Celebrating International Women in Engineering day!
A day to celebrate!
June 23rd marked International Women in Engineering Day (INWED). This year INWED celebrated the amazing work that women engineers around the world are doing not just to respond to the pandemic but also to support lives and livelihoods every day – the best, brightest and bravest women in engineering, who recognize a problem, then dare to be part of the solution; who undertake everyday ‘heroics’ as much as emergency ones.
Hear a little bit from our Malvern Panalytical heroes…
Lara Lockley got into Engineering through an apprenticeship scheme and has not looked back since. She is currently studying for a BEng in Mechanical Engineering with the University of Birmingham.
We asked Lara what her favorite thing about engineering is…
“I like seeing ideas come to life, from a concept brainstorming session to 3D printing and finally the end product.”
Caroline Finch is a Quality Engineer but previously specialized in PBC manufacture in her role as a manufacturing engineer. After completing a foundation course in Electronics she pursued a Sandwich BEng Degree in Electronic System Design (the sandwich part being a year in industry).
We asked Caroline to tell us a little bit about her favorite engineering project she has worked on…
“My favorite projects tend to be the ones you don’t know the answers to straight away, especially Lean Six Sigma. There is a problem, we need to understand it and then how to resolve it. I formed part of a team in one job assessing why builds were inconsistent and it was a very interesting process to gather the data, determine the root cause(s), and then very satisfying to come up with how to resolve and implement.”
Rowena Innocent transitioned into a new role in March 2021, moving from Malvern Panalytical’s Vice-President R&D leading product development to Group Head of STEM strategy and Spectris.
We asked Rowena her favorite thing about being an engineering…
“My favorite thing about being an engineer is creating cool stuff as part of a team. As a leader in R&D, I particularly enjoy helping others with their career and personal development. Helping the teamwork through really complex technical issues is really rewarding. I love seeing people grow and gain confidence in their abilities.”
Finally, we asked Rowena to share some advice for those girls and women thinking about taking up an engineering discipline…
“Engineering is everywhere and therefore it offers a huge amount of options. Don’t be put off by the image of engineering being all dirty and a man’s world, that might have been the case 100 years ago but it really isn’t now. There are engineering jobs that you can do from home or ones where you can travel the world. There are jobs that deal with the very large (space science) and those that deal with the very small (nanomaterials). There is everything you can imagine and so much more. One thing is for certain, in order to create a sustainable future for humankind and the planet we need a lot more creative and thoughtful engineers. If you care about the world, engineering is a great way to make a positive impact.”
Spectris are an official sponsor of International Women in Engineering Day 2021 and ran a ‘selfie card’ campaign. Please see their highlights video here: