On the 8th March 2021 to celebrate International Women’s day, Global Engineering Futures hosted an international event led by female leaders across the world who are championing sustainable development. The event was supported by leading sustainability-driven organisations including European Young Engineers (EYE), IChemE National Early Careers Committee, Women's Engineering Society Bath, Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers (AFBE-UK), Nuclear Institute Young Generation Network, COP26 and beyond and YES-Europe (Young leaders in Energy and Sustainability), and The GREEN Program.
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This global summit featured short lightning style talks, panel discussion and networking opportunities. This included the challenges faced by leading female engineers, entrepreneurs and policy makers across industries such as biotechnology, health-tech and food-tech, and how they overcame them.
Vicky Regan, a volunteer in Global Engineering Futures Operations Department, is Project lead for this event and developed it to further raise the standards for women in engineering and wider in science, technology, engineering and mathematics stated:
"To truly enable a sustainable future we must all participate and encourage collaboration. We must ensure that demographics are not under-represented and have access to the same opportunities, as we strive for a diverse and inclusive future, a founding principle for Global Engineering Futures.
I am truly excited to host this event and have brought together women who I truly believe are pioneering in their industries. I would encourage all to attend no matter their gender, this is not an event for only women, but for all to ensure that women’s voices are heard and represented equally within society”
The panel speakers include:
Nadja Yang
Nadja Yan is a PhD student in Systems Engineering at the University of Oxford (Rhodes Scholar), where she focuses on sustainable system transformations in the circular bio-economy and food sector. Trained as a chemical engineer at the Technical University of Munich (and Tsinghua University), Nadja serves as the Vice President of Public Policy at the NGO European Young Engineers (EYE), which represents more than 350,000 young engineers. Since 1994, EYE hosts conference throughout Europe and recently got engaged in European policy as the voice of young engineers in Europe. Currently, it is establishing the Network of European Engineers in Politics and is working on the topic Gender Equality in STEM. Moreover, it is engaged in the fields of Energy, Water, Circular Economy, Future of Work, and hosts the online series “horEYEzon” that brings together influential leaders and young engineers. As she believes that engineering plays a crucial role to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Nadja is deeply committed to accelerate the progress towards a climate-neutral and sustainable future.
Dina Holzapfel
Dina Holzapfel is an entrepreneur now based around Zurich, Switzerland. After spending her 20s living and working across Europe and the Middle East as an engineer, marketeer and investment analyst she co-founded her new food venture SMIQQL in 2020. The purpose-driven business launched last September with its first product line of flavored flaky salts that she likes to call their “Sprinkles of Joy”. Dina strongly believes in the power of collaboration for innovation in business and in life by showing that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. She has become a strong advocate of women supporting women after spending a decade in a "man's world"
Naomi Mcgregor
Naomi recently graduated with a 1st Class Master’s in Product Design Engineering from Queen’s University Belfast. Movetru® was inspired from Naomi’s childhood passion, ballet. She grew up as a dancer and began as an assistant ballet teacher at 13 years old. A year later, Naomi was devastated when she injured herself, potentially removing her ability to dance again. It took over three years and eight different specialists to finally diagnose her injury. Unfortunately, her story is not unique. Athletes across the world suffer from life altering injuries that ruin their career. To help overcome this, Naomi created Movetru, home physio for anyone, anytime. Naomi’s success with Movetru has achieved the Catalyst Invent Enterprise Software award and won QUB Dragon’s Den! Naomi is also a STEM Ambassador, with a passion to help remove the imposter syndrome and inspire other women into a career in STEM. On top of all of this, she is a TEDx Speaker, model and influencer with a passion for dance and fitness.
Melissa Lee
Melissa Lee is the Founder and CEO of The GREEN Program (TGP), an award-winning experiential education program for young leaders in sustainable development. For her work with TGP, Melissa was recognized by the National Association of Women Business Owners as the Environmental Advocate of the Year, Philadelphia magazine's Best of Philly® - Expander of Frontiers, and the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in Education. Melissa has served as a U.S. Global Schools Ambassador for the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and a Heinz Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Ipshita Mandal-Johnson
Dr Ipshita Mandal-Johnson serves at the intersection of bio, innovation and impact, addressing the planet, people, and profit through the Global Bio Fund. Ipshita has worked in 7 countries across the last 15 years working with research institutions, start-ups and corporates in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, technology and financial services. She has led strategy and implementation projects covering operations, transformation, fundraising and business development, due diligence and capacity building. She is currently also in the boards of Global Engineering Futures and Chiasma NZ and is a Visiting Lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health. She has received multiple awards including thrice being listed in the 50 Movers and Shakers in Bio Business, McKinsey Founders Award, St Gallen Leader of Tomorrow and an inaugural 40 under 40 for University of Auckland. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge with the then-Pro Vice Chancellor of Enterprise Prof. Nigel Slater.
Chiara Heide
Chiara has a PhD from the Department of Chemical Engineering and is the Founder from BrightCure, a Femcare company developing microbiome solutions for women suffering from urinary tract and intimate infections. She completed her undergraduate studies at the ETH (Switzerland), University of Potsdam (Germany) and UC Berkeley (US) before moving to London for her MSc in Advanced Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. Chiara received a Marit Mohn Scholarship from the Department of Chemical Engineering and did her PhD in Chemical Engineering developing a Cell-free protein synthesis platform to accelerate the screening of antibodies. During her time at Imperial she founded the WOMENinSTEM group at Imperial, a supporting network for female academics, for which the group received the Julia Higgins Medal, and a charity called Humans of Science, showcasing world-leading scientists to society. After completing her PhD, Chiara focused on BrightCure. She received pre-seed investment from Indiebio/SOSV to start her own company and lab and was part of their accelerator in 2020. Her start-up has been supported by the Mayor of London and BrightCure is about to test its product in consumer testing in Q1 this year.
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