Key points
Celebrating the female heroes in process engineering who don’t wear capes.
The Women’s Engineering Society (WES) has published an annual list of the 50 Most Influential Women in Engineering since 2016. Each year the theme changes to focus on brilliant women in different sectors and in 2020-21 WES has chosen Engineering Heroes to celebrate the engineers who have played a major role in protecting and defending us from the pandemic. At the same time, this brought into sharp focus how engineers also deliver and maintain critical services and infrastructure, keep civic society functioning at every level, and support lives and livelihoods.
Here we present a sneak preview of some of the 2021 WE50 winners whose use of process engineering makes them heroes. Their names and the complete list will be revealed on 23 June 2021, International Women in Engineering Day (INWED), at the WES INWED Celebration webinar. Book your free place here
The PhD student
This hero’s first reaction to the pandemic was “how can I help?” She quickly realised she had the vital knowledge and access to resources that could help keep people safe. As a PhD student in the manufacturing industry, she applied her expertise in 3D printing and process manufacturing to form a team with colleagues to design, manufacture and distribute face visors to address the shortfall in PPE for key workers.
Her experience with CAD design assisted in altering the design in response to user and manufacturing requirements. She scrutinised BSI standards for medical applications and sourced appropriate materials during a nationwide shortage of materials to make PPE, so to aid this, she designed and implemented supply monitoring and tracking systems.
After only three months, the face visor had appeared on the new, been CE marked and NHS approved, resulting in hundreds being manufactured in an on-campus manufacturing site, before being handed to a local company for mass manufacture creating employment in the area. Additionally our hero provided visors to a charity so they could continue their work enriching the lives of local disadvantaged people.
The Data Analyst
Our hero’s work at a big tech company presented a restoration methodology to improve mammographic images. Late detection of advanced-stage breast cancer tumours makes treatment more difficult, especially in younger women whose breast tissue is dense. X-ray mammography assisted by CAD systems, is the most used and most effective technique for the early detection of breast cancer. However, false positive rates lead to women undergoing unnecessary procedures such as biopsies.
Digital mammograms with high spatial resolution and low noise levels are required for accurate microcalcification detection by a CAD system. This hero devised a quantum noise denoising algorithm followed by an enhancement technique based on the x-ray equipment used to generate the images. Results with real mammography images (of dense and non-dense breast tissue) have demonstrated that the pre-processing increased the detectability of microcalcifications in mammographic images by 15% while reducing the false-positive rates by up to 66%. Her proposed methodology for noise reduction has also paved the way for the reduction of radiation exposure in cancer patients by 20-30%, and can be used as a pre-processing module for CAD systems intended to improve breast-cancer screening.
The Construction Manager
Wanting to play her part during the pandemic, this civil engineer applied to soup kitchens and NHS delivery services but was turned away because so many generous people had volunteered. Her chance to contribute came soon after in April 2020 when she was asked to join the Nightingale Hospital construction team. As a Construction Manager with a global construction company, she leapt at the chance and arrived at the hospital that same evening.
The brief was to build 4,000 hospital beds: 500 in just 9 days. Our hero’s experience with large-scale projects saw her establish structure and composure within a frenzied environment. She implemented quality management and change control processes, which permitted better communication and successful outputs. She also designed a fully sealed partition wall dividing the live hospital from the construction zones, as well as the design for heavy duty ramps within the mortuary.
Her role didn’t stop there. She contributed to a mental health scheme, providing therapists for staff, and she improved Health and Safety management, including weekly audits. During the second wave she was promoted to lead the entire team through the construction of a rehab and Mass Vaccine Centre – a testament to the positive contributions she engineered and implemented during Phase 1.
The Campaigner
Before her current position as a Healthcare & Life Sciences Consultant, this process engineer worked in the cosmetic industry playing a key role in bringing a very popular product to market. Subsequently she worked in the Pharmaceutical and Technology team at a construction company and most recently was a Biopharmaceutical Process Development Scientist at a pharmaceutical company. It is her work addressing systemic racism whilst remaining fully committed to her engineering “day job” that makes her an engineering hero.
She has demonstrated exceptional leadership in forming a start-up company which aims to support and champion Black individuals across STEM.
Her company provides a key source of connections and strategies for starting a career in STEM, as well as running joint workshops with industry to provide Black students with insights into engineering career opportunities. More than this, she works to educate allies in the wider STEM community. She has addressed the leadership teams of universities and multi-billion pound global companies, and contributed to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Diversity and Inclusion in STEM.
The Scientist
This professor in agircultural engineering specialises in soil degradation processes and sustainable land management, working closely with industry to address both climate and biodiversity emergencies.
Her research includes increasing carbon sequestration and storage to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. She has shown that adapting to extreme weather events associated with climate change is possible by designing and testing field engineering practices to mitigate soil and water losses, such as the use of conservation tillage, grass waterways and field buffer strips. Other research has tested different soil cultivation equipment to improve soil health and crop growth, simulating real life field conditions in cutting-edge pilot scale laboratory facilities at her university that she helped design and build.
She has also worked on civil engineering projects, including the design and testing of geotextiles for control of soil and water losses on engineered slopes. She constructed a full-scale replica of a devleopinpg country’s rural road to test the performance of geotextiles in controlling damage to road surfaces.
The Aviation Engineer
This RAF Warrant Officer has played a key role in delivering critical defence output throughout a challenging and uncertain year. An aircraft engineer in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) and part of 1 Regiment Army Air Corps (AAC) she has continued to maintain and operate the helicopters at the front and centre of the military support to the COVID-19 pandemic. Key achievements include identifying and implementing practical engineering solutions to improve safety and efficiency and creating a new procedure to manage anti-deterioration maintenance. Arguably her biggest achievement has been the positive impact she has in the workplace, including her assisting the formation of the Defence Breastfeeding Network, helping many servicewomen return to work with confidence.
The Researcher
Since January 2017 this engiener has pioneered the development of sustainable materials, not only within her research area, but for the whole of the university’s engineering department. In her work, she has helped to tackle the climate crisis by focusing on the development of sustainable biocomposites and recyclable thermoplastic composites.
She has also been lead investigator on a Research Council-funded feasibility study, investigating the use of novel reactive thermoplastics and is currently leading research on the use of recycled plastics in polymer-reinforced composites. In this latter case, her work aims to turn plastic waste into high value materials for renewable energy generation.
It is hoped that these examples of fabulous Engineering Heroes have whetted an appetite to find out more about the work that engineers do behind the scenes, keeping us all safe during the recent crisis, as well as at other times. The complete list will be published online on the 23 June 2021 by The Guardian and will also be announced by the Women’s Engineering Society at their INWED webinar on the same day.
Book your place here
