Welcome to the Community Insights blog!

This blog features posts from and about the EngX community. Want to contribute? Read our blogging guide to help you get started.

  • National Women In Engineering Day - Helen Sharman

    23 rd June is National Women in Engineering Day #NWED2016  and to celebrate this occasion, we are publishing some blogs to highlight the contribution Women have made to Science & Engineering.    This blog is about Helen Sharman who was the first British astronaut and is officially also a cosmonaut, as her space mission to the Russian MIR space station was a joint venture with the Soviet Union.   Helen spent 7 days, 21 hours and 13 minutes in space and at the age of 27 she was one of the youngest people to go into space.   Her mission to MIR began when she responded to a UK radio advert in 1989 ‘ Astronaut wanted – no experience required”. The advert as you can imagine proved popular and a total of 13,000 applicants were received.  Following various rigorous selection processes, Helen was selected…

    Deborah-Claire McKenzie
    Deborah-Claire McKenzie

  • Just two weeks left to get your YWE applications in

    Have you applied?

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • IET YPS: A Talk About CEng With A Visit To A Beverage Processing Plant

    An Evening with Young Professionals Section:CEng Application and Processing with a Visit to a Beverage Processing Plant Speakers: Mr Richard Fong / Dr Andrew Ng/ Mr Nicolas Week / Mr Daniel Floyd Date:10th June 2016 Time: 7.00pm -9.30pm Venue:Beerfest Restaurant,4 Rochester Road, S-139215 Nearest MRT:Buona Vista Opening Speech:Dr.Bicky Bhangu, IET Singapore Chair Speaker1: Mr Richard Fong, FIET Council Member, International Professional Registration Advisor (Why choose professional registration as a Chartered Engineer?)                                                       Speaker 2: Mr Nicholas Week, CEng, Materials Engineering Manager-Singapore Rolls-Royce(Chartered Engineer (CEng) professional registration and benefits) Speaker3: Dr Andrew, CEng, MIET, Assistant Professor at the Singapore…

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • Meeting with Michael Luo from IET WA Network

    Thousands of thanks to Michael Luo from IET Western Australia Network visiting Singapore Network to teach us about IET life skill workshop. IET Singapore will be one of the countries launching this program soon, stay tuned!

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • Next CoderDojo Session

    There is still time to register! The event takes place on Saturday 25th June 2016 Read more...

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • Google designs emojis depicting professional women

    Google engineers have designed a set of 13 emojis that they say better represent women in the world of work.   The designs have been presented to the Unicode consortium, the body that approves and standardises emojis. The team said that they hoped the samples would "empower young women (the heaviest emoji users) and better reflect the pivotal roles women play in the world". It includes healthcare workers, scientists and businesswomen. Read more...

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • How scientists in Iceland turned harmful greenhouse gases into rocks.

    Humans release at least 35 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, which can be tough on the environment. But what if, alchemy-like, we could take all that carbon dioxide and turn it into rock? At Iceland's Hellisheidi power plant, that's what they've been trying to do. Read more...

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • Another successful event at BT Dial House

    Today, The Manchester Young Professionals Network were hosting the event "Broadband – How do BT deliver the Network infrastructure for the UK, now and in the future". The event was very successful, thanks to those who attended, and also special thanks to BT who organised and ran the event! We were given the chance to visit the BT exchange centre in Manchester, learnt about the very old and the most recent technology BT has to keep the phones and broadband running in many homes in the UK. We have a few more events coming up this summer, we look forward to see many of you again soon.  Find out more about our future events.

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • PATW SW Area Final

    Congratuations to the Charlotte Levy and Esther Dunstan-Sewell on their success in the PATW SW Area Final held in Salisbury last week.   Charlotte who won the SW AreaFfinal will now go on to the UK Final with her talk on the Science of Cocolate to be held on 21st July.    Esther was the runner up with her talk on testing LCD Displays.

    John Savage
    John Savage

  • Latest Society Insight - Flooding, Internet Of Things And Food

    Welcome to the second of our Society Insights series.  In our first blogpost about this series  we explained that the Society Insights series looks at the subjects IET Local Networks are bringing to the wider public's attention. For our second Society Insights digest we look at three topics that IET Local Networks have been discussing –  food engineering ,  flood risk management  and the  Internet of Things , which we feel will impact on the wider public now and in the coming years. What follows are a summary of what these talks discussed... Food engineering IET Somerset and West Wiltshire Local Network Steve Long ’s talk on the process of turning caught fish into the fish fingers you find in the supermarket gave an insight into how engineering efficiently provides food on the table. Steve…

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • A hug Congratulations to Dawn Bonfield...

    Inspiring Codicote and Stevenage engineer, Dawn Bonfield receives MBE in Queen's honours. Dawn is chief executive of the Women's Engineering Society (WES) based in Six Hills Way, Stevenage and founder of National Women in Engineering Day (NWED)  Dawn will also be speaking out our NWED evening event, 23rd June - Check out our events section on this page! Read more...

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • Please join the #NWED2016 Thunderclap below

    National Women in Engineering Day (#NWED2016) is now an International awareness campaign to raise the profile of women in engineering and focus on the amazing career opportunities available to girls in this exciting industry. It takes place annually on 23 June. It's your day so get involved. In 2016 we celebrate NWED for the third year, and it just happens to coincide with the referendum this year!  Read more...

