Profiles
- Mechanical
- Sports & leisure
- Profiles
- Issue 98
On the fast track to green hydrogen
Dr Caroline Hargrove CBE FREng's career has taken her from pioneering research in computer modelling of particle interactions, into racing car simulators, and onto medical technology and the production of green hydrogen.
- Environment & sustainability
- Profiles
- Issue 97
A champion of the green economy
Professor Simon Pollard OBE FREng’s confidence in the idea of a circular economy began when he set out to turn harmful waste into useful materials. His career as an environmental engineer has encompassed many aspects of the waste and water utility sectors.
Quick read
- Design & manufacturing
- Environment & sustainability
- Profiles
Q&A: Deborah Meaden
Ahead of this year’s National Engineering Day, green Dragon, Deborah Meaden emerged from the Dragon’s Den to share a few secrets of success with Ingenia.
- Mechanical
- Transport
- Profiles
- Issue 96
Keeping complex systems on track
Kuldeep Gharatya FREng has been a key advocate for systems thinking at TfL – to the advantage of all London Tube users.
- Software & computer science
- Transport
- Profiles
- Issue 94
The entrepreneur solving engineering problems with data
Elspeth Finch MBE FREng started her first company in her 20s and is now heading up her second, which is using data to transform supply chain relationships.
- Health & medical
- Profiles
- Issue 93
The journey to portable dialysis
Professor Clive Buckberry FREng believes that successful engineering needs an injection of artistic thinking, along with a dose of physics and the ability to use pictures to make a point.
- Aerospace
- Mechanical
- Profiles
- Issue 92
The helicopter flight fixer
When Philip Dunford FREng started his career, flight test engineers flew alongside pilots. As his career progressed, flying time gave way to developing new aircraft.
- Mechanical
- Profiles
- Issue 91
Inventing a communication revolution
Professor Lucy Rogers FREng’s career is not typical of many engineers: starting with engineering bubbles for firefighting, it has taken in television, animated dinosaurs, along with inventions and stand-up comedy.
- Electricals & electronics
- Technology & robotics
- Profiles
- Issue 90
An innovator who fills a vacuum
From outer space to the depths of the earth, Professor Trevor Cross FREng seeks new uses of the technologies that enabled the electronic revolution.
- Chemical
- Profiles
- Issue 89
The ethics of engineering net zero
Professor Raffaella Ocone OBE FREng FRSE's career journey encompasses biofuels, carbon capture, and even landslides and volcanoes. She's now pioneering teaching ethics to engineering students.
- Electricals & electronics
- Profiles
- Issue 88
The outsider who changed the system
As a Jewish Holocaust survivor, political refugee and woman in engineering, Dr Agnes Kaposi FREng has every reason to call herself an outsider. But it didn’t stop her from becoming the third woman ever to be elected as a Royal Academy of Engineering Fellow.
- Environment & sustainability
- Maritime & naval
- Profiles
- Issue 87
Sound moorings for a renewable career
For Dr RV Ahilan FREng, a career that started in offshore oil and gas has turned him into a champion for renewable energy. He used his knowledge of fluid mechanics and marine experience to push the commercialisation of offshore renewables.
- Design & manufacturing
- Profiles
- Issue 86
Facing engineering’s ultimate challenge
Dr Luisa Freitas dos Santos FREng – with teams to manage in Singapore, the UK and the US – was one of the first people in the UK to experience how the pandemic would affect engineering operations
- Civil & structural
- Profiles
- Issue 84
Teams that count
Dervilla Mitchell CBE FREng has created engineer and architect teams to work on major projects. The recipient of the 2020 Royal Academy of Engineering President’s Medal- Mitchell has used her engineering skills to help keep Arup’s firm running during COVID-19 and also to chair a decarbonisation project for the National Engineering Policy Centre.
- Profiles
- Issue 83
A vital link in the chain
As Head of Upstream Supply Chain at BP, Leigh-Ann Russell FREng is responsible for a team of 900 and a budget of $20 billion a year. Her position builds on skills developed as a completion engineer, working on drilling operations in the harsh North Sea offshore operating environment.
- Electricals & electronics
- Environment & sustainability
- Profiles
- Issue 82
Life in electrifying times
Professor Sir Jim McDonald FREng FRSE, elected President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, has worked as a transmission and distribution engineer. He joined the academic world when the electric industry was going through a business and technology revolution, becoming immersed in sustainable energy policy issues.
- Electricals & electronics
- Profiles
- Issue 81
A spectrum of generations games
Stepen Temple CBE FREng worked as an engineer within government to shape modern telecommunications and lay the foundation for today’s trillion-dollar global mobile industry. His career in the civil service has spanned the history of mobile telephony and he managed to recue 5G from a bureaucratic black hole.
- Civil & structural
- Environment & sustainability
- Profiles
- Issue 80
Structures for a sustainable society
The growth of megacities and factors such as climate change have changed the nature of the challenges engineers face. Jo da Silva OBE FREng warns of the growing need to consider the resilience of the infrastructure that sustains cities and their inhabitants.
