electrical Industry Awards.
At present, Katy is working on the development of an automated meter reading (AMR) system which monitors electricity, gas and water consumption in public buildings to ensure best use of energy.
The competition has proved a useful barometer for bodies monitoring the impact of women engineers in the profession.
Dr. McLoone, who works at Queen’s Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT) Research Institute, leads a research team of PhD students and research fellows who are looking at security in modern communications applications such as email, online shopping and banking.
“Baby” of the group, Charlotte Dean is the first winner of the Dyson Young Woman Engineering Apprentice of the Year Award. She completed a multi-skilled automation apprenticeship last year at UPM-Kymmene, a Finland-based newsprint manufacturer at their premises in Flintshire, Wales.
She planned, designed and implemented a training rig that enables the testing of specific software and hardware for UPM-Kymmene, and this has enabled the company to train employees on vital equipment in-house instead of sending employees to external courses.
She actively encourages young people to enter engineering, and is part of a focus group that aims to make engineering more appealing to young people, particularly girls.
By Liz Clark
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