Engineering role models
For National Engineering Day 2024 we have unveiled a modern statue of a living engineer and a digital artwork of five engineering role models, in a bid to inspire a new generation into the profession.
Our research shows that engineering-specific role models are a strong influencing factor on young people to choose engineering. In the summer of 2024 we launched a public call for nominations of engineering role models and received 158 nominations for 96 individuals. Our judging panel has now selected a group of these whose stories we are sharing on National Engineering Day.
Specially designed by visual artist Kelly Anna, the striking new statue is of Macclesfield-based engineer Alice Kan. The statue encapsulates Alice’s remarkable journey, achievements, and personal resilience in engineering and vaccine production. The central, dynamic figure of Alice stands strong with an empowered posture, symbolising her resilience, leadership, and unwavering determination. Alice is shown looking upward, representing hope, optimism, and her visionary approach to the future.
Experience the statue through augmented reality
The statue is constructed from various blocks and shapes, representing Alice's ability to build teams and overcome obstacles. These blocks embody persistence and inclusiveness—demonstrating how diverse perspectives come together to create strength.
One of the key elements is a pencil, symbolising Alice’s tenacity and her relentless pursuit of success. Known for her determination, Alice has often been described as tenacious, and the pencil signifies her approach to problem-solving and her preference for putting pen or pencil to paper to communicate ideas, particularly to non-engineers. This reflects her ability to break down complex concepts with clarity and collaboration, underscoring her role as a leader who makes engineering accessible to all.
The other acknowledges a significant personal and professional achievement: Alice is represented holding an oversized vial, symbolizing her significant role in the mass production of vaccines, such as those for COVID-19 and Ebola, and her contribution to public health. The abstract COVID-19 graphic on the base of the statue depicts three vaccine vials. Vials are a key symbol of Alice's work on the vaccine as they both gave hope but also added complexity to the project. Alice has three of them on her desk as a constant reminder. Why three? Because it’s a three-step process to cap the vials.
If you're not able to visit the statue in London, you can interact with it and learn more about each of the elements and what they represent through an augmented reality experience. This experience was created by Atlantic Productions and truly brings the statue to life before your eyes - wherever you are.
Who do you think is an inspirational engineer?
We asked you for your nominations of engineers who would inspire young people on their journeys into the profession. We asked who is the person you know who is contributing to or creating a feat of engineering that has made or will make a difference to the world.
In response, you told us about engineering innovators who make the impossible, possible: the unsung heroes whose contributions are making or have made a significant difference.
The judges' selections have been brought to life in a new digital artwork by visual artist Kelly Anna, who also designed the engineering role model statue. Alongside Alice Kan, it features four other inspiring engineers—Navjot Singh, Meg Ginsburg, Dr Shini Somara, and Laura Hoang—who each bring unique contributions and diverse backgrounds to their fields.
Meet the engineering role models
Alice Kan
Alice Kan, a mechanical engineer from Macclesfield, has made a significant impact on the world of vaccine production. Originally drawn to maths, she discovered her passion for engineering after attending a taster course at Cardiff University. Alice began her career at AstraZeneca, working in various project and leadership roles for 13 years.
When the pandemic hit, she became programme manager for the fill-finish of the Oxford-AZ COVID-19 vaccine at Wockhardt, where she led the team responsible for setting up the manufacturing AstraZeneca vaccines for the UK, making crucial technical decisions under immense pressure.
Alice is now contributing to Sabin Vaccine Institute’s efforts to tackle two of the world’s deadliest diseases, Ebola and Marburg, by supporting the manufacturing of vaccines currently in Phase 2 clinical trials, inspired by her late sister Polly, a doctor who helped with the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. Her work feels deeply personal, and she hopes to contribute to saving lives through her efforts.
Alice is also passionate about addressing sexism in engineering and driving culture change to retain more women in the profession. She’s applied for a Churchill Fellowship to learn how other countries successfully support women engineers. Having overcome her own imposter syndrome during the COVID-19 vaccine project, she’s determined to continue tackling challenges in manufacturing and beyond.
The judges chose Alice as an inspirational role model because her journey into engineering highlights the power of curiosity and non-traditional paths to success.
