London engineer crowned Young Woman Engineer of the Year

Twenty-five-year-old Ella, who is a Materials Engineer for luxury British supercar maker McLaren Automotive, won this prestigious award at the IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year virtual awards ceremony last night.

Ella is responsible for all the material investigations in the business across the development phases of the company’s supercars; from concept drawings all the way to customers in the field. Balancing her time between experiments and leading technical meetings, Ella created this department from the ground-up and plans to demonstrate the importance of materials in the automotive industry even further.

Ella’s passion for her work really showed throughout the interview process. She is a dynamic young engineer who represents the very best of the engineering profession and has the charisma and personality to inspire others to follow in her footsteps.

On winning, Ella said: “I am absolutely honoured to have been chosen by the IET and the judges to be this year’s winner. Those who know and work with me recognise how passionate I am about my science and being able to talk about that and the amazing supercars I get to work on at McLaren. I want to encourage the next generation of engineers and scientists to push the boundaries of what’s possible.”

The IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year Awards celebrate women working in modern engineering – and aim to help change the perception that engineering is predominantly a career for men by banishing outdated engineering stereotypes of hard hats and dirty overalls.

As well as highlighting female engineering talent, these prestigious engineering industry awards seek to find role models who can help address the UK science and engineering skills crisis by promoting engineering careers to more girls and women. Just 12% of those working in engineering and technical occupations are women (source: Engineering UK).

Other winners include: Denize Ivy Pilarta (21), who won the Mary George Memorial Prize for Apprentices, Shrouk El-Attar (28), who won the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) prize and Pam Wilson who won the Gender Diversity Ambassador Award. Finalists Bethany Probert, Melanie Jimenez and Neera Kukadia were all highly commended.

Jo Foster, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Manager at the IET, said: “I’d like to congratulate our fantastic winners and finalists of this year’s awards. They are a real credit to the engineering profession and will make excellent role models to young girls who might be thinking about a career in engineering and technology.

“It’s vital we champion engineering careers to the next generation – it’s a diverse, creative and exciting career, which offers the opportunity to do something life – or even – world-changing.”

The winners were announced at the IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year virtual awards ceremony on 4 March.

British Astronaut, Tim Peake made a surprise appearance at the end of the ceremony with a video message congratulating the winners and finalists and talking about the importance of the awards.

The YWE Awards are sponsored by BAE Systems, Boeing, BP, Collins Aerospace, Frazer-Nash, GCHQ, Leonardo UK, MBDA, Ofcom, Royal Air Force, Royal Mail, Teledyne e2v, Thales and Wiley.

To find out more information, please visit the IET YWE website.

You can also find out more about the awards and this year’s virtual ceremony by listening to the latest edition of our Engineering a Better World podcast, featuring our winner, Ella Podmore! Available to listen to here.

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