The Electronic Engineering department at Royal Holloway, University of London hosted a free event aimed at inspiring the next generation of female engineers, and to mark International Day of Women and Girls in Science on Saturday 11 February.
The Girls into Engineering event included an inspirational talk given by a senior member of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES), Professor Lucia Lo Bello, who has been the IES’s representative in the IEEE Women in Engineering steering group for the past five years. Lucia shared insights into how to overcome the challenges of navigating a career in engineering as a woman and specified the support offered by the IEEE IES to women and girls.
Girls into Engineering event organiser, Dr Matthew Bryan commented,
"Since its founding, Royal Holloway, University of London has had a long history in women’s education. The Department of Electronic Engineering is proud to continue this tradition and give to as many women as possible the opportunity to make a difference through engineering.
By hosting the Girls into Engineering event, staff and students from across our department were delighted to give girls in year 11-12 a taste of being an engineer for a day and get an inside view of the challenges and opportunities that women face in the engineering world."
The programme of activity included hands-on lab activities to build circuits to create timing pulses, writing Python code, creating prototype circuits, and an opportunity to chat with recent graduates and current undergraduates.
Visitors also enjoyed a tour of facilities and the fabulous Fab Lab at the Electronic Engineering department's state-of-the-art laboratories in the Shilling Building.
Afterwards, a few visitors gave us their feedback on the day:
“All aspects of the day were great and I really enjoyed it as well”
“The talk was very inspirational and the circuit building was really fun as well”
“The coding with Python was fun to do in pairs”
“You could see the connection between the maths and the code”
[Girls into Engineering] “ gives a good insight on the broad types of learning you can go into”
[On the talk from Lucia Lo Bello] ”So inspiring to listen to somebody with lots of experience engineering”
