Ramboll UK engineers inspire our girls for National Women in Engineering Day
We marked National Women in Engineering day (#NWED2016, which took place on 23 June) by welcoming three female engineers in to school to talk about ‘Engineering in action: how to think like an engineer’ on Tuesday 28 June.
The engineers, Isabel McTiffin, Principal Engineer, Helen Leung, Design Engineer, and Rachel Bennett, Acoustic Engineer, all from the Cambridge branch of Ramboll UK – renowned for their work in building projects that are highly sustainable and require complexity, such as science research facilities – gave an interactive and informative presentation to 200 girls from Year 7 to Year 10. The engineers explained through a series of images what engineering is, and what it isn't, and showed the girls images of their own projects and buildings that they have worked on.
Isabel McTiffin said: “We were delighted to be invited to St Mary’s School, Cambridge to join the girls in marking National Women in Engineering Day. It is so important that girls are able to see the many careers and areas of study that come under the umbrella of engineering and also to see how engineering presents genuinely exciting future prospects, especially at this stage before they consider their GCSE and A Level subjects.”
The team from Ramboll UK highlighted that each project involves a series of cyclic steps, from planning and proposing solutions, to reviewing outcomes. As an example, the engineers talked the students through the process of developing the Millennium Bridge in London, including the problems encountered and solutions proposed.
Running concurrently, Year 9 students heard a talk by Rod Kirkby entitled ‘The Miles M-52: Britain's wartime supersonic project'. Mr Kirkby’s experience in Physics, Aerodynamics Research and passion for art led him to depict the Miles M-52 as it ‘might have been’, and his talk focused on the engineers’ and aerodynamicists’ efforts to understand how best to approach an extremely difficult engineering challenge in an area where knowledge was absent, poorly understood, or where the acknowledged experts turned out to be wrong. This talk also illustrated the excitement of working in an area where the boundaries of both science and technology are being tested.
Our Head of Science, Dr Cristina Alves Martins, said of the day’s events: “We are extremely grateful to all of our guests for sharing their passions and personal achievements with the girls. That they are able to bring to life the subjects that the girls study in their lessons is an essential part of the girls’ understanding of how far-reaching STEM disciplines can be, and how far these subjects can take them – and that three quarters of our guests were female ensures there’s no chance of our girls thinking that engineering is not for girls!”