Engineering Review of the Year 2023

Dr Hayaatun Sillem CBE

Hayaatun is CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation. She co-chairs with the Science Minister the government’s Business Innovation Forum and co-chaired with Sir Lewis Hamilton his Commission on improving Black representation in motorsport. She is a trustee of various charities, member of the government’s Levelling Up Advisory Council and Digital Skills Council and NXD at construction company Laing O’Rourke. She has been named as one of the ‘Inspiring 50’ women in tech in Europe and one of the most influential women in both UK engineering and UK tech. She has a Masters in Biochemistry (MBiochem) from Oxford and a PhD from Cancer Research UK/UCL. She is a Fellow of the IET, Honorary Professor at UCL and Honorary Fellow at The Queen’s College, Oxford. She has received honorary doctorates from UCL, Imperial College London, Newcastle, Brunel, Huddersfield and Southampton, as well as a Science Suffrage Award and the Engineering Professor’s Council President’s Medal. She was a finalist for the Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman Award and was made a CBE for services to International Engineering in 2019. Prior to her current roles, she was Deputy CEO at the Academy and served as Committee Specialist and later Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee.

Dr John Lazar CBE FREng

John Lazar is co-founder and general partner at Enza Capital, and Chair of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. In 2019, with two partners he co-launched Enza Capital which backs founders and teams using technology to solve large and meaningful problems across Africa. Headquartered in Nairobi, Enza has invested in more than 30 African tech companies to date. John sits on the board of four of Enza’s portfolio companies. As well as being a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, he is also a Fellow of BCS, the UK’s chartered institute for IT. He is chair of the Academy’s Enterprise Committee which oversees the activities of its Enterprise Hub, supporting start-ups and scale-ups across the UK. For the past eight years, he has also been a judge and mentor on the Academy’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, which backs 15-20 early-stage African engineering companies annually. He has also spent many years working on tech-related non-profit initiatives in Africa, especially building “digital blacksmiths” and maker labs. John has also been an active angel investor and technology start-up mentor in the UK and Africa, with more than 40 individual pre-seed/seed investments. In 2016, he stepped down as Chairman and CEO of Metaswitch Networks. He joined the company in 1987 as a software engineer and became Chief Executive Officer, and then Chairman, as the company established its leadership in cloud communications software. Metaswitch was acquired by Microsoft in 2020. He graduated from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar with an M.Sc in Computation and a D.Phil in History. He was awarded a CBE for services to engineering in 2016.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili CBE HonFREng FRS

Jim Al-Khalili is an academic, author and broadcaster. He holds a Distinguished Chair in Theoretical Physics at the University of Surrey where he conducts research in quantum physics. He has written 15 books on popular science, between them translated into over 26 languages. He is a regular presenter of TV science documentaries and the long-running BBC Radio 4 programme, The Life Scientific.

Professor Chris Wise FREng

Chris co-founded Expedition in 1999 and the Useful Simple Trust in 2008. Prior to this, he worked for Ove Arup and Partners from 1979. Serving in the UK, Australia and USA, he became Arup’s youngest Director in 1992, later appointed one of five Board Directors responsible for Building Engineering. He has a reputation for hands-on creativity and innovative engineering projects, both as design lead, and in collaboration with some of the world’s leading architects. He has also been a long-time innovator in the field of engineering design education, including founding the Constructionarium while the first Professor of Creative Design at Imperial College. In 2012, Chris was honoured with two Gold medals, receiving the highest individual award from both the UK’s primary professional engineering institutions, IStructE and ICE, in recognition of his design and educational contribution to engineering in the design community and society.