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Event Held at the House of Commons Focuses on the Future of Engineering |
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 The House of Commons recently played host to MPs, Engineering Students and key members of industry and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to provide a forum for discussion and debate about the future of Engineering. Engineers bring billions to the economy and of the FTSE 100 companies, one third is led by engineers.
Amongst those to receive an invitation to the event was Carol Marsh, a student from the Institute for System Level Integration (iSLI) who won the Elektra Award for ‘Student Engineer of the Year’ in 2007. Carol is studying for an Engineering Doctorate (EngD) in System Level Integration at the iSLI and is currently in her fourth year of her research, which is sponsored by Algotronix. Carol comments, “This event focused on the importance of engineers to the UK economy, and ways to promote engineering to young people”.
At the event, ‘Engineering the Future’ demonstrated their commitment to achieving this long-term goal by presenting a scheme that aims to introduce technology into mainstream science lessons for pupils attending primary and secondary schools.
As a result of young people not opting to study engineering, there is a major difficulty recruiting employees with the necessary key skills. One of the major industry players at the event revealed that it had spent time defining these requirements and is now working with Universities to shape future engineering courses to ensure that students graduate with skills-sets that are relevant to industry.
In many cases niche designing is disappearing and technical staff now need to have a much broader understanding of Engineering. Tony Harker, CEO at iSLI comments, “Our aim at iSLI is to maintain core skills for industry, producing Engineers that are adaptable to industry requirements and have a good grasp of fundamental issues such as analytical techniques and structured problem solving. UK Academic Institutions do not always have the option to move as fast as industry requires to meet a rapidly evolving market. ISLI help to address this through our targeted continuing professional development courses.” For more information visit www.sli-institute.ac.uk |