- Electricals & electronics
- Design & manufacturing
- Profiles
- Issue 79
Driven to an electrifying future
From apprentice to Executive Director of Product Engineering at Jaguar Land Rover, Nick Rogers FREng takes a special interest in young engineers. His career has included managing the transition to electric vehicles while simultaneously developing new car models.
- Profiles
- Issue 78
A role model for the next generation
Air Marshal Susan Gray CB OBE FREng has taken on many roles in the Royal Air Force (RAF), including responsibility for procurement, supporting the RAF’s response to emergency relief, raising the profile of engineering among young women and preparing the headquarters for the future.
- Health & medical
- Profiles
- Issue 77
Developing the first integrated prosthetic leg
Professor Sir Saeed Zahedi OBE RDI FREng combined his interest in mechanical engineering and medicine when biomedical engineering only had a few research groups. He is now Chief Technology Officer and Technical Director of the Blatchford Group, running a team that developed the first integrated prosthetic leg.
- Energy
- Profiles
- Issue 76
Building a sustainable career
Dr Shaun Fitzgerald FREng has moved between academia, strategic consulting and running his own business, and is now the new Director of the Royal Institution. A career that started in geothermal energy research moved to natural ventilation in buildings, leading to a business that has changed the nature of building design.
- Civil & structural
- Profiles
- Issue 75
Foundations for a construction revolution
For a young Dr Sarah Williamson FREng, summer holidays were spent on her father’s building sites. Today, she leads a team of engineers at one of the UK’s largest construction sites and is pioneering the implementation of ‘digital engineering’ in construction.
- Mechanical
- Sports & leisure
- Profiles
- Issue 74
A formula for success
Over the past 30 years, Paddy Lowe FREng has seen Formula One motor racing grow from small teams to a billion pound enterprise at the forefront of technology. He has introduced active suspension, hybrid engines and other key technologies that have changed the profile of motor racing.
- Health & medical
- Profiles
- Issue 73
A talent for bursting bubbles
Creatures of all sizes, from bacteria to whales, have shaped Professor Timothy Leighton FREng FRS FMedSci' career. It started where he began to research the physics of sound in water and then an invention to clean medical devices brought him into antimicrobial and antibiotic resistance.
- Software & computer science
- Profiles
- Issue 72
Natural born code writer
A childhood introduction to writing software for a BBC Micro set Suranga Chandratillake FREng on a path that led to Silicon Valley, and a hugely successful software startup before he returned to the UK and began backing the next generation of young entrepreneurs.
- Mechanical
- Profiles
- Issue 71
Thinking about the revolutions
An interest in engines first drew Professor Neville Jackson FREng into engineering and, over the years, his work has covered almost everything related to transport. As Chief Technology Officer at Ricardo. he considers the future of car manufacturers and modern mobility engineering.
- Materials
- Environment & sustainability
- Profiles
- Issue 70
Forging links between academia and industry
For Julia King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge DBE FREng, materials science has been a common theme in a career that has taken in the academic world at all levels, to becoming a vice-chancellor, along with time in the higher echelons of corporate engineering at Rolls-Roce.
- Mechanical
- Electricals & electronics
- Profiles
- Issue 69
Taking engineering to industry
Becoming CEO of Rolls-Royce has taken Warren East CBE FREng from electronic chips to jet engines. This change in industries isn’t as dramatic as it might seem as, after all, they both operate at the cutting edge of engineering.
- Energy
- Profiles
- Issue 68
Energy with connections
When Steve Holliday FREng moved from the oil industry into energy distribution, the sector was seen as staid. In reality, during his years at National Grid, the sector became increasingly important as the need to tackle climate change led to a transformation in the UK’s energy mix.
- Technology & robotics
- Software & computer science
- Profiles
- Issue 67
A web of networks
Information technology has come a long way since David Cleevely CBE FREng investigated the suitability of computers for word processing and communications. He has been shaking up innovation in the UK and trying to do something about the advice that governments receive on technical matters.
- Design & manufacturing
- Profiles
- Issue 66
Integrating metrology in business and academe
Professor Jane Jiang’s interest in measuring began when she worked on a bus production line in China. She found that the best way to improve quality, consistency and productivity was through metrology, the science of measurement. Today, she runs the UK’s largest metrology research group.
- Technology & robotics
- Profiles
- Issue 65
Instilling robots with lifelong learning
In the basement of an ageing red-brick Oxford college, a team of engineers is changing the shape of robot autonomy. Professor Paul Newman FREng explained to Michael Kenward how he came to lead the Oxford Mobile Robotics Group and why the time is right for a revolution in autonomous technologies.
- Software & computer science
- Profiles
- Issue 64
Evolving the internet
He may have given the world the technology that speeded up the internet, but in his next move, Professor Nick McKeown FREng plans to replace those networks he helped create.
- Design & manufacturing
- Mechanical
- Profiles
- Issue 63
R&D investment makes good business sense
In just five years, Dr Ralf Speth FREng has presided over a revolution in design and manufacturing that has helped create a new family of engines and has overhauled Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) production facilities.
- Civil & structural
- Profiles
- Issue 62
Creating user-friendly buildings
For Michelle McDowell, a former Business Woman of the Year, a passion for joined-up design thinking and building information modelling with a user-friendly approach has enabled her to pioneer revolutionary changes in her field.