Challenging Engineers: a call to tomorrow's problem solvers

An evening of discussion with some of the world’s greatest living engineers. 

QEPrize winner Dr Robert Langer returns to the UK this October, joining a panel of leading engineers to discuss the future of engineering. 

Last year’s Create the Future report, an international survey looking at attitudes towards engineering in 10 global economies, highlighted the public’s desire to see engineering leading the way in solving the world’s problems. With problems as diverse as climate change, healthcare for an aging global population and securing the world’s energy supply to contend with, what steps must engineers take to meet the public’s high expectations?

During the event our panel will look at some of the new and novel approaches that engineers are already undertaking, and give their thoughts on the changing role of engineering in tomorrow’s world. 

Dr Robert Langer won the 2015 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering for his ground-breaking work at the interface of chemical engineering and medicine.  His pioneering experiments in large-molecule drug delivery systems have benefited more than 2 billion people worldwide and helped treat diseases such as cancer, diabetes and mental illnesses.

Accompanying Dr Langer on the panel is Ilya Marotta, Executive Vice President of Engineering on the Panama Canal expansion project.  Ilya has 20 years of experience working on the canal and is the only woman to take the top post in the canal’s 100-year history.  Arguable the most ambitious feat of modern engineering, Ilya has headed up not only the canal’s physical expansion but investments, construction and purchasing on the canal.  

Journalist, broadcaster and author, Alok Jha, will be moderating the discussion before opening the floor to questions. After studying for an undergraduate degree in physics, Alok turned towards a career in science journalism, working as a reporter at a science policy magazine before joining the Guardian newspaper. He is now the science correspondent for ITV News, and author of The Water Book: the Extraordinary Story of Our Most Ordinary Substance.