Protecting Our Planet with Engineering

Panellist: Sehar Raza - Graduate Engineer, Offshore Transmission, Energy Networks Department, WSP in the UK

Sehar is a graduate engineer in the Offshore Transmission team at WSP, where she works on projects that enable countries to share electricity and to access renewable energy from offshore wind farms. Her team works on all stages of these electricity transmission projects, from initial feasibility right through to final construction and testing.

 Sehar completed a masters in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde, where she studied a wide range of engineering topics, for example, energy generation and transmission, robotics and aerospace systems. During university, she supported engineering outreach activities for primary and secondary school pupils and helped run the Strathclyde Equate and Engineers Without Borders Strathclyde societies. 

 Through volunteering at COP26 and her experiences at university, she was inspired to pursue a career that helps decarbonise the energy system and meet net zero targets to tackle climate change.

Panellist: Ross Sanders - Marine Robotics Technologist, Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML)

Ross is responsible for operation and development of automated marine systems such as data buoys, autonomous underwater vehicles and uncrewed surface vehicles that are used for scientific data collection for the Western Channel Observatory and National Centre for Coastal Autonomy. His work often involves skippering PML’s rib to the L4 data buoy 10 miles south of Plymouth to carry out services and upgrades or providing support on larger vessels for profiling water sampling instruments.

Shortly after graduating from his Electrical and Electronics Engineering degree, Ross worked at Halley Research Station in Antarctica as an engineer supporting scientific equipment measuring everything from ice shelf movement, to greenhouse gas distributions and space weather events. During his career at BAS Ross has experienced temperatures of -50°C, huge waves on Drake Passage and aurora australis during the total darkness of an Antarctic winter.

Panellist: Ben Winchester - Postgraduate Researcher, Dept. of Chemical Engineering and the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London

Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute focuses on Climate Change and the environment, bringing together researchers from the university and beyond to work on issues across sustainability and to communicate these to the wider public. 1 in 3 people around the world are currently without access to clean drinking water whilst over 700 million people still lack access to electricity. Based within Grantham’s Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet Doctoral Training Partnership, 

Ben’s research focuses on how new types of solar panels can be used in rural contexts around the world to supply communities with electricity and both hot and clean water whilst reducing greenhouse gas emissions.