Who:
Danielle George
Role: Professor of radio frequency engineering, University of Manchester
Areas of expertise: Low-noise receivers, monolithic microwave integrated circuit design, cryogenic and radiometer applications, engine communications using RF/microwave techniques
Professor Danielle George studied astrophysics as an undergraduate at university before starting out as a senior frequency engineer at Jodrell Bank Observatory. Since joining the University of Manchester in 2006, she has enjoyed a meteoric rise in academia, being awarded a professorship in 2014 at the age of 38 and winning widespread recognition as an expert in radio frequency engineering.
But perhaps the pinnacle of her career, to date, also took place in 2014 when she was chosen to present the Royal Institution’s Christmas Lectures, remarkably becoming only the sixth woman to do so in almost 200 years.
That opportunity focused her mind on the role that academics can play when it comes to promoting opportunities in Stem – if they apply themselves in the area of public engagement.
“When I was asked to pitch to present the Christmas Lectures, I initially thought it was a joke. I deleted the email and only responded when prompted again,” she says. “Once I realised it was a serious offer, I really wanted to do it. It was amazing. I felt so lucky to have been given the opportunity, and I wanted to use it as a springboard to do more to help with the perception of engineering on television.”
George believes that academics have a duty to explain to the public what they do in their professional lives. “I do think there is a duty to engage, even more so now that I’ve been exposed to it in such a marvellous way. I was lucky that I could reach out to a few million people: not everyone gets that opportunity. It doesn’t matter how it’s done.
“Academics must engage with the public so they understand what we’re doing – even if it’s just from a research point of view.”
George regularly puts her words into action. She participates in open-mic events in Manchester, which involve standing up in pubs and bars and giving an impromptu talk on the value of engineering in society. It takes guts, but she thinks such direct action is the only way of changing perceptions about the profession. “It’s an interesting concept. People are sitting there chatting and having a drink on a Monday evening, and I get up and talk about what I’m doing in my job. Yes, it falls outside my comfort zone, but it’s tremendously rewarding when I see members of the public having a light-bulb moment and really getting what I’m talking about. I think it’s good to be taken out of your comfort zone – that’s often when the magic happens. It’s when you innovate, it’s when you’re at your best.”
George plans to keep public engagement at the heart of her career. She’s passionate about improving the standing of engineers within society, and isn’t prepared to take a back seat in making that happen. “You still see it on TV all the time,” she says. “All the credit goes to scientists, and people forget about engineers. But I always say that everyone is born a scientist – I don’t know any child that doesn’t ask ‘why?’ But not everybody is born an engineer. It takes the ‘how’ to become an engineer. The ‘why’ plus the ‘how’ is engineering to me. It’s the next level up.”
Focus on schools
George on… perceptions of engineers among young people: “It’s dispiriting, because I don’t think it’s changed in decades. I went to a local primary school recently to chat to them about what engineers do. The teachers had primed the kids that there was a professor coming in, and asked them to draw what they thought I would look like. All of the kids drew a man, and it was the typical old man with glasses and crazy hair – that stereotype. Even when I got there and the head of school said: ‘Now we have Professor Danielle George with us’ and I was standing pretty close by, I could see that the children were still looking around.”
George on… variations in academic standards: “The problem we have is the gap that exists between A-levels and BTEC qualifications – and degrees. A-levels are very exam-focused. Students are taught to pass exams but aren’t always taught the subject knowledge well enough, and their practical experience is non-existent. BTEC students come in, and generally their maths is a little weaker but their practical work is far better. A blend of the two, giving students a more rounded package of skills, would be helpful.”
Who: Eleanor Stride
Role: Associate professor, fellow at St Catherine’s College and
the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Oxford
Areas of expertise: Ultrasound, medical imaging and encapsulation, specifically the use of bubbles for more targeted drug delivery in the human body
Professor Eleanor Stride found her calling at a relatively late stage in her education. Although she excelled in chemistry, physics and maths at A-level, she also took Latin and art and was toying with several career paths. It wasn’t until a tutor took her to an industrial design show that she fully appreciated the role engineers played in the application of science.
