At school in the 60s I was with a variety of students from around the world - all male. The sixth form however was shared with an all girls school.

At university, studying Electronics & Electrical Engineering, again there was a variety of students from around the world - all male. However, when doing my PhD there was a very interesting Cantonese lady from Malaysia with us - we eventually got married and are still together. I attracted her interest initially because I knew where Malaysia is.

At work I had some interesting experiences that made me realise that we need a range of people to enhance our engineering capability.

In the earl 80s, we recruited someone who just sat in the corner of the room and said nothing. One person found out how to communicate with him and together they formed a successful small team designing cyber secure power supplies for all of the companies products.

Over time I met and worked with blind people, deaf people, transgender people and people in wheelchairs - all engineers who contributed a lot to the business. Actually when I worked with these people I didn't notice their differences.

During the six years before my retirement, our Chief Engineer was a woman and my manager was a woman.

These are just examples - my work environment was diverse but could be more so.

I think that the IET should be encouraging people from diverse backgrounds that engineering can be very interesting and rewarding while at the same time encouraging companies to recruit a diverse group of people by illustrating the benefits with evidence.

My concern is that we need to include those people who think differently to us. If we can find out how to communicate with them then maybe they have plenty to give to engineering. At the moment we seem to try to control them by giving them medicine.

We also need to give engineers a role in society. Most people have no idea what an engineer is, so it is a closed group. Government could benefit enormously from more engineers being involved. For example, I insist on being called Dr or Peter - I don't like being called Mr but  a lot of people don't know that engineers can be doctors (not medical doctors, i.e. medics). Even worse, nurses with PhDs are still nurse.

At school in the 60s I was with a variety of students from around the world - all male. The sixth form however was shared with an all girls school.

At university, studying Electronics & Electrical Engineering, again there was a variety of students from around the world - all male. However, when doing my PhD there was a very interesting Cantonese lady from Malaysia with us - we eventually got married and are still together. I attracted her interest initially because I knew where Malaysia is.

At work I had some interesting experiences that made me realise that we need a range of people to enhance our engineering capability.

In the earl 80s, we recruited someone who just sat in the corner of the room and said nothing. One person found out how to communicate with him and together they formed a successful small team designing cyber secure power supplies for all of the companies products.

Over time I met and worked with blind people, deaf people, transgender people and people in wheelchairs - all engineers who contributed a lot to the business. Actually when I worked with these people I didn't notice their differences.

During the six years before my retirement, our Chief Engineer was a woman and my manager was a woman.

These are just examples - my work environment was diverse but could be more so.

I think that the IET should be encouraging people from diverse backgrounds that engineering can be very interesting and rewarding while at the same time encouraging companies to recruit a diverse group of people by illustrating the benefits with evidence.

My concern is that we need to include those people who think differently to us. If we can find out how to communicate with them then maybe they have plenty to give to engineering. At the moment we seem to try to control them by giving them medicine.

We also need to give engineers a role in society. Most people have no idea what an engineer is, so it is a closed group. Government could benefit enormously from more engineers being involved. For example, I insist on being called Dr or Peter - I don't like being called Mr but  a lot of people don't know that engineers can be doctors (not medical doctors, i.e. medics). Even worse, nurses with PhDs are still nurse.