UTC Heathrow proudly welcomed students from two local secondary schools, Hatch End High School and Sacred Heart Language College, on Tuesday 23 June 2026 to celebrate International Women in Engineering Day 2026.
Around 30 Year 8 girls visited UTC Heathrow for an exciting engineering challenge day, delivered in partnership with our Digital Futures Programme partner, Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The day was supported by inspiring female engineers from AWS: Yvonne Naburuk, Sukanya Sengupta, Nicoleta-Cristina Anghel, and Preeti Shah, who mentored students throughout the challenge and shared insights into their own careers in engineering.
The event focused on an Ocean Health Challenge, where students worked in teams to design solutions to prevent plastic pollution entering the world’s oceans. Through a structured process, including defining the problem, exploring the design cycle, and understanding real-world constraints, students developed innovative ideas to reduce plastic waste, particularly plastic carrier bags.
They considered key design factors such as sustainability, durability, cost, and behavioural change, while also ensuring their ideas could work at scale.
UTC Heathrow female students also played an important role on the day, volunteering as mentors to support the visiting pupils and help bring their ideas to life.
The day also featured an inspiring personal message from Elisabeth Eweka, founder of ENGRL, a global community empowering girls in engineering.
All teams presented their ideas to a panel of AWS judges, fellow students, and parents. Every group demonstrated exceptional creativity, teamwork, communication, and engineering thinking, with one team awarded the overall prize (huge congratulations to them!)
Year 8 student, Noor, said:
“I’ve found today really interesting. I really like how we’re working on a project to save the environment and recycle plastic. I would love to come to something like this again.”
Year 8 student, Emily, added:
“I was excited about coming along today. It is what I hoped it would be. Days like today are important to help girls see that they can go into engineering careers.”
Year 13 UTC Heathrow student Gracie, who volunteered as a mentor, shared:
“You can see the girls really open up once they get started. They work so well together and ask loads of questions. It’s amazing to see them flourish throughout the day.
My advice to young girls considering a career in STEM is to explore opportunities, attend events, and speak to people in the industry; there’s so much more out there than you realise.”
Organised by Assistant Headteacher Michelle Reeves, the event forms part of UTC Heathrow’s ongoing commitment to encouraging more young women into STEM careers. Now in its second year, the initiative continues to grow and make a lasting impact.
We extend a huge thank you to our partners at AWS, the local schools who allowed their students to take part, our own volunteer students, and all staff involved in making the event such a success, despite the heatwave!