A first-class degree in mechanical engineering from University College London and a postgrad followed, triggering a research interest in non-destructive testing using ultrasound. That led to a serendipitous meeting with a radiologist and a conversation about the potential use of microbubble agents in medical ultrasound imaging. Now Stride is one of the world’s most highly regarded experts in using bubbles for smarter drug delivery.
Her own circuitous route gives Stride much sympathy for other youngsters unsure about what academic path to take. And she says that confusion starts at an early age. “I think we do something dreadful at primary school,” she says. “At the age of six, most children love playing with Lego, they love building stuff. And yet, somehow, when we teach them maths, we give them the impression that it’s a boring and difficult subject – rather than it being a language that underpins engineering and an enabler to go on to build even better things.
“Why does that disconnect exist? I think it’s because people who tend to be good at maths seem incapable of understanding why anyone else doesn’t ‘get it’. The people who, in the past, have become maths teachers want to teach it in a dry way, because that’s the way they see it. And they assume everyone else sees it that way, too. So they end up teaching it as a pure, theoretical subject rather than something that can be applied.”
Stride says that unless we get more students to enjoy maths at a young age, and to see the relevance that it has in the modern world, then there will always be a shortage of engineers.
“We need to integrate academic subjects more,” she says. “We need to emphasise the overlaps between maths and the way you go about creating a sculpture in art, for example. The problem is that there’s a generation of teachers who see strict disciplinary boundaries. There will be teachers on the art side who say: ‘I don’t want to touch maths’. We need to get at the teachers so that they stop making their pupils fearful.”
Stride would also like to see changes in the way that engineering is taught at university. She supports the more widespread application of experiential learning – learning through experience or, more specifically, “learning through reflection on doing”. She believes that this type of learning would deliver more rounded graduates with a better grasp of applying text-book knowledge.
“This sort of undergraduate teaching is strong in the US,” she says. “They have a lot of equipment, and they give the undergrads a task and let them ‘play’. Experiential learning forces you to understand what you’re doing. It’s a much more engaging way of teaching. Yes, you need all the mathematical tools at your fingertips – I’m not suggesting we change rigour – but the way we do it could be made more effective.”
Basis for optism
Stride on… the popularity of engineering at university:
“I’ve taught at UCL and Oxford University, and most of the students have been pretty clued up about where engineering might take them. They are pragmatic – they know that an engineering degree is highly regarded and can open doors in finance. If you have a degree that proves you have stamina, that’s going to be valuable in a lot of industries. It’s not always about a passion for engineering. Over the past four or five years, there’s been a shift in the popularity in engineering as we’ve seen numbers go up. I think there’s been a strong push by government and institutions and largely it’s worked – you can trivialise it as ‘the Brian Cox effect’, but there’s been a lot more interest in the media.”
Stride on… public engagement activities:
“We have a duty as academics to explain what we do to as many people as possible, because ultimately we are largely funded by the taxpayer. The way that you enthuse people and show them that engineering is important is by going to talk to as wide a range of people as possible. At UCL, I decided to do some bite-size videos that were put up on YouTube. I did one on bubbles, and it went crazy. And as a result of that, I got to do lots of other things. These days, I’m drowning in requests from schools and local societies – the challenge is finding the time to accommodate them all.”
Who: Radu Sporea
Role: Royal Academy of Engineering academic research fellow at the Advanced Technology Institute, University of Surrey
Areas of expertise: Power-efficient electronics in organic and inorganic semiconductor technologies, based on the concept of a source-gated transistor
Dr Radu Sporea is confused. As an undergraduate in computer system engineering who studied in his birthplace of Romania, Sporea came to the UK to study for a PhD. Once here, he was shocked by the low perception of engineering in a country that’s so respected for its achievements overseas.
“In eastern Europe, engineering is seen as an elite job,” he says. “With an engineering degree you can go on and tackle any sort of career. That’s empowering for people, and a lot of my colleagues are scattered around the world. I was surprised when I came to the UK. For a country with such a tremendous heritage in engineering, I wasn’t sure where the respect and enthusiasm for this sort of career had gone. Something must have happened. Clearly, it’s understood by anyone in the know that engineering is essential – the jobs are rewarding and the variety of the work is fantastic. But this doesn’t seem to be very well understood by non-engineers.”
