Dr Claire Lucas from the School of Engineering at the University of Warwick is a finalist in the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) Young Woman Engineer of the Year Awards 2019.

These prestigious engineering industry awards celebrate women working in modern engineering – and aim to help change the perception that engineering is predominantly a career for men by banishing outdated engineering stereotypes of hard hats and dirty overalls.

Dr Claire Lucas is an Associate Professor of Systems and Information Engineering at the University of Warwick.

Claire’s journey into engineering started at an open day at the University of Oxford, where she originally went to look at the law course, however reading tonnes of books didn’t seem appealing so she accidentally ended up in the Engineering department where she was drawn in by a talk showcasing the variety of types of engineering she could learn.

She then enrolled in Engineering Science at Oxford University, staying to study a PhD modelling the control of blood pressure in the brain. This led to a role at Jaguar Land Rover as a Mathematical Modelling Specialist, carrying out modelling capability improvement projects and multi-physics modelling of interactions between systems, drivers and the outside world.

In 2015, Claire joined Warwick as Director of Studies for Systems and Information Engineering, where she is responsible for teaching and learning of students in Systems, Biomedical and General Engineering and has launched two innovative degree programmes.

Claire is passionate about developing a curriculum that attracts female students to Engineering through incorporation of holistic systems thinking approaches alongside traditional technological challenges. Since then, around 40% of the cohort have been female students studying a mixture of mechanical, electronics and software engineering together with data science.

However Claire is keen in getting not only young females into engineering, but retaining and attracting women and men who are older and want a career change or to learn new skills. Outside of Warwick she is a member of the ‘Parenting Science Gang’, which is a Wellcome funded radical citizen science project enabling parents to define the questions which matter to them.

From this Claire has met many women who are mothers like her, which gives them aspiration for themselves and for their children to be scientists and engineers. The project particularly touched upon the increasing distrust of scientists by parents, but since, several parents have returned to education to pursue their interests, including mothers.

Dr Claire Lucas from the School of Engineering at the University of Warwick comments:
“I am delighted to have made it to the final round of the Young Woman Engineer of Year awards, to make it to this stage alone and be recognised for my work to improve diversity; both in industry and in education, is an achievement in itself .

“There is still work to be done from a younger age to encourage more people (including women) to go into Engineering, I fell into it accidentally, but if we change the way we describe engineering to show how Engineers are solving the grand challenges in, for example, health, sustainable cities and energy we can promote it in different ways. We need to back this up with Engineering education which gives students the holistic problem solving skills needed to address such interconnected and dynamic challenges.

The winner of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) Young Woman Engineer of the Year Awards 2019 will be announced on the 5^th of December 2019.

ENDS

3 DECEMBER 2019

NOTES TO EDITORS

High-res image available at: https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/october2019/jlr_bloggers_009.jpg

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Alice Scott
Media Relations Manager – Science
University of Warwick
Tel: +44 (0) 2476 574 255 or +44 (0) 7920 531 221
E-mail: alice.j.scott@warwick.ac.uk

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Alice Scott
Media Relations Manager – Science
University of Warwick
Tel: +44 (0) 2476 574 255 or +44 (0) 7920 531 221
E-mail: alice.j.scott@warwick.ac.uk