The page lists female fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng), elected by the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK.
The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng), founded in 1976, is the youngest of the five national academies in the UK. It represents the nation's best practising engineers, innovators, and entrepreneurs, who are very often in leading roles in industry, business, and academia. [1] Fellowship of the RAEng is a national honour, bringing prestige to both the individual and any organisation the Fellow is associated with. In recent years between 50 and 60 new fellows have been chosen each year by peer review from nominations made by the current fellowship;. [2] Those proposed for fellowship must come "from among eminent engineers regarded by virtue of their personal achievements in the field of engineering as being of exceptional merit and distinction". [3]
All 130 of the founding fellows in 1976 were men. Four women were elected in the first 20 years, the first in 1982. In all, 13 female fellows pre-date 2000, with a further 20 elected before 2010 and 65 in the decade before 2020. In 2010 the Council determined a policy that over time 10–20% of newly elected fellows should be women. [4]
The Academy published a diversity and inclusion action plan for the five years from 2020 [5] but does not regularly publish the proportion of female engineers in the current fellowship, estimated in 2019 to be less than 7%. [6] In July 2020 it launched a campaign aimed at delivering a 'Fellowship that is Fit for the Future' by the time it celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2026 and set an aspiration that at least half of all candidates elected each year will be from under-represented target groups. [7] In 2023 six of the 60 new fellows [8] and in 2024 twenty one of the 60 were female. [9]
As of 2024, 158 women have been elected to Fellowship, plus thirteen international fellows, thirteen honorary fellows, and one royal fellow.
International Fellows are engineers of international distinction who are not of British nationality and who are not resident and working in Britain. The number of International Fellows cannot exceed one-tenth of the number of Fellows, and no more than ten may be elected in any year. [3]
| Year of election | Image | Fellow | Field(s) of work; Academia/Industry | Notes | Refs. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 |  | Jane Grimson | Computer science; academia | [87] | |
| 2011 |  | Anne Lauvergeon | Chemical engineering; industry | [88] | |
| 2012 |  | Shirley Ann Jackson | Particle physics; academia | [58] | |
| Allyson Lawless | Civil engineering; industry | [58] | |||
| 2013 |  | Ursula Burns | Mechanical engineering; industry | [64] | |
| 2018 |  | Frances Arnold | Chemical engineering; academia | Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018 | [76] |
| 2022 |  | Rebecca Enonchong | Entrepreneur; industry | [83] | |
 | Andrea Goldsmith | Electrical engineering; academia and industry | [83] | ||
 | Grazia Vittadini | Aeronautical engineering; industry | [83] | ||
| 2023 | Nadine Aubry | Fluid mechanics; academia | [8] [85] | ||
| Marlene Kanga | Chemical engineering; industry | [8] [85] | |||
| Viola Vogel | Bioengineering; academia | [8] [85] |
2024
Persons not being Fellows who have made or are making a distinguished contribution to the practice of engineering are eligible for election as Honorary Fellows. Their number cannot exceed fifty and no more than five may be elected in any year. [3]
| Year of election | Image | Honorary Fellow | Refs. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 |  | Anne Glover | [40] |
 | Vanessa Lawrence | [40] | |
| 2021 |  | Roma Agrawal | [81] |
| Yewande Akinola | [81] | ||
 | Anne-Marie Imafidon | [81] | |
| Steph McGovern | [81] | ||
| 2022 | Nike Folayan | [83] | |
 | Hannah Fry | [83] | |
 | Damilola Ogunbiyi | [83] | |
| 2023 | Kate Bingham | [8] [85] | |
 | Martha Lane Fox | [8] [85] | |
 | Angela McLean | [8] [85] | |
2024
Royal Fellows are such members of the Royal Family as on the invitation of the Board shall agree to become Royal Fellows. [3]
| Year of invitation | Image | Royal Fellow | Refs. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 |  | Anne, Princess Royal | [89] |
The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering.
Alan Richard Bundy is a professor at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, known for his contributions to automated reasoning, especially to proof planning, the use of meta-level reasoning to guide proof search.
Amanda Elizabeth Chessell is a computer scientist and a Distinguished Engineer at IBM. She has been awarded the title of IBM Master Inventor. She is also a Member of the IBM Academy of Technology.