Navjot Sawhney
Navjot Sawhney, or Nav, is a London-born aerospace engineer and is the founder of The Washing Machine Project. Having grown disillusioned with "making vacuum cleaners for rich people," Nav pivoted to humanitarian efforts in India, volunteering with Engineers Without Borders. There, he developed low-smoke cooking stoves and met Divya, a neighbour whose daily struggles with handwashing inspired Nav to design a washing machine that doesn’t use electricity or a fixed water source.
This idea sparked The Washing Machine Project, a UK-based social enterprise dedicated to alleviating the burden of handwashing clothes, particularly for women in remote, low-income, and displaced communities. The Divya Washing Machine, named after this neighbour, is the world’s first flat-pack, manual washing machine.
His dedication to selfless service, combined with his vision for creating humanitarian products that solve multiple challenges, showcases his leadership, empathy, and commitment to making the world a better place.
This innovative device saves up to 50% of water and 75% of time compared to hand washing, addressing a critical need for predominantly women and girls around the world who experience this burden every day.
Now active in 15 countries, Nav's project aims to impact 150,000 people over the coming years. Nav believes that as an engineer you have a choice to help or hinder the planet. With partners like Whirlpool Foundation, he plans to scale the initiative, tackling broader global challenges in clean energy, mobility, and more.
Dr Shini Somara
London born, Dr Shini Somara is a mechanical engineer and science communicator who is passionate about making engineering accessible to all. As a creative child, she loved building and making things but initially struggled with maths. After many years of focussed hard work, she later mastered maths to follow in her father’s engineering footsteps.
At university, she discovered the combination of creativity and logic and developed a novel "freeze flow" technique in computational fluid dynamics, which is now used in hypersonic spacecraft modelling. Shini transitioned from industry to communications, hosting TV programmes such as Al Jazeera’s ‘Technow’ and creating educational content like "Crash Course Physics" videos, which have reached 50 million viewers. She’s also an author, with her first seven books aimed at inspiring children to pursue engineering.
Shini was chosen for her creativity and ability to make engineering accessible to diverse audiences
Committed to diversity and inclusion, Shini advocates for wider participation in the field, promoting apprenticeships and speaking in schools to inspire the next generation of engineers. Her mission is to bring engineering into the mainstream and help close the skills gap with a diverse and inclusive workforce.
Meg Ginsberg
Meg Ginsberg is an assistant project manager at South West Water who has forged an inspiring career in the wastewater industry after facing significant personal and professional challenges. Born in Guildford and now based in Devon, Meg became a mother during the pandemic and navigated multiple surgeries that left her a wheelchair user by the age of 18. Originally pursuing a career in nursing, she shifted to project management, completing an apprenticeship and soon to start a degree apprenticeship at Exeter.
At South West Water, she manages large-scale projects across Devon and Cornwall, including flood and pollution reduction, working closely with engineers to modernise Victorian sewage systems and future-proof infrastructure.
Passionate about inclusivity, Meg launched "Construct Ability”, an initiative to help disabled people enter and thrive in construction and engineering.
With sights set on becoming an engineer herself one day, her unique perspective as a wheelchair user drives her mission to make the industry more accessible, adaptable, and diverse. Meg is proud to be part of an essential industry and hopes to continue changing perceptions and driving meaningful change.
Meg exemplifies resilience and determination and has overcome personal challenges to carve a successful career in project management within an engineering environment
Laura Hoang
An after-school project with National Grid sparked her interest, leading her to study systems engineering at Loughborough University.
She spent 12 years at working in the aerospace industry, where she designed cockpits and training systems.
After a shift into an environmental and sustainability consultancy, working with a broad range of industries including mining, wastewater and hydrogen projects, Laura joined Amentum and is now the human factors lead for a large-scale nuclear energy project.
Her focus is on cutting-edge design to reduce human error and drive the UK towards its net-zero ambitions. Laura is committed to inspiring young people, especially girls from ethnic minority backgrounds, to see engineering as a viable and exciting career.
Laura’s visionary mindset and passion for clean energy position her as an inspiring figure, motivating others to pursue careers that benefit both people and the planet.
Engineering: Today, tomorrow and beyond
We are excited to announce our involvement in a news-style programme produced by ITN Business. The programme features key industry and news-style reports along with sponsored editorial profiles. You can watch the interview with Academy CEO Hayaatun Sillem and Engineering Role Model Alice Kan below, and to watch the programme in full, visit the ITN Business Hub.
Video transcript
For over half a century the Royal Academy of Engineering has been bringing together a community of leaders from all disciplines of engineering and Technology. We spoke with the charity about how they're growing talent, developing skills for the future, driving Innovation, building Global Partnerships, engaging the public and influencing policy. Hi Hayaatun, you're the CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Alice Kan you're the winner of the Royal Academy of Engineering's role models competition for which they invited members of the public to nominate inspirational living Engineers so these are massive uh achievements and titles so well done and congratulations thank you both for joining us here hi Alon I'm going to start with you public visibility of engineers in the UK it's relatively low why is this yes so Engineers are hidden enablers of almost everything we take for granted in the modern world from the smartphones that have now become extensions of our brain to the transport that I used to get here to the uh fatless clean water when you turn on the Taps to the medical devices that help us to be diagnosed and treated in hospitals but actually we don't see we don't notice the engineers behind all of that and I think that's for two reasons one is that it works so we can just enjoy the the benefits the Creature Comforts that we get from all that hidden engineering without ever having to worry about it and then secondly in the UK we have a particularly narrow and outdated visual shorthand for who Engineers are so we still default to the hard hat and hi vis jacket that really does not do justice to the incredible diversity and breadth of modern engineering careers Alice please tell us your route into engineering so when I was in sixth form at school I was doing math further math physics and absolutely loved math was going to go to university and do math and a teacher said to me have you considered engineering and I thought well I don't want to fix cars so why would I do that and then as soon as I started to explore it a bit more I realized Engineers do all sorts of things it isn't just about fixing cars and I went to Cardiff University for a week and they showed us every type of engineering that there is and based on that I decided I'd go and study mechanical engineering at University and then I specialized in manufacturing and management alongside that and the rest is history. Hayaatun, what is the academy doing to attract women and minorities that are underrepresented so we have a long-standing engineering skills short for so we just don't have enough engineers in this country and that's been the case for many years but alongside that we have this really stubborn diversity deficit so today our engineering profession is made up of 15.7% women and obviously that lags far behind many if not most other sectors alongside that there are other aspects of underrepresentation certain minority ethnic groups disabled people for example so it's not a surprise therefore that for the Royal Academy of engineering tackling this is a real priority and at the moment our focus is on National engineering day which we've created as a national awareness day an opportunity to celebrate and talk about and shine a light on the engineers who are powering Our Lives unseen unnoticed so it's our chance to really show who are these people and what do they do and so we've run a role model competition so we invited the public to nominate living Engineers who have inspired them and we commissioned the brilliant artist Kiana to produce a digital artwork for the five that we shortlisted and then of course Very excitingly a special sculpture to represent Alice who is our overall winner it's rather wonderful I saw your eyes light up than Alice how do you feel about having a statue it's a very surreal thing I don't think I've properly taken it in yet as well as having a a very small percentage of women within the industry there's also retention problem isn't there so I think there is a real problem with retention it can feel like quite an inhospitable culture I feel like I'm quite lucky that having worked on the COVID vaccine I feel like I've really earned my place but that's taken me until I was in my 40s to get to that point I've experienced a lot of sexism some of it overt some of it not so overt but as you get older you think life too short to put up with this and I think part of the reason there's a drop off of women midcareer is that they don't want to put up with it anymore given your experiences and advice that you've given there what else would you say to young women especially those from under represented backgrounds for example who might be considering a career in engineering firstly it's an amazing career you can do almost anything with engineering I think it's a very rewarding career because you for me you can really make a difference I think the other thing I would say is get a mentor there are lots of women in the profession who are proud to be engineers and who would love to support women and underrepresented groups coming through the Royal Academy has a mentoring scheme and so does the um women's engineering Society each of the engineering institutions do so there are lots of places but go and ask somebody and say tell me about your career as an engineer I don't know many people who wouldn't be really willing to share that I think think that as an engineer you can get a real sense of purpose from what you do because you are fundamentally solving problems to make a difference to the Future and to me that is the main reason I love what I do I feel like I'm having a real influence on the future and and making an important difference what inspires you I'm currently working on a couple of vaccines for Ebola um which is a cause really close to my heart my younger sister Polly was a doctor she un unfortunately died by suicide in 2021 but in 2016 she went to se Leone worked there for 3 months as a doctor and I remember saying to her you really should go you have the skills work are giving you the time to go why wouldn't you do it so when I was approached to work on a vaccine for Ebola those words came back to me and I felt like I had to do it and I have a really clear sense of purpose I feel like I'm supporting my sister's Legacy but also I'm making a difference to people who otherwise are likely to die from such a terrible disease thank you both [Music]
A look back at National Engineering Day 2023
National Engineering Day impact by year
National Engineering Day 2023: Everyday Engineering
Our national competition, Everyday Engineering, was open to all the UK’s kitchen table engineers, with ideas and innovations that could make or are making our daily life more sustainable. A public vote held on National Engineering Day, 1 November 2023, decided the nation's favourite sustainable idea or innovation.
