Imperial celebrates the achievements of its female engineers as part of an international day of celebration.

International Women in Engineering Day (INWED), organised by the Women’s Engineering Society, focuses attention on the amazing careers in engineering and the technical roles open to young women. It also enables everyone to celebrate the achievements of outstanding female engineers.

As part of Imperial’s INWED celebrations, a networking luncheon will be held later today. Professor Alice Gast, President of Imperial College London, Professor Mary Ryan, Vice-Dean (Research), and around 60 engineers will be at the celebratory networking event.

Throughout the day, Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering is running a campaign called #BEHuman, which is inspired by the Humans of New York (HONY) campaign.

Imperial bioengineers do humans of New York style campaign

HONY is a hugely popular photoblog and book that features street portraits and interviews collected on the streets of New York City.

Imperial’s bioengineers aim to do something similar, posting images and stories on @ImperialBioeng Twitter account, using the hashtag #INWED17 and #BEHuman.

Undergraduates from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering who are out on a field trip will be Tweeting all day. The students are in Norfolk as part of the Constructionarium project.

Pioneered by industry partners and Imperial staff, Constructionarium is a design course that enables students to manage and build real engineering projects at a construction site, which is provided and supported by the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB).

Academics from across the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering will be getting into the spirit of the day, posting fun, comic-book-style inspired Tweets. The campaign for men and women focuses on the important role that engineers play using a superhero-style themed approach, which will be posted on the Department’s @imperialeee Twitter account.

Professor Pantic puts the case forward in City A.M. for more female computer engineers

Only nine per cent of the UK Engineering workforce are women. This low number is contributing to a number of problems in the economy including a skills shortage and the gender pay gap. Getting more women into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) is important if the country is to reach its target of 1.82million more engineers in the UK by 2022, according to the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET).

Imperial’s Institute for Molecular Science and Engineering will take photos of male and female affiliates from across the College who will be holding signs with the “9% is not enough” message, originally inspired by the IET.

The images will be regularly posted during the day on the @Imperial_IMSE account, using the #INWED17 hashtag.

Female academics and researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering  share their thoughts on the key issues surrounding INWED, as well as talking about their proudest achievements to date. Excerpts will be shared throughout the day on Facebook and Twitter. 

Professor Maja Pantic, from Imperial’s Department of Computing, and her colleagues have invited young women from across the UK to Imperial to talk about the issue.

Professor Stepan Lucyszyn from Electrical and Electronic Engineering lends his support to INWED 2017

This evening, they will discuss how to get more women into computer engineering. This could be a gold mine of well-paid jobs for women in the future.

Professor Pantic, a panel of distinguished guests, and the audience will discuss pragmatic policies that are aimed at overcoming gender biases and persistent barriers that keep women away from careers in computing.

Panellists include Saadia Zahidi, Head of Education, Gender and Work at the World Economic Forum, and Dame Wendy Tan, Co-Founder of Entrepreneur First, and one of the most successful Angel Investors in London.

Professor Pantic has also written a comment piece about this issue, which was featured in City A.M (page 20) on 21 June 2017.

Dr Leila Sheldrick, from Imperial’s Dyson School of Design Engineering, has also written an opinion piece for The Engineer magazine.

In the article, she discusses the School’s recent success. More than 52% of the projected intake of 2017 MEng Design Engineering course will be women.

Dr Nan Li, from the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College London, has been chosen by a panel of experts as one of the top women under 35 in engineering.

The list features in today’s Daily Telegraph. Nominees were chosen by a judging panel from the Women’s Engineering Society.

Here are some of the social media highlights from the day: