PUBLIC EVENT
This event is free of charge, but registration is required. This event will be broadcast live on LinkedIn and a LinkedIn account is required to register and participate in the live event Q&A.
If you have any questions, please contact Beth Hagen, Events Coordinator, Royal Academy of Engineering at [email protected].
This Critical Conversation will define complex challenges and explore the role of systems thinking in addressing them. The audience will learn about the fundamentals of systems approaches and how an engineering mindset can improve safety and efficiency in complex systems. Academy CEO, Dr Hayaatun Sillem CBE, will be joined by three expert panellists:
Dame Judith Hackitt DBE FREng, Chair, Safer Complex Systems Programme Board
Dr Stephen Wendel, Author and Behavioural Scientist
Joss Colchester, System Innovation Networks Founder
The audience will be able to pose questions to the panel during the live event via the comments section on LinkedIn. You can find further information about this mini series in the More details tab.
Critical Conversations
Bringing together the thoughts of leading experts from across the Academy’s networks, our Critical Conversations explore issues of relevance to global professional engineering community and wider society. Fellows, awardees, and engineering partners gather to tackle topical issues of relevance to the global professional engineering community and wider society.
Catch up on all previous Critical Conversations here.
Recording notice
Please note this event will be recorded and published on the Royal Academy of Engineering website. Your video will be off and your account will be muted throughout the entire event. Only the speakers and presentations will be visible on your screen.
Accessibility
It is very important to the Royal Academy of Engineering that our events are accessible to all. If you have any accessibility requirements, please contact the Events team at your earliest convenience so that necessary arrangements can be made. Contact details: [email protected].
Diversity monitoring form
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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.
Dame Judith Hackitt DBE FREng
Dame Judith Hackitt is a chemical engineer by training and spent the first half of her career working in the chemicals industry – both in manufacturing and also as an advocate for the industry at national and international level. She is a former President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and a Fellow and Trustee of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Throughout her career she has championed the importance of Engineering in delivering solutions which provide benefit to society and has been a role model particularly for young women wanting to enter the profession. She cares deeply about safety in the workplace and more broadly. From 2007 to 2016 she was Chair of the UK’s Health and Safety Executive and in 2017 conducted an Independent Review for UK Government into Building Regulations and Fire Safety in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster. Since publishing her final report in 2018 she has continued to press for regulatory change and for industry culture change and her recommendations for radical reform of the regulatory system received Royal Assent in the Building Safety Act 2022. The change has been described as the biggest shake up in Construction regulation in a generation. She is currently Chair of the RAE’s Membership Committee and also of the Engineering X Safer Complex Systems programme
Joss Colchester
Joss Colchester is the founder of the Systems Innovation Network, a global community of some twenty-seven thousand members learning and applying the ideas and methods of systems thinking toward addressing wicked challenges in diverse areas. With a background in design, he has spent the last ten years researching and teaching systems thinking and complexity theory to millions of people via the video lessons and countless live sessions presented on the Si platform. A thought leader and community builder, Joss is on a mission to make the ideas of systems thinking more accessible to more people and to create spaces where we can work together on addressing the most critical and complex challenges of today.
Dr Stephen Wendel
Dr Wendel is an applied behavioural scientist who helps companies and organizations effectively use behavioural science for social good. His current company is sistemaFutura, which drives behavioural change to address complex business and social challenges. Before co-founding sistemaFutura, he led the behavioural science efforts at Morningstar, HelloWallet and Busara, developing and field-testing hundreds of interventions. He founded the international non-profit organization Bescy, and has authored three books on applied behavioural science, including the broadly-used textbook, Designing for Behavior Change, now in its second edition.
Conquering complexity through systems approaches
This three-part series will explore systems approaches to complex challenges, focusing on understanding systems, enhancing capacity building, and improving governance structures. Through these sessions, the audience will gain a better understanding of systems approaches and the long-term benefits of investing in them to tackle complex challenges.
- The first event will break down what complex challenges are and start showing how an engineering mindset- systems approaches- can benefit us when tackling them.
- The second event will apply a systems approach to capacity building, drawing on case studies from the Global Engineering Capability Review 2 and Engineers for Africa report.
- The third event will look at governance of complex systems, discussing what effective governance of complex systems looks like, and using the offshore wind sector as an example.