Northumbria University student branches of IEEE WIE and IET jointly organised a “Women in research” event on Thursday, 25th May 2017. The event was organised by the Ph. D. students Mrs. Sivapriya Bhagavathy; IEEE WIE and IEEE Smart grid R&D committee member, Vice-chair IET Northumbria On Campus Group; and Ms. Geetika Aggarwal, chair of IEEE WIE Northumbria University student branch. The event was also supported by Pep Canyelles, chair IET Northumbria On Campus Group, Prof. Krishna Busawon, Northumbria IEEE Branch Counsellor, and Dr. Peter Minns, Chair of IET Northumbria Local Network.
The aim of the event was to bring together all the female researchers around the campus and discuss the common challenges faced by the women researchers in engineering. The event also was designed as a networking event for getting to know other female researchers from different departments. As ‘women’ are naturally good listeners but hardly raise their concerns, the theme of the event was organized to be an informal forum, providing an opportunity to all female researchers to discuss any concerns both in work/personal front. An ice-breaker session for the event was conducted by Dr. Laura Hutchinson, Research Development Manager at Northumbria University. This was followed by discussions on student support & mental health and Academia challenges for women. The discussion on student support and mental health and well-being was led by Mr. Simon Lee and Mr. Dan Huston from Student support and welfare team of Northumbria University and addressed the concerns of researchers on stress and isolation. The group led by Dr. Nirodha Fernando and Dr. Kanchana Ginige discussed on work-life balance and impact of parental care responsibility on the career. The event raised a positive response from the researchers and ended with a note to conduct events on stress management and networking. There were also enquiries about hands on training workshop which are also planned to be conducted in due course.