WES member Professor Dame Julia Higgins (Emeritus Professor of Polymer Science, Imperial College London) was one of the twelve women who won awards at the prestigious Suffrage Science event held at the Waldorf Hotel on International Women's Day 2013.

The UK Business Secretary Vince Cable has suggested that more women should go into engineering to help solve the skills shortage and also end the idea that engineering is a dirty hands business for men with a lot of pens hanging out of their shirt pockets.

Both experienced and early career women engineers and scientists in the energy sector are sought to speak at the WES conference in October 2013.

New engineering award named after WES member Baroness Platt of Writtle CBE FREng in recognition of her work in support of the engineering profession in general and Incorporated Engineers in particular.