Superstars of STEM series

Carolyn Thomas – Mining and environmental engineer

Carolyn has worked in the oil and gas industry ensuring regulatory approvals are in place to operate offshore platforms. She has managed safety and environmental issues of subsea production systems. Her various engineering roles have included environment, facilities surveillance, pipelines, metering, safety cases and risk assessment.

Associate Professor Kate Fox – Biomedical engineer

Kate uses 3D printing to make new medical implants. She is investigating new materials, like diamond, to make implants fit better with bone. She also worked on developing the bionic eye.

Dr Beena Ahmed – Electrical engineer

Beena works at the crossroads of health and technology, applying machine learning algorithms on this data to improve our lives. These algorithms can warn us if we are at risk of dementia or insomnia, give us feedback on whether we are doing our speech therapy or language learning exercises correctly, and help us regulate our stress levels.

Kate Cole – Certified occupational hygienist​

Kate works with businesses to prevent illness and disease in the thousands of workers in industries including construction, tunnelling, demolition, and contaminated land remediation. By creating streamlined processes that help business protect their workers, her work has positively impacted the infrastructure sector through increasing the focus on the “health” in “health and safety”.