The Faculty champions the excellent work produced by our female staff across engineering, whether they are a senior member of staff or just starting out in their career, and aims to present engineering as an attractive career choice to young women.

All of our departments have, or are working towards, Athena Swan accreditation. These awards recognise the Faculty's work to ensure it provides a good place for women to work and study.

Our staff are core to the Faculty's success, and it is through our vibrant community and diverse workplace that we are able to produce the world class teaching and research for which the Faculty is known.

Women in Engineering Network

The Women in Engineering Network (WiN) is led by Professor Julie McCann, Faculty Ambassador for Women, and aims to promote a safe and supportive space within the Faculty of Engineering for female staff and PhD students to come together and expand their networks.

WiN hosts termly events to hear from inspiring female engineers from inside and outside of Imperial College, targeted development opportunities and networking. In addition, WiN hosts an annual celebration for International Women in Engineering Day on or around 23 June each year.

To hear about our events as soon as they are announced, sign up to the WiN mailing list.

Introduction to the Faculty Ambassador for Women

As well as Faculty Ambassador for Women, Professor Julie McCann is Head of the Adaptive Emergent Systems Engineering (AESE) group within the Department of Computing and Vice-Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Engineering.

Her work centres on highly decentralised algorithms, protocols and cross-layered solutions to wireless sensor networks – with a particular focus on low-powered sensing devices. Space, Agricultural and Infrastructure Engineering challenges lead to her work on the Internet of Things as well as Cyber-physical systems, where her interests lie in harnessing the various interactions between the cyber and physical to improve performance, resilience and security.

Julie says:

'In my comprehensive school days, my old Maths teacher thought he would introduce programming just to see how we fared. From there I was hooked, and this allowed me to be first in my family to go to university. I did my Degree and PhD at the local university (University of Ulster) to minimise costs but after eight years of study I was ready to see the bigger world. I came to London via Dublin, intending to stop off for a few years and then move to the USA, but fell in love with the multicultural mix and excitement of London and decided to stay. I initially joined City University as a postdoc and then came to Imperial College in October 2002, becoming Reader in 2007 and Professor of Computer Systems in 2012, all while being a mother to my son who was born in 2005.

It's an honour to be the Faculty Ambassador for Women. I see this role covering more than women, so please don't be shy to reach out, email, whatever - I want to know about your experiences, and I want to help where I can.'