October 12, 2016, by Claire Henson

Ada Lovelace Day Celebrations

Dr Leah Ridgway from Engineering talks about how the faculty are celebrating Ada Lovelace Day 2016

“The Faculty of Engineering is celebrating the achievements of women in engineering and science with our Ada Lovelace Day event on Wednesday 12^th October. The main event runs from 1 – 3pm in the Atrium of the Engineering and Science Learning Centre where we have contributors from our own research schools showing us how they’re changing the world. The event is aimed at a non-expert audience, so all are welcome. We’ll ask you to reflect on which women most inspire you and why increasing diversity is important.

We also have teams of year 9 pupils from schools across the midlands coming to learn more about Ada and competing in an engineering challenge. Engineering is the application of maths and physics in a creative way – that’s a message we want to spread.

Marking Ada Lovelace day is important to us. Nationally, numbers of women studying engineering subjects has remained stubbornly low over the past decade at around 19% of the undergraduate population. While the Faculty of Engineering at The University of Nottingham attracts more female students than the national average, we strive to continually improve. Part of this is reaching out to our community and explaining what we do and why it’s important, and part of this is showing our existing undergraduates what they could achieve in a research career.

Engineering in three words to me is “Change the world” and Ada as the mother of modern computing really did change the world.”

Anyone with an interest in participating in next year’s event (entering a school team or presenting their research) should contact Dr Leah Ridgway: leah.ridgway@nottingham.ac.uk

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