Dr Nagham Saeed, Professor Tatiana Kalganova, Dr Aisha Naseer, Kristy Yiu, Jane Wright and Armelle Boisset
Dr Nagham Saeed, Professor Tatiana Kalganova, Dr Aisha Naseer, Kristy Yiu, Jane Wright and Armelle Boisset

Spotlighting women engineers: UWL hosts Connected Smart Cities event

Intro

The University of West London played host to women engineers from business and academia last month as it hosted an IEEE Women in Engineering Early Profession Conference on Challenges and Opportunities - Enabling Technologies for Connect Smart Cities. Organisations represented at the event, organised by UWL’s Associate Professor in Electrical and Electronic Engineering Dr Nagham Saeed, included BT, Huawei, Ofcom, Transport for London (TfL) and Brunel University.

Article body

The smart city concept integrates information and communication technology via the Internet of things (IoT) network to optimise operations, services and connectivity. Smart cities potentially offer an efficient and sustainable future where everything from transportation to utilities can be linked, networked and measured to ensure supply meets demand.

Governments are keen to develop connected cities as they see the attraction of a digitally connected ecosystem where everything is responsive to the number of consumers and volume of services being used. Co-sponsored by the IEEE Smart City Committee, the event considered the challenges, including how to successfully manage an enormous increase in demand for wireless connectivity and the generation of huge volumes of data that will come from smart cities.

The panel speaking at the IEEE Women in Engineering event

There are clear applications for sustainable artificial intelligence (AI) as Brunel University’s AI Research Centre Director Professor Tatiana Kalganova explained, with Director of Research R&D at Huawei Dr Aisha Naseer also giving her view on future sustainable societies. From a network perspective, Kristy Yiu and Jane Wright from TfL outlined work on a future connected London, while Greg McSorley AI & Sustainability Researcher for BT Research Group discussed cooling infrastructure.

Also on the programme were Director of Spectrum Engineering at Ofcom, Armelle Boisset covering regulation issues and Dr David McKee CTO of Slingshot Simulations speaking on the potential of digital twins to help in effective resource modelling and planning.

Dr Saeed said of the event,

Speakers discussed how unnecessary data needs to be managed and filtered so that what we collect is really informing our decisions and feeding into better efficiency. Speakers even compared data to plastic, in terms of its potential to become a pollutant.”

The event is part of a series from IEEE which spotlights the achievements of female engineers and aims to encourage those at an early stage of their career to think big, offering them the chance to take part in panel discussions and networking opportunities.

Dr Saeed added,

We were delighted to welcome engineering students from all over London. They had a valuable opportunity to talk to our speakers, learn from them and ask questions.

We had very positive feedback both on the day and on social media and we look forward to hosting more IEEE Women in Engineering events in the future.”

School of Computing and Engineering

We offer a wide range of industry-focused, innovative courses designed to give you an edge in your career. Our civil engineering courses are ranked 6th in the UK and our construction, surveying and planning courses are 12th in the UK overall (Guardian University Guide, 2024).

DO NOT USE

Related news