Our news story on the day highlighted how outdated perceptions of engineering could hold the UK back from its net zero goals.
Our partnership with Transport for London, TfL, saw 274 engineering icons celebrated with a reimagined tube map. This drove the conversation on the day, as the community celebrated engineers from every sector of the procession.
The Academy organised the first ever public event in celebration of National Engineering Day. Innovation Late featured a series of TED-style 10-minute talks from speakers about their work which either improves the planet or improves people’s lives. The talks were accompanied by exhibitions featuring chocolate welding, robotic dancing dogs, ergonomic chairs for disabled users, and eco-friendly plastic alternatives. 87.5% of the audience hadn’t been to an event hosted by the Academy before.
Over the course of the Day, and thanks to an incredible community of partners and supporters we achieved:
- Nearly 100 pieces of UK news coverage mentioned National Engineering Day or the Everyday Engineering Competition
- Trended at #6 on Twitter in the UK, with #NationalEngineeringDay generating 76 million impressions and more than 56 million engagements
- High profile engineers and engineering champions such as Sir Tim Peake, other influential accounts such as the Mayor of London, as well as Dragons’ Den ambassador Deborah Meaden all posted on the day
- The tube map generated great conversation on LinkedIn with over 300 posts, including from Google UK MD Debbie Weinstein, George Imafidon MBE, Ella Podmore MBE, Elena Rodriguez FREng, Penelope Endersby FREng and more.
- The first ever Innovation Late event received 780 registrations with 352 people attending. The event was featured in news outlets including Skint London, Cheapskate London, Southwark News, the Londonist and BBC Radio London. 92.5% of the audience rated the event ‘very satisfactory’ and ‘outstanding’.
National Engineering Day 2022: improving lives through engineering
This is Engineering Day returned on 2 November 2022 as National Engineering Day with a focus on showcasing how engineering improves lives.
We produced a video featuring Great British Bake Off stars, Andrew Smyth, Giuseppe Dell'Anno and Rahul Mandal showcasing how engineering and baking are interlinked. We also launched the #EngineeringCakes social media challenge which encouraged the public to bake a vegan chocolate with an inspirational engineering decoration.
The Academy published new research revealing that the UK is an engineering powerhouse, with the profession generating up to an estimated £645bn gross value added (GVA) to the UK’s economy annually – equivalent to 32% of the country’s economic output. A map was produced highlighting that hotspots of engineering appear all over the UK, with a high proportion of local populations of Mid Ulster, West Cumbria, and Flintshire and Wrexham working in the profession.
Over the course of the Day, and thanks to an incredible community of partners and supporters we:
- Achieved over 77 million potential impressions this year across social media, more than double last year's equivalent number.
- Trended at #3 on Twitter in the UK
- Amassed more than 200,000 video views for National Engineering Day activities
- Organised a parliamentary reception and panel hosted by Lord Mair. The event was attended by over 70 people including nine Parliamentarians, industry partners, professional engineering institutions, Fellows and representatives from the This is Engineering campaign.