Sporea, to his credit, has tried to make a difference. Now a Royal Academy of Engineering academic research fellow at the University of Surrey, he is developing a range of electronic components and applications that are cost-effective to make, flexible and even printable. When perfected, this technology will greatly increase the convenience, ease of manufacturing, ruggedness and practicality of medical applications, sensors and consumer electronics.
It’s an exciting area of activity, and Sporea is doing all he can to enthuse as many youngsters as possible about the technology he’s creating. In his own time over the summer, he oversees several research placements for bright sixth-form students, who get to work on genuine engineering problems.
“Last year I had six students working on cutting-edge, state-of-the-art applied physics,” he says. “They get to carry out undergraduate and PhD-level research, within a month. It’s a steep learning curve, but we’re able to produce genuine research results. In 2014, I had a student who has, within a year, been able to publish his work on the self-heating effects of source-gated transistors in Nature – the international weekly journal of science.”
These 17- to 18-year-old students are at the top of their game. And Sporea’s summer placement gives them the chance to embrace high-end research in engineering – as well as gaining practical skills in, and knowledge of, sophisticated digital software and processing capabilities.
“It’s exciting for them – they interact with high-end engineers and physicists, and there’s all this amazing kit lying around. They’ve no problem getting on and doing it. Learning from doing, rather than from being taught, is powerful,” he says.
Sporea has to fit the summer placements around his own research and teaching activities at the University of Surrey. But despite the time pressure, he’s determined to give as much back to young students as he can. “There’s a lot of pressure on academics. But as I told my line manager, this is my hobby – and I’m going to do it anyway. I hope this sort of model takes off elsewhere.”
Who: Dr Jack A Cohen
Role: Royal Academy of Engineering enterprise fellowship
in partnership with University of Warwick
Areas of expertise: Virtual reality software and hardware
The University of Warwick’s Dr Jack Cohen is typical of a new breed of academic with commercial nous. Cohen has developed a wireless device that detects and uses detailed 3D movements in the fingertips to interact with a computer. His technique has huge potential in the multibillion pound gaming industry, and in niche markets such as remotely operated machinery.
The device works by combining information from cameras and wireless sensors, and in the future it could even replace traditional computer keyboards and mice to enable people to create and manipulate digital information with their hands, freely and naturally. The technology could also enable people to perform new tasks that would previously have been too complex or intricate, such as sorting and processing large and disparate amounts of data.
Such is the excitement behind Cohen’s device that he has been awarded £85,000 of funding, through the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Enterprise Hub, to spend the next 12 months developing a spin-out business based on his innovation. That award heralds a step from academia into the commercial world.
“It’s exciting,” he says. “I am going to use the money to pay my salary for one year and to start the company. I have been prototyping, awarding outside contracts, and pitching to venture capitalists. There’s not enough overlap between academia and enterprise, so I’m keen to keep a foot in both camps.”
Cohen knows that he’s about to encounter a steep learning curve as he tries to make a success of his business, but that doesn’t frighten him. Universities are set up, primarily, for learning rather than business exploitation – and he found that environment limiting. He welcomes the chance to test himself in more commercial environments.
“I worked in academia for 10 years,” he says. “It was too restrictive for me, creatively, and also too slow in terms of the speed at which things worked.
“I’ve always wanted to be an inventor, and you have to have the freedom to prototype and to use any equipment that you want. In the academic environment, it was so slow. I was continually fighting against the bureaucracy – that’s why I’m in enterprise now.”
That said, Cohen knows he owes a great deal to the academic institutions that set him on his way. As payback, he’s now heavily involved in public engagement, making online tuition videos and giving presentations to schoolchildren to promote Stem careers.
“My PhD and research fellowship have been government-funded. I’m appreciative of the opportunity. I want to give back. When I grew up in Essex, there wasn’t much of a culture of people being interested in engineering and technology. I want to try and encourage that in my local area.”