Sheffield academic nominated in the 2014 WISE Awards!

If you've been following us for a while, it will come as no surprise that the University of Sheffield's Faculty of Engineering has plenty of inspirational female role-models. So we're delighted that one of our own has been nominated in the 2014 WISE Awards! Professor Elena Rodriguez-Falcon, Professor of Enterprise and Engineering Education, Director of Enterprise Education in the University of Sheffield, Faculty Director of Communications and External Relations, and (last but certainly not least!) former Faculty Director for Women in Engineering, has been shortlisted for the 2014 WISE Champion Award.

WISE (or Women into Science, Engineering and Construction) works to inspire girls to choose science, technology, engineering and mathematics pathways and has the target of increasing the number of girls in the STEM workforce to 30% by 2020. The WISE Awards is an annual event which recognises and celebrates the achievements of individuals and organisations which are actively working towards WISE's goals. For her work in encouraging the recruitment, retention and progression of women in STEM subjects, Elena has been nominated as "an individual champion who has used their position to influence others to take positive action to promote female talent in STEM, within their own organisation or beyond." Elena was tasked with setting up the Women in Engineering project at Sheffield and led the initiative for three years.


The award ceremony will take place on Thursday 13 November at the Grange Hotel, Tower Bridge, London, and we'll keep you up to date with the winners. Congratulations, Elena!

One to Watch: Bioengineering student Shruti Vasudev makes her mark on her placement year.

Last year Shruti spoke to us about choosing Sheffield and her experiences so far at the University. A year on and she has made the most of the opportunities that have come her way by actively seeking out further career opportunities and training to add to her ever-growing knowledge and experience of engineering.

Being highly motivated and ambitious one of Shruti’s greatest achievements over this past year took place on her placement year with National Instruments (NI) where she led a team to victory working on a robotic arm draughts opponent.

Tell us about the team you successfully managed to victory:

Each year the Application Engineering (AE) department at NI divides itself into four teams to participate in the four-month long AE projects competition alongside our daily roles. Rather than sit back I nominated myself to become the project manager for one of the groups which saw me lead other interns as well as graduate experienced employees by creating an automated draughts opponent using LabVIEW and the new NI myRIO. We were announced as winners and treated to a lovely day out and gifted an NI branded polo shirt with 'AE project winners 2014' written on the back. 

The experience helped me realise my passion for management and I decided to enroll onto an external self-funded course called PRINCE2. This course is a project management course that many companies follow the principles of and I passed both the foundation and practitioner exams for the course and am now officially a PRINCE2 Practitioner. NI have offered me a graduate job to be taken up upon the completion of my degree after seeing my work and enthusiasm over the year.

How did it feel managing a group of engineers?
Part of my group was made up of interns who started with me and had similar levels of technical knowledge and experience as me so it was easier than I thought. The experienced engineers are great at what they do and with them I took the approach of learning from their individual management styles and experiences. I would ask them for their opinions on how a task should be done and then use the advice that made most sense to me and matched my project plans. When I nominated myself for the role I knew this was my one chance to learn about project management from the experienced team members on this team who had had previous experience at managing teams and were willing to teach me as we went along .

You said you nominated yourself - do you feel pressure to 'step forward' and be seen because of your gender or are you a natural leader?
No, I did not feel pressured at all. I do agree that there are fewer women than men in the engineering industry but that is changing and if you work hard and prove yourself to be worthy of a role then people will respect you irrespective of your gender. I feel I am a natural leader who thrives in management related roles and am constantly trying to improve and further develop my leadership skills by learning from the people around me. 

Every team in the project had a mentor and I took a lot of guidance from our mentor for my project manager role. My mentor helped me develop my management style and advised me on different approaches to managing the different people in the team and I learned a great deal as a result of this.

What’s been the biggest learning curve?
Very early on in this internship I realised that I am here not to prove myself or the skills I already possess but to try and acquire new skills and knowledge from the pool of brilliant, talented and experienced engineers I was working with. This attitude and willingness to learn is what I feel, has benefited me most during this placement year. It has enabled me to have no inhibitions when working with more experienced people in the department and ask them to teach me something they are good at. 

