Meet our 2020 IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year Finalists

Our IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year awards celebrate women in modern engineering as they aim to help change the perception of engineering and encourage more women to pursue STEM careers. We seek to find role models to inspire more girls to join the industry and help us to engineer a better world.

Meet our finalists…

Bethany Probert (23) is a Junior Software Engineer at Altran UK, working in the High Integrity Software Centre on a graduate apprenticeship scheme. Bethany is a member of the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Young Professionals Board where she advocates for gender diversity in STEM and aims to inspire the next generation of women.

Ella Podmore (25) works for McLaren Automotive as a Materials Engineer, in which she is responsible for all the material investigations in the business across all development phases of the company’s supercars. As the leading STEM ambassador for McLaren, Ella helped launch the recent competition McLaren Automotive ran with BBC Blue Peter asking children to design their ‘supercar of the future’ and was one of Autocar’s Top 10 ‘Rising Star’ in 2019.

Neera Kukadia (28) is a Project Engineer at Transport for London. Neera has been a STEM ambassador for five years, through this role she works with girls’ schools in underrepresented boroughs in East London to encourage and inspire them into engineering. After completing her Meng at Brighton University, she has taken up a volunteer role with the university’s BAME mentor programme.

Dr Melanie Jimenez (33) is a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow at the James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow. Melanie’s work crosses the engineering, science, clinical and social science disciplines to help achieve a healthier world. The excellence of her research and engagement work has been recognised by several institutions and funding agencies.

Shrouk El-Attar (28) is an Electronic Engineer at Elvie where she engineers smart tech that improves the lives of cis women and trans men, whilst breaking down barriers and smashing taboos. Shrouk has been a STEM ambassador since 2011, teaching children about engineering solutions and most recently headed up a project, teaching maths to children of refugees.

Denize Ivy Pilarta (21) is an Apprentice Non-Destructive Examination Engineering Technician at BAE Systems Submarines. Denize is a passionate about her role as a STEM ambassador where she supports many educational events. She has been awarded ‘MAKE UK Engineering Apprentice of the Year: Rising Star National Winner’ for her dedication to continuously improve, and actively promotes the endless possibilities within STEM to young girls.

2019 Young Woman Engineer of the Year, Ying Wan Loh, said: “The IET’s YWE award is the most prestigious award for early career women in engineering in the UK. Since winning, I’ve had the chance to collaborate with a BAFTA-winning celebrity, a famous sportsperson and many senior members in the engineering community.

“With this platform, I’ve been able to raise awareness for STEM in wildly interesting and creative ways. The YWE award is recognised internationally and I’ve received invitations to give talks abroad and was also recognised in Forbes 2020 30 under 30 list.

“The IET gives female engineers a voice to be heard and I am using this platform to raise the profile of women in STEM. Representation matters, and I am so grateful to the IET for giving me this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to inspire young people everywhere to become engineers.”

The winner will be announced at the IET’s Young Woman Engineer of the Year Awards ceremony on Thursday 4 March 2021. For more information, visit our YWE website.

The IET will also be hosting a webinar on 3 December, giving people the chance to meet this year’s YWE finalists and find out more about them and the outstanding work they are doing, as well as ask the finalists questions in a live Q&A session. Details of the webinar will be shared across the IET’s social media channels in due course.

This year’s YWE Awards are being sponsored by BAE Systems, Boeing, BP, Collins Aerospace, Frazer-Nash, GCHQ, Leonardo, MBDA, Ofcom, RAF, Royal Mail, Teledyne e2v, Thales and Wiley.