- Secured widespread media coverage including in the Metro, the Express, Daily Mirror, The Times. As well as mentions on BBC Radio 2 and a dedicated slot from Steph McGovern on her show Steph’s Packed Lunch on Channel 4
This is Engineering Day 2021
In 2021, This is Engineering Day landed at the start of COP26, when public conversations were focused on what we need to do to tackle climate change and become net zero by 2050. Through reimagined artworks, we envisioned what landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes would look like in a net zero world in 2050. From agriculture to travel and energy to housing, we shared how engineers can mitigate the effects of climate change and help us live a more sustainable life tomorrow.
The Academy worked with a digital artist who reworked masterpieces by Monet, Van Gogh, Constable and Pissarro to inspire a conversation about the engineering advances that could help to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Innovations such as agricultural robots, smart thermochromic windows, vertical farms and flying taxis have been woven into the reimagined impressionist masterpieces to depict what a more sustainable world may look like in the future.
Over the course of the Day, and thanks to an incredible community of partners and supporters we:
- Achieved a total media reach of 33 million
- Hashtags from the day were seen over 30 million times
- Set up a pop-up art installation at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, the host city for COP26
- Hosted a special Green Skills themed panel discussion as part of our COP26-linked Ask the Engineers event series
- Secured widespread media coverage including in The Mirror, The Sun, Channel 4, Radio 4, The Times, and on Steph’s Packed Lunch with engineers who feature in This is Engineering and the Great British Bake Off.
This is Engineering Day 2020
This is Engineering Day 2020 saw the Academy’s plans to launch a new, pandemic-proof, virtual museum: the Museum of Engineering Innovation on Google Arts and Culture, with an inaugural collection showcasing the engineering behind Paralympian Jonnie Peacock’s blade, vaccine manufacturing and Shakespearean theatre.
We also hosted five online Q&A sessions for students, attracting over 420 registrations from schools and the engineering community. The discussions were recorded and are available to view here.
Media highlights included features on BBC World Service and Channel 4’s Steph’s Packed Lunch, and articles in the FT, The Metro, Daily Express, and Forbes.
Engineers and engineering organisations across the country got involved in the day both online and offline. Highlights included:
- Transport for Greater Manchester provided over 170 poster sites around their network featuring the Museum QR code
- Network Rail shared campaign content on over 50 screens in stations across the UK
- Amazon re-programmed Alexa to answer questions about engineers and This is Engineering Day and created an Alexa engineering quiz, and special engineering book list.
- The Mercedes F1 Team and Lewis Hamilton created a bespoke new video for their social media accounts, which generated over 836K views and 316K likes
This is Engineering Day 2019
In 2019, we hosted our very first This is Engineering Day on 6 November 2019, in the middle of Tomorrow’s Engineers Week, a day to raise awareness of what engineers really do and celebrate those who are shaping the world we live in.
To challenge the narrow public perception of engineers and engineering, we launched a new public image library of more representative images of engineers, a new Instagram channel @ThisisEngineering, and a challenge to help us change image search results for the word ‘engineer’.
Engineers and engineering organisations across the country got involved in the day both online and offline:
- Over 130 organisations signed a pledge to increase the public visibility of more representative images of engineers and engineering
- Over 780 images were dontated to our free engineering photo library by over 40 partner organisations
- Amazon Alexa answered questions about This is Engineering Day and the role of engineers, and Amazon ran engineering-focused tours of Amazon’s fulfilment centres
- Network Rail showcased real images of engineers on 60 screens across 15 stations in the UK, and across the Virgin train network
- Facebook created and promoted new engineering video content featuring their engineers
- Google hosted an engineering takeover at its Portsmouth Digital Garage
- Celebrities including F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton, author and present Konnie Huq, astronaut Tim Peake and Great British Bakeoff finalist Andrew Smyth marked the day on social media, helping #ThisisEngineering reach over 12 million people on 6 November alone
Related content
Looking for images of engineers?
Our This is Engineering image library has contemporary images that represent the diversity of today's engineers across all disciplines. All our photo's are free to use.
More resources
Visit our resources page for ideas for how to get involved with National Engineering Day and assets to use on your own channels.
This is Engineering
National Engineering Day is part of the This is Engineering campaign which aims to bring engineering to life for young people, and give more people the opportunity to pursue a career that is rewarding, future-shaping, varied, well-paid and in-demand.