Meet our students: Maria Brancato, 3rd year Bioengineering student

Student Intern Phoebe Kimble-Wilde recently interviewed women students in the faculty to find out a bit about the women engineers at the University, why they chose engineering, what interests them and what they want to do in the future. Here she interviews Biomedical Engineering student Maria Brancato, currently in her 3rd year of her MEng.

The UK should hold engineers in higher esteem

Professor Elena Rodriguez-Falcon, Director of Women in Engineering at the University of Sheffield was recently interviewed by John Yates for Discover magazine.  In this article she shares her thoughts about the perception of engineers in the UK.

  “We have two very big problems. The first is a misunderstanding of what engineering is about, and the role it plays in improving the quality of all our lives. And the second is the perception that engineering is overwhelmingly a male preserve."

It's physics that makes your body work...

Maryam Shariatzadeh, PhD student at the Department of Mechanical Engineering
The University of Sheffield

Lecturer in bioengineering, Dr Cecile Perrault  tells us how maths and physics can be used to understand the human body and that you don't have to study medicine to unravel its mysteries.

"The body is an intricate, elegant, very complex machine made of equally complex and elegant parts."

Body building, but not as we know it...

Lindsey Dew is a PhD student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Her work specifically looks at skin tissue engineering. Here she talks about tissue engineering, how she got into this exciting field and why women need to know what engineering actually involves in order to increase female representation within the profession.

Women in Engineering: it's how you sell it that counts

Christina Georgiou, PhD student in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering at the University of Sheffield, explains how communicating a passion for engineering to the next generation of female engineers is a great way of encouraging smart young women into the discipline. She argues that contrary to this, well meaning initiatives aimed at women in engineering can be discouraging.

Education, careers and gender: it's not just women who miss out

In his article, Pro-Vice Chancellor Paul White argues that whilst the Women in Engineering initiative is breaking down the gender barrier for the engineering discipline, it is not the only academic area that is affected by gender assumptions. He highlights subjects which are seen as the preserve of women and suggests that we should be doing more to tackle social gendering, which prevents both men and women entering professions they can thrive in.  

"We clearly need to counter the ‘expectation’ that an engineer or a computer scientist will be male – but we also need to counter the ‘expectation’ that a speech therapist or a social worker will be female."