What else are you working on at National Instruments at the moment?
I joined NI as an Applications Engineer, where after my intense training of two months, I began supporting our customers. NI has about 35,000 companies as customers around the world in different sectors of engineering and my role as Applications Engineer is to support these customers using our products. I have to understand their engineering applications which could range from medical to aerospace to radio frequency related. Many at times I need to recreate their problems in our lab using the same products and then try and find a technical solution for them.

I was also given the opportunity to do a three month stint/rotation in the technical sales department as a technical sales engineer. These three months really opened my eyes to the business side of engineering and gave me a different perspective of the industry. My role was primarily understanding the application needs of our customers and supporting them by advising on the right software and hardware products to satisfy their needs. Many at times I had to match their specifications with our products and produce a product list and quote for them. I was mainly in-charge of business in Scotland and North East of England and worked with a Field Engineer based in the area to support our business in the area.

Tell us more about the rowing event you organised as part of the NI team:
This was a fun event. Every year the Newbury Round table organises a massive charity event called Crafty Craft which involves building your own boat, forming a team and taking part in a boat race in the canal in Newbury. This year I was in-charge of organising our team. I began working on oganising teams to work on this event with me and I got some very talented people to fix our boat, paint it and also got some great rowers from the company. The theme for Crafty Craft this year was 'Brazilian Adventure'  and we named our team 'myRIO Car-NI-val' – a pun on the latest NI product myRIO and NI for National Instruments.

Hard Work, Luck and a Great Mentor = the Perfect Recipe for Success

Annette Baxter from the Careers Service explains the difference a good mentor can make. She draws on the examples of elite athletes, and the support teams that guide them towards their success, illustrating the importance of developing a network for achieving your goals. Annette also highlights mentoring schemes engineering students can access.


Ask most successful people what it was that helped them to achieve success in their careers, and many will mention a lot of hard work, some will say a modicum of luck but most will also refer to the help and support they received from a significant person who pointed them in the right direction or gave them the time, encouragement and support to achieve their goals. Some would call this inspirational person a friend, a parent, a teacher or a manager but the common term in industry is often a mentor.

A mentor can share the benefits of their experience and insights in industry, a company or job role; they can give you advice and tips on the recruitment process and help you face job search and progression with greater confidence. They may also help you to assess your current skills, identify gaps in your skill or knowledge base and then help you to identify strategies for meeting these development needs.

"Remember the old phrase ‘it’s not just what you know, but who you know’ that can make the difference."

No one can ever tell you what to do, but people often say that discussing a situation with another objective person can help them to see different perspectives, generate other ideas, find alternative ways of overcoming obstacles or handling situations and therefore make better decisions – benefiting from the experience (and mistakes) of someone else who may have been in that situation before.

Whatever you want to achieve, your role as mentee is to define the goals you want to achieve and a mentor may be able to help you to identify the steps you need to take to achieve them, offering feedback and encouragement along the way.

When you look at any successful athlete or sportsperson like Andy Murray or our very own Jessica Ennis, they are surrounded by a team of people to help them reach peak performance and achieve the accolade in their event. They may have a coach, nutritionist, physiotherapist just to name a few and just as in sports, you may want to build a team around you to improve your career fitness and support you to achieve success in your career.


In the careers sense ‘your team’ may include an academic or project supervisor, a Careers Adviser, family members but it can also include a career mentor (or all of them), each able to offer you advice and support to help you achieve your career goals.

You don’t have to wait until you get into employment to have a mentor, you can start to build your network now by contacting the Careers Service and speaking to a careers adviser. You may want to join the Email Mentoring Scheme offered by the Careers Service, and mentoring schemes are also offered by professional bodies such as the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) who offer mentoring to engineering students.

