IET in the news
We’ve been hitting the headlines across a range of media outlets.
King’s honours for our president
Sir Warren East CBE received an award of Knight Bachelor in the King’s New Year Honours list for his services to the economy and net zero.
Sir Warren is an inspiring engineer and leader with a career that spans 40 years, having made significant contributions to the engineering and technology industry. His award is in recognition of his work as a business leader, formerly holding both the CEO positions at chip manufacturer ARM and Rolls-Royce plc, and championing net zero.
Sir Warren said: “I’m delighted to receive this honour and pleased to fly the flag for industry in the UK. During my time so far as president I have been immersed in the exciting changes and opportunities in the sector, especially looking at green and digital futures. It has been very rewarding to represent and work with people throughout the organisation – colleagues, volunteers, partners and professional members – all coming together to engineer a better world.”
Multiple trade publications covered the announcement, including Manufacturing & Production Engineering Magazine.
Sustainable AI
In December, our president spoke to CNBC, a world leader in business news and realtime financial market coverage, about our research into using AI sustainably.
Our research found that most people are not aware of the environmental impacts of the likes of ChatGPT – how much energy it uses to be developed, its energy usage to run and the water consumption it takes to keep it cool.
He also covered how we can use large language models more responsibly and why we need to think in a more sustainable way about AI technologies and the infrastructure to support it.
Engineering research prize
At the beginning of the year, Dr Changzhi Li was announced as the latest winner of the prestigious AF Harvey Engineering Research Prize – one of our flagship initiatives.
Li, a professor at Texas Tech University, has developed portable radar sensors that can monitor people without needing on-body devices. These ground-breaking sensors can remotely check small movements such as breathing and heartbeat, helping with conditions including sleep apnoea and sudden infant death syndrome. His work is also used in touch free gesture controls in modern electronics.
Li’s innovations have improved wireless human machine interfaces and smart living, providing accurate indoor user information and supporting energy efficiency. He holds an impressive 14 US patents, with three more pending.
Coverage of the announcement included The Engineer as well as three American news outlets.
Professor Li will present his work at a keynote lecture on Wednesday 26 March 2025. The event will be live streamed and followed by a Q+A session.
Women engineers celebrated
In December last year, we crowned Marisa Kurimbokus (below, centre) as our 2024 Young Woman Engineer of the Year. She is a chartered engineer with a career spanning over a decade in product design and systems engineering within the automotive and power electronics industries, including Jaguar Land Rover, Triumph Motorcycles and Lyra Electronics. You can find out more about Marisa on page 92.
We also awarded our IET Mary George Memorial Prize for Apprentices to Alexia Williams (right), a through life technical lead at Rolls-Royce plc, and our Women’s Engineering Society Prize to Natalie Parker (left), a technical specialist and manager for operational technology group at Sellafield.
Our talented winners received national and regional coverage from LBC News, BBC Radio 5 Live and gov.uk to BBC Radio Bristol and BBC Radio Cumbria.