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IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year finalists revealed

Published: Tue 8 Oct 2019

Six young female engineers have been announced as this year’s finalists for the IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year Awards 2019. The finalists will attend the awards ceremony at IET London: Savoy Place on Thursday 5 December 2019.

The IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year Awards seek to find role models who can help address the UK science and engineering skills shortage by promoting engineering careers to more girls and women.

This year, a new award has been added to celebrate gender diversity within engineering. The Gender Diversity Ambassador Award will be presented to an individual who has spent a large proportion of their career committed to addressing the gender imbalance within their profession. This individual will have made a significant contribution to the engineering gender diversity arena and the work the IET supports to address the gender diversity gap.

Our 2019 finalists are:

  • Amber O’Connor (25) is an Equipment Health Monitoring and Performance Engineer, as well as an Engineering Programme Manager for Siemens Aeroderivative Gas. She is an active STEM Ambassador and supports projects and events to encourage the next generation towards a career in STEM.
     
  • Charlotte Buffey (21) is a Material Laboratories Apprentice at Rolls-Royce plc. Charlotte is currently undergoing an Aerospace Engineer Level 6 Degree Apprenticeship as part of the Laboratory at Rolls-Royce. She has dedicated a significant portion of her time to STEM activities.
     
  • Claire Lucas (33) is an Associate Professor of Systems and Information Engineering at the University of Warwick. In 2015, Claire joined Warwick as Director of Studies for Systems and Information Engineering where she is responsible for teaching activity in Systems, Biomedical and General Engineering.
     
  • Samantha Magowan (21) works at Dale Power Solutions as an Applications Engineer, figuring out solutions for customers. She started out in a rotational apprenticeship, allowing her to try all the business departments and find out exactly what she liked doing.
     
  • Shrouk El-Attar (27) works at Renishaw and designs electronic circuits for large robotic machines. She won the DaVinci Engineering Award, IET local Present Around the World (PATW) competition, was named as Young Woman of the Year by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and was named in the BBC list of 100 most influential women in the world.
     
  • Ying Wan Loh (28) works as a Manufacturing Engineer at Rolls-Royce plc. She completed a Mphil in Industrial Systems, Manufacture and Management at the University of Cambridge. During this time, she co-founded a technology start-up that developed rapidly within a tear and won the CSSA UK High-Tech Entrepreneurship Bronze Award.
     

Last year’s Young Woman Engineer of the Year, Sophie Harker, said: “After winning YWE in 2018, I didn’t realise how incredible my year ahead was going to be.

“This award and the IET have provided me with a huge platform to share my story with young girls and women across the country (and even the world), passing on the inspiration that was sparked in me as a teenager – and that’s what these awards are all about. I can honestly say it has been one of the most positive and rewarding experiences of my career and I cannot wait to see where it leads me next”.

Jo Foster, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Manager at the IET said: “Engineering is a fantastic career – it’s diverse and exciting with the opportunity to do something life- or world-changing.

“I’d like to congratulate Charlotte, Amber, Shrouk, Ying, Claire and Samantha for making the final six and in helping to demonstrate the tremendous female engineering talent in our industry today.”