If you want to widen your professional network wider, professional bodies such as Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) or Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) also have opportunities for students to meet with society members and build their professional network. Social media sites such as LinkedIn can also be invaluable to help you develop your professional networks but who knows, this may be the topic of a future blog on this site!

Remember the old phrase ‘it’s not just what you know, but who you know’ that can make the difference. Start today by building your network and finding your mentor for success.

Memories of 1960's Sheffield from our first female Civil Engineering Graduate - Mrs Alison Moore

Alison Moore BEng Civil Engineer Graduate of 1964

50 years ago Mrs Alison Moore BEng graduated from our University. In her own words, she shares an honest account of what life was like for a fledgling female Civil Engineer at University and in industry.

Between 1950 and 1960 I spent ten years at a very low key girls’ boarding school in the middle of nowhere. At this time relatively few girls went to university so my parents were a little surprised when I announced that I would like to not only go to university but to read civil engineering - I think that I had romantic notions about building grandiose bridges and spectacular dams! In fact, my father was so concerned that his delicate flower of a daughter might struggle in such a male environment that he arranged an interview with Professor Boulton, the then Professor of Civil Engineering, to make sure that I would be properly cared for! Obviously he received the right assurances and I was allowed to apply and in due course was offered a place on the course.

Unfortunately my school had no idea about university courses and I discovered that I would require A Level Chemistry in addition to Maths and Physics which were my only A Level subjects. I was instead offered a place in the Preliminary year which catered for those with the wrong A Levels and international students who needed to improve their language skills. This proved to be fortunate as there was one other girl in the year who was reading Mechanical Engineering. For this first year we joined forces and had a fairly easy time where we covered Engineering Drawing, which had obviously not featured at my Victorian Ladies’ school, maths and an awful lot of chemistry. This left plenty of time for sport and social activities and participation in the University Boat Race. Our home made boat of wood, wire and oil drums survived the course better than many put together by the boys so we were obviously learning some engineering skills!

For my first proper year in Civil Engineering I had another girl to keep me company but she struggled to cope with the male company (not that they were unkind or particularly chauvinistic) and she gave up after one year, which left me as the only girl and eventually the first one to graduate in civil engineering. After some initial wariness I was treated normally by the rest of my classmates. My only problem was that the lecturers always knew if I was absent! As trousers for girls were still considered a bit risque at that time I usually wore skirts and high heels to mix concrete, climb over the machinery or whatever else we were doing in the labs.

I joined the Engineering Society which then covered all the engineering courses and graduated from being Year Rep to Publicity Officer and eventually Secretary. This gave me my first success as a woman in a man’s world! After a particularly drunken Engineering Society Dinner at a nearby hotel there was a slight disagreement about the fate of several bottles of liqueurs which some unfortunate waiter was foolish enough to leave on a table. The manager became extremely agitated and vocal in the process of throwing us out of the hotel and stated very loudly that he would be getting in touch with the Secretary. At this point I stepped forward, all of five feet two inches in my best red velvet, low necked mini-dress and six inch heels and informed him that I was the Secretary. That put an end to all the swearing as in those days no gentleman could swear and shout at a lady and no more was heard of the incident. (Apart from all engineering societies being banned from the hotel!) From then on this became one of my particular roles in engineering!

"I travelled all over the country supervising teams and ran the drawing office as well as practicing my special skills as a trouble shooter whenever a contract went wrong"

My only really negative treatment was my first summer vacation job when I spent two months at a local engineering consultants. Instead of giving me a proper engineering job I was side-lined to the architects’ department and given very trivial tasks which I had to persist with in order to fulfil my holiday commitment. Fortunately the following year I had exactly the opposite experience when I was given a job at the local Water Board, where everyone was very supportive and I was given work in all the different departments.

