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hello and welcome to the podcast the 23rd of june is international women engineering day so here we are with a special bonus episode to share our personal experiences thoughts hopes and dreams. Enjoy!
hello everyone my name is royd alhammed and i'm glad to be a part of this great podcast i just wanted to wish everyone a happy international woman engineering day and share a bit on why i became an engineer so it's all started me as a kid loving to construct stuff from almost anything that i can find in the house so i thought that what architect do then later on i found out that what civil engineers does i was persuaded to go in a different field however things did not
work out and i ended up doing engineering which i absolutely love then after doing my bachelor degree in civil engineering i did a master's in structural engineering and then did my phd in structural and fire safety engineering and today i'm fortunate enough to be a lecturer in civil engineering teach all young engineers all about structures and how to build the stuff and pass this knowledge on it's been a delightful ride for me and i really enjoy being an engineer so happy traditional women
engineer day everyone hi my name is anika and i'm a research fellow in nuclear fusion and i would like to wish everybody a happy international women in engineering day a little bit about myself i hadn't always planned to be an engineer i was always very inquisitive as a child but actually when i was at school i wanted to study something else geography i had a bit of a mishap with my exam and missed a page in my exams and because my other subjects were science and math i thought
engineering would be a good option because it was kind of a combination of all of them and i found it really hard to specialize and stick to one thing and i liked the variety that i offered so i ended up studying mechanical engineering and then during my mechanical engineering degree i took some nuclear modules which i found really really interesting and then somehow at the end of my three-year degree i saw an advertisement for phds in nuclear fusion and i thought why not it sounds really
cool and really exciting and i was really lucky and i got it and since then i haven't looked back and i'm still in the field of nuclear fusion i've worked in lots of different places focusing on engineering and material side of things and so i'm really really lucky to be in the situation that i am and i'm so fortunate for all the opportunities that were given to me so i think it's really important that we share opportunities and share our knowledge and i hope by being on this podcast we can
share knowledge with the new generation of women scientists and engineers and support them in helping them to pursue their dreams i'm laura lay i'm the producer for this podcast and i've also had quite a varied career in science and engineering spanning carbon capture radiation effects and material science and nuclear engineering and when i was in school we didn't really learn about many subjects so for me science was the most interesting thing so that's what i studied at
university i didn't even really encounter engineering until after i finished my undergraduate degree now my interest in science was that we could learn about the world but then i started to think that if you want to use that knowledge if you want to create things that's essentially what engineering is and i really like creating things so in hindsight maybe i should have studied engineering after all and there are loads of female engineers in this podcasting team and i've learned
so much from them i really value their viewpoints and their creativity and we've had so much fun planning and recording each episode so i'm so glad that i get to work with them i'll now pass on to antonia cheng who did actually study engineering in her undergraduate degree and she's going to start off telling us about some thoughts she wants to share on pioneering women it's international women in engineering day on the 23rd of june and i've been asked to reflect on my career and who or
what has inspired me one person comes to mind is mary curry she's well known for her work in radiation and where it comes from she became the first woman to receive the nobel prize in chemistry but i think what stood out to me was her background it was contrary to many other scientists at the time not all women had secondary education and even fewer were able to attend university when i tried to look up these statistics behind it i just found a really long wikipedia page
covering the timeline of women in science whilst it's long i still don't think it would have been as easy to list it all if it was more commonplace whilst it's really exciting to see a lot of firsts i think it's also a lot of work being the first so i think that shows the progress we have made since then [Music] antonia could you also tell us about some of your experience during your undergraduate degree whilst at university i drew a lot of inspiration and motivation from being part of a
volunteering organization called engineers about borders pretty well known that there are less women than men in engineering but it almost came to parity at these events and at their leadership level i think there was something about the joint interest of using engineering for improving quality of life alleviating poverty and overall sustainable development that must have drawn us all together i got to meet like-minded people and made some great friendships including
cara who is also on this podcast and we would have these thought-provoking chats just like on our podcast but with a little less polish and more student griminess hi i'm caramel holland and i am a social impact and sustainability specialist or what i'm commonly called now is a social value specialist my background is in civil engineering but i call myself a professional jack of all trades the reason i got into civil engineering and why i call myself jack of all trades is
that you can bring together the physics the math the data science the digital tools alongside the management the geography the people side of things and you're really understanding stakeholders and impact on people's lives of engineering and that's what i'm really passionate about the connection between how things work but also why we build them the way we do so my story of how i get into engineering i think really i can trace it back to understanding that i read a
book called mind-boggling buildings when i was a kid i just loved hearing the stories of how these buildings were built but also how they really connected with the culture of everyday life at the time but then i went on i was really fortunate i did the engineering education scheme when i was still in high school and i went on to become the northern ireland young engineering team of the year i then did my undergraduate and master's during which i was fortunate to be part of engineers about
borders a voluntary organization and then i got a summer research project which i then went on to do a european commission internship in italy for a few months of the engineering research and after that my phd which was funded by industry and the research councils and then after that i'm now doing an innovate uk funded research project for a couple of years so i've really been lucky that i've been able to get lots of different types of opportunities to be able to work in this niche which is
bringing together lots of different areas of different fields and different uh backgrounds and so that's the kind of thing that you like you know understanding science but applying it to every life then that's why i think engineering is just a really interesting place to be hi my name is amina and i would like to wish everybody happy international women in engineering day i feel it's so important for women to support other women on occasions like these because
there are so many women out there who would be the perfect personality to fit into the science and engineering world but perhaps they think that it's a male-dominated field and they're not so accommodating and just won't part of the reason why we do this podcast is to break down barriers and to show that engineering is accessible to every gender and is actually quite enjoyable and we sincerely hope that that comes across in our podcast there doesn't have to be a traditional
rate that everyone fits into engineers come from all different backgrounds and experiences i myself was quite an inquisitive individual from quite a young age which now my daughters have inherited and sometimes we have great lengthy discussions but sometimes i would just like them to accept my answer and the questions but they don't often stop i have a material science and engineering bachelors followed by a nuclear science and technology masters which then led me into being a nuclear
safety engineer at rolls-royce for eight years i've now gone back to university to do a phd in nuclear engineering at manchester university so as you can see i don't think i have a very traditional route but i've just gone where the opportunities have taken me and i've thoroughly enjoyed it and i've come across some really amazing people i have found everyone to be really really accommodating we sincerely hope that we can inspire the future generation into science and
engineering please keep listening to the podcast for some interesting conversations and please get involved [Music] you