Ursula Hilda Mary Martin is a British computer scientist, with research interests in theoretical computer science and formal methods. She is also known for her activities aimed at encouraging women in the fields of computing and mathematics. Since 2019, she has served as a professor at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh.
Dame Ann Patricia Dowling is a British mechanical engineer who researches combustion, acoustics and vibration, focusing on efficient, low-emission combustion and reduced road vehicle and aircraft noise. Dowling is a Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and from 2009 to 2014 she was Head of the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, where she was the first female professor in 1993. She was President of the Royal Academy of Engineering from 2014 to 2019, the Academy's first female president.
Dame Lynn Faith Gladden is the Shell Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Cambridge. She served as Pro-vice-chancellor for research from 2010 to 2016.
Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in the UK and from around the world to promote excellence in engineering and to enhance and support engineering research, policy formation, education and entrepreneurship and other activities that advance and enrich engineering in all its forms.
Sir Anthony Charles Wiener Finkelstein is a British engineer and computer scientist. He is the President of City St George's, University of London. He was Chief Scientific Adviser for National Security to HM Government until 2021.
Peter John Bell Clarricoats was a British engineer who was Professor of Electronic Engineering at Queen Mary, University of London.
Howard Allaker Chase FREng is a British academic and chemical engineer. He is Head of the School of Technology and Professor of Biochemical Engineering at the University of Cambridge. From 1998 to 2006 he was Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Chase has been a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering since 2005. He is also a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered Chemist, and a Chartered Scientist. In 2010 he was awarded the Donald Medal, an award of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, in recognition of his industrially related research in the field of bioseparations technology. Chase was an undergraduate, and a research student (biochemistry) at Magdalene College, Cambridge, between 1972 and 1978. He held a research fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge, from 1978 to 1982. In 1984 he was elected to a fellowship at Magdalene College, Cambridge where he became director of studies in chemical engineering. He was tutor for graduate students 1987–1994, tutor 1994-1996 and senior tutor 1993–1996.
Julia Alison Noble is a British engineer. She has been Technikos Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford and a fellow of St Hilda's College since 2011, and Associate Head of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division at the university. As of 2017, she is the chief technology officer of Intelligent Ultrasound Limited, an Oxford spin-off in medical imaging that she cofounded. She was director of the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME) from 2012 to 2016. In 2023 she became the Foreign Secretary of The Royal Society.
Paul Michael Newman is a British engineer and academic, the BP Professor of Information Engineering at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Keble College, Oxford. He is head of the Oxford Mobile Robotics Group (MRG) and CTO at Oxa.
Dame Angela Rosemary Emily Strank is a British engineer who is head of downstream technology and chief scientist of BP, responsible for technology across all the refining, petrochemicals, lubricants and fuels businesses.
Agnes Aranka Kaposi is a British-Hungarian engineer and author. In 1992 she became the third female to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. She was an emeritus professor in electrical engineering at London South Bank University. In 2020 she published her autobiography Yellow Star-Red Star. The book is a witness’s account of life in Hungary before and during the Second World War and under Communist rule, as well as of the author’s subsequent escape to Britain. She was appointed MBE in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to Holocaust Education and Awareness.
Lucy Elizabeth Rogers is a British author, inventor, and engineer. She is a visiting professor of engineering, creativity and communication at Brunel University London and has served as a judge on the BBC Two show Robot Wars from 2016 to 2018.
Elspeth Finch is the founder and CEO of IAND. She won the 2013 Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal and was appointed MBE in 2018.
Judith Louise MacManus-Driscoll is a Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge. Driscoll is known for her interdisciplinary work on thin film engineering. She has a particular focus on functional oxide systems, demonstrating new ways to engineer thin films to meet the required applications performance. She has worked extensively in the fields of high temperature superconductors, ferroics and multiferroics, ionics, and semiconductors. She holds several licensed patents.
Michael (Mike) Lowe FREng is a British mechanical engineer. Since 2019, he has been the Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London. He is a Professor in Non-Destructive Testing (NDT), with particular interests in structure-guided ultrasound, wave theory, wave scattering, materials characterisation, and analytical and numerical modelling.
Sir John Wilfred Lazar is a British investor, engineer and businessman who is the current president of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He spent much of his career at Metaswitch, where he served as chairman and CEO, after starting at the company as a software engineer.