In 1964 I applied for my first full time job at a firm who were recruiting Designer/Detailers for a new Sheffield office. At my interview it was made clear that I could not expect to have any site experience as there were so many young men in the company who would take priority! I was in fact the first female graduate that they employed and I was very pleased to see in later years that they were one of the first firms of consulting engineers to allow women on site. I moved on to a small specialist firm of pipeline engineers who were involved in surveying and contracting work for the Gas and Water Boards. Our biggest area of work was locating and checking gas pipelines in preparation for conversion to natural gas and this was my job. We worked closely with a German company who manufactured mains location and gas leak detection equipment, which demanded specialist teams working in the field and a drawing office to record the results. I travelled all over the country supervising the teams and ran the drawing office as well as practicing my special skills as a trouble shooter whenever a contract went wrong.

In general I think that most men were very supportive of a woman coming into their world although I was never really treated as an equal. I was especially a target at conferences where I was usually a minority of one and quite a number of the men thought that I would be 'available' after a few drinks.

My engineering career was all too short as I 'retired' when I married, which was still very much the norm in the 1960s and by the time that my children left home I was too busy and too long out of touch to pick up my career.

The Importance of Internship by Tanya Coupland

engineering in my spare time with an old mini 

In the summer between my third and fourth year studying Mechanical Engineering I was offered an internship at a Tribosonics in Sheffield. The company was set up by a former PhD student from the University of Sheffield and employs a handful of graduates from the university.

Tribosonics provide a variety of ultrasonic monitoring systems for a wide range of things. Their motto is that they have solutions looking for problems. It was because of this that I think I gained so much more from the six weeks I spent there than I ever could have imagined.

Far from the stereotypical intern (there to do everything other people didn’t want to do and make the tea) I was given my own project so was hands on at every stage. From conducting research and literature reviews to designing and carrying out experiments, it was my responsibility to decide the next step in getting a new product off the ground. This was a very steep learning curve to what I had been used to during my time at university when you are given specific tasks to do and a specific set of requirements.

Although it was a big responsibility and hard work, it was much more rewarding when I collected and presented results knowing that this was something I had set up and worked on; and knowing that it could be a solution to a real life problem. This was a different experience to uni lab classes when you collect data simply to discover something you always knew was going to happen. 

I have always believed that the best way to learn is by doing things, not by reading about them or being told about them. I would encourage anyone to take the opportunity to do an internship or work experience if they get are offered it. 

Working as an intern broadens your experience of engineering. As there were never more than three placement students in the office at once I learned far more than I would have done in a class of over 100 people with one lecturer. It gave me the opportunity to pick the brains of experts in the field of ultrasonic measurement every day. It also meant I had the chance to learn skills such as machining that there simply isn’t time to fit into the packed schedule of an engineering undergraduate.

I have always believed that the best way to learn is by doing things, not by reading about them or being told about them. I would encourage anyone to take the opportunity to do an internship or work experience if they get are offered it. Not only do you learn so much I had such good fun at Tribosonics! I met some great people and decided to stay involved with the company by working with them on my final year project. I think it showed how much all the interns enjoyed it when one morning the three of us were all stood outside the office waiting for someone to let us in! I feel privileged to have been able to study a subject that allowed me to work somewhere which made me happy to get up and go to work every day.

I am a fourth year student in the department of mechanical engineering. My degree course is Motorsport Engineering Management and my interest in engineering is in the automotive industry, particularly engine technology.

Imagination Can Take You Anywhere - National Women in Engineering Day Monday 23rd June - Celebrate With UoS

Date: Monday 23rd June 2014
Time: 4pm – 8pm
Venue: Mappin Hall, Sir Frederick Mappin Building, Mappin Street, Sheffield, S1 3JD

Imagination, curiosity and creativity has given us electricity, steam engines, cars, planes, medicine and mobile phones. Somebody had to dream of these things before they were made real. An imaginative child will become an imaginative adult, likely to create, to invent. Likely to change the world.

To celebrate National Women in Engineering Day we’re opening our doors and inviting you to join us for loads of activities that explore science, engineering and most of all imagination.

Amongst many other activities there will be sumo-fighting robots; a giant tetrahedron; exploding coca-cola and you can also watch our excellent academics duke it out to prove which engineering discipline is the best!

All activities and events are free!

Engineering Imagination - where will it take you?