Episode #28

Welcome to Podcast #27

The future of engineering with Dr Jillian Kenny

About Dr Jillian Kenny

• After growing up in regional Queensland, Jillian now lives in Melbourne with her husband of almost exactly 1 year – Happy anniversary to Jillian!! 
• Jillian has a Bachelor in civil engineering, with her PhD being in innovation in the water sector 
• Living in a country town she wasn’t exposed to engineering as a career.  A very chance encounter lead Jillian to her career.  During her gap years (she took two!), she worked for 3 months in an admin role at Theiss (a large engineering company) and discovered engineering.  During this very short time, she discovered what she wanted to do with her life. 
• Since becoming an engineer Jillian co-founded 2 companies in the school education space. And also works at a university. 
• Power of Engineering, a NFP that works to inspire the next generation of engineers to solve the world’s biggest challenges 
• Machinam a company that creates real world maths resources that answer the question every student asks, “why do I need to learn this?”
• University of Melbourne – working within the Creating Innovative Engineering… thinking about how we need to be training engineers moving forward. 
• Jillian was one of government’s inaugural “Superstar of STEM” by Science and Technology Australia and was listed as one of Australia’s top 100 influential women in 2014

Hot Topic discussion

• “What does the future of engineering look like…. and where are we placed, where do we need to be and how do we get there?” 
• Engineers are “going to have to evolve, and we are going to have to evolve quickly because things seem to be moving quickly with new technologies coming through” (Dom) 
• Change is being driven by two things: technology (making traditional engineering easier) and societal (i.e. people’s expectations of the way people can work) 
• The change in engineering has three key clusters (green), each with individual interactions to each other (blue)

The framework that will influence the future of engineering

People: the sort of soft-skills engineers need to have, diversity, well-being.

Technology includes AI, VR, Augmented reality, drones, smart cities – how does technology change our business model, because traditionally it’s based around time. 

The ways we work: such as physical space of the office.  But a lot of engineering companies are unsure if such setups would work for engineers.

During this podcast, you will also reflect on:

• Working as a Millennial – being able to juggle multiple jobs 
• The future of engineering “There’ll be a massive place for virtual reality and augmented reality…. when going out on site, even in terms of maintenance” 
• Engineering will be more interactive amongst engineers and increased soft skills 
• “Engineering has always been a people profession in a way, it’s just becoming a people profession in a different way” 
• Don’t really know what the future of engineering is going to be like because we are IN the change.

Want More?

Learn more about Dr Jillian Kenny 

An engineering item for discussion. Jillian is “really drawn to elegant solutions that make a big difference”. LifeStraw is essentially a straw that makes drinking water safe to drink.  A rather simple design which the company has been able to generate further humanitarian works. 

An engineer to admire. Since watching the movie Hidden Figures Jillian greatly admires the work Mary Jackson did – after forging a path, she passed her knowledge onto other women.