The Royal Institution

How Engineers Can Crack Science's Toughest Mysteries - with Shini Somara

Shini Somara opens her talk by recounting a personal journey from a mechanical‑engineering degree to an industry‑based PhD in computational fluid dynamics, highlighting how that experience revealed stark gender and diversity gaps in engineering. Determined to change the narrative, she turned to media and storytelling, authoring *Engineers Making a Difference*—a book profiling 46 engineers across twelve sectors, which was donated to every secondary state school in the UK to plug the curriculum void around engineering education. Somara draws a clear line between engineers and scientists: engineers ask "how can we solve this?" while scientists ask "why does this happen?" She illustrates this distinction through anecdotes about historical figures such as Michael Faraday, a self‑taught apprentice who built the electric motor, generator and transformer, and modern communicators like Carl Sagan, David Attenborough and Susan Greenfield, whose work humanizes and popularizes science. The audience poll further underscores that engineers are often perceived merely as problem‑solvers, a perception she seeks to broaden. The talk then surveys the evolution of scientific questions—from ancient curiosity about the heavens to the industrial drive to harