The recent apartment building collapse in Miami, Florida, is a tragic reminder of the huge impacts engineering can have on our lives. Disasters such as this force engineers to reflect on their practice and perhaps fundamentally change their approach. Specifically, we should give much greater weight to ethics when training engineers. Engineers work in a vast range of […] … learn more→
Tag Archives: engineering

Why we need engineers who study ethics as much as maths

Why engineering schools globally need more creative women
Engineers are good at solving problems. We make bridges safer, computers faster and engines more efficient. Today, the profession is working on an especially thorny problem: gender equity in higher education. While other fields of study continue to make significant advances towards gender equity, engineering schools are still struggling to pull their numbers of women students […] … learn more→
Bringing the Liberal Arts to Engineering education
\”It’s required.\” Too many engineering undergraduates utter this simple phrase when asked why they are taking a particular liberal-arts course. The structured curricula that exist for most students in engineering fields create a checklist approach to liberal-arts courses that makes them seem, well, \”required\” — not relevant, salient, or connected to their professional aspirations. As […] … learn more→
Now you can turn your inkjet printer into a chemistry lab and use it to diagnose diabetes
If you stop and think about it for a moment, you will realise what an astonishing feat of precision engineering your colour printer is. It can take the primary colours – cyan, yellow, magenta and black – and mix them together carefully enough to achieve more than a million different hues and shades. Not only […] … learn more→
Let’s stick together: composite materials, aeroplanes and you
What do Novak Djokovic’s tennis racket, Mark Webber’s F1 car and the new Boeing 787 have in common? They all extensively rely on composite materials. A composite material is a strategic combination of multiple materials that results in a material with better properties than its individual components. In other words, by combining multiple materials, composite […] … learn more→
Master of Studies in Sustainability Leadership
The Master of Studies in Sustainability Leadership is an accredited University of Cambridge postgraduate degree. It is delivered on a part-time basis over 2 years; hence participants can continue in full-time employment and do not need to be UK-based. … learn more→
Solar concentrator increases collection with less loss
Converting sunlight into electricity is not economically attractive because of the high cost of solar cells, but a recent, purely optical approach to improving luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) may ease the problem, according to researchers at Argonne National Laboratories and Penn State. Using concentrated sunlight reduces the cost of solar power by requiring fewer solar […] … learn more→
Women to be given support to succeed in science, engineering and technology
An initiative aimed at ensuring South Yorkshire leads the way in supporting women to succeed in science, engineering and technology, was launched recently at the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Research Manufacturing Centre (AMRC). Female engineers, universities and businesses gathered at the event which marked the South Yorkshire launch of the Smith Institute report, which highlights […] … learn more→