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • IET National Women in Engineering Day - Collaborative Events June 23rd

    Remember to register to attend our two fantastic events, taking place on National Women in Engineering Day (NWED)   National Women in Engineering Day - ASK AN ENGINEER: LIVE WEBINAR   National Women in Engineering Day: The Big Discussion

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • Skanska UK Return-to-Work Programme 2016

    Skanska UK Return-to-Work Programme 2016 Women Returners are partnering with Skanska, a leading construction company and developer, to launch a new UK Return-to-Work Programme. Opportunities exist across the business including engineering (civil, mechanical, electrical, design, geotechnical); operations (planner, project manager, construction supervisor, facilities/general management, BIM technician); commercial (quantity surveyor, buyer, commercial manager); and enabling functions (HR, IT, Health & Safety, Environment, Finance). Skanska are looking for talented professionals, both male and female, with relevant skills and experience who have taken a voluntary career break of two or more years. The programme is based in London and surrounding areas, at Maple Cross, and in Cambridgeshire. It…

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • The School Gate SET

    The  School Gate SET  is a new online community of parents volunteering to help with Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) in their children’s primary schools. Set up by Kate Bellingham, (IET member, Champion for Girls' Opportunities in Engineering and former Tomorrow's World presenter), it will provide activity ideas, training and mentoring, through face to face training, a blog and other social media platforms.   Do you know a part-time or career break parent with a STEM background and a child in primary school who might like to get involved?   The target group are career-break parents who may have lost confidence in their STEM skills and are therefore less likely to 'return' to STEM work and they are more likely to self-identify as 'parents' than with 'STEM'. However, we are…

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • International Robotics Showcase - 1 July 2016 (London)

    In my second of a series of posts in the run up to our fantastic event - the International Robotics Showcase - I wanted to concentrate on another exciting aspect of robotics engineering. A huge area of robotics engineering is looking to help people who are unable to walk - to walk again. With the help of robotic limbs this is becoming a reality for more and more people. At the forefront of this work is Dr Homayoon Kazerooni who is a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as the director of the Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory. Dr Kazerooni is a leading expert in robotics, control sciences, exoskeletons, human-machine systems and augmentation, bioengineering, mechatronics design, intelligent assist devices, and power…

  • National Women in Engineering Day - Resource Pack

    Take a look at the full resource pack for NWED 2016! Read more...

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • Newsletter Distribution - North Yorkshire

    The Yorkshire and Humber Region (North, South and West Yorkshire & the Humber) has, for many years, distributed a paper-based newsletter initially by post and, lately, via an insert in the E&T magazine. The Communities Committee of the UK (the IET organisation, run by volunteers, that allocates budgets to the Local Networks) asked all networks to review their expenditure on newsletter production and seek to distribute event information and other details electronically via the regular e-mails and Engineering Community (here!). There has been much discussion in the region about ceasing the production of a paper newsletter but there has never been any concensus in the regional committee to move to electronic distribution of the newsletter. The budget submission for the North Yorkshire Local Network…

    Paul Smith, RPS
    Paul Smith, RPS

  • Limbitless engineer refuses to feed into stereotypes

    You’ll usually catch her at work in the engineering building’s innovation lab with a look of sheer concentration on her face as she tinkers with electronic circuit boards or operates complicated machinery, such as laser cutters and 3-D printers. -  Gabby Baquero, Central Florida Future Read more...

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • Countdown is on to National Women in Engineering Day 2016

    On June 23 rd  2016, National Women in Engineering Day (NWED) will be celebrated worldwide to raise awareness of women in the engineering industry and the career opportunities available. The IET Women's Network has some fantastic events for you to attend on NWED. Read more...

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • Let's get real about supporting women in tech

    Despite the well-documented (really obvious) gender gap in the tech sector, we’re not seeing a lot of improvement, and it’s time to take some serious action. Right now, women (who represent  57 percent  of the U.S. labor force) fill just a quarter (26.5 percent) of tech jobs at the top U.S. tech firms, and earn, on average, just 85 percent of what their male counterparts do. The thing is, only  18 percent of women hold leadership positions  in these companies. At the top 100 VC firms, a mere  7 percent  of managing partners are women.   Could it be because men just do a better job? Well, no. Not according to the research. - Craig Newmark, Recode.   Read more...

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • Critical Mass; The Silent Competitor Within ‘InfoSec’

    The size of the Cyber Security market is vast. Through the standardisation of technology cyber security is appearing across more industries so is strengthening the confidence of new technology platforms. Its safe to say the phase from domain security networks into multi-tenant environments is no longer next-gen, but rather expected activities.  The ease at which technology allows horizontal and vertical integrations across market channels is efficiently realised and far more quicker than before. I have recently researched the Cyber Security market and found that human factors will now be the core of innovation – specifically enterprise systems and combined with the need for social promotions, the balance to achieve quality 'critical mass' might be the new competitor playing field. Almost of…

  • Ford Prize For Women In STEM Study 2016

    Recognising that women are traditionally under-represented in STEM studies and the related professions, Ford is delighted to award it's 2015 award to Melissa Matthews. Entries for 2016 accepted until 30th June 2016.

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

  • Orla Murphy the IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year 2015

    The IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year Award is still open for entries. Here we ask Orla, last year’s winner, what winning has meant to her and what she has been doing since she won the award. Read more...

    Former Community Member
    Former Community Member

Community Rules & Guidelines