International Women in Engineering - Dr Petra Szilágyi

Now in its fifth year, the 2020 WE50 celebrates women who have made a significant contribution within sustainability. Winning nominees were required to provide evidence of their successful support of UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals or the Net Zero Carbon Programme, and their responses were judged by a panel of industry experts.

The awards forms part of the International Women in Engineering Day celebrations today (23 June).

Creating new materials using sustainable approaches

Dr Szilágyi obtained PhD degrees in Chemistry from the University Eötvös Loránd, Budapest, Hungary and in Physics from the University Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France before continuing her research in postdoctoral academic positions across Europe and Australia. She was appointed as a Lecturer in Functional Materials at the School of Engineering and Materials Science at Queen Mary in 2018.

Her research aims to address global challenges in a multidisciplinary way. Her focus on energy and sustainability has led Dr Szilágyi to carry out research in topics ranging from green methods to remove dyes from wastewaters to hydrogen storage. Currently, she leads the Advanced Functional Hybrid Materials research group at Queen Mary who are conducting research into making porous functional materials for energy and environmental applications in a sustainable way, for example by using waste.

Dr Szilágyi, said: “Throughout my career most of my research has revolved around energy and sustainability and I’m passionate about using interdisciplinary approaches to target these universal issues. In my opinion these issues can only be tackled in an international and multidisciplinary manner.”

About the WE50 awards

The WE50 is an awards programme created in 2016 by the Women’s Engineering Society to raise awareness of the skills shortage facing the industry, highlighting the huge discrepancy between the number of men vs. women currently in engineering professions. ?

Each year, the WE50 has had a different theme, and has now recognised approximately 250 outstanding UK based female engineers. A full list of the 2020 WE50 winners is available at www.inwed.org.uk/we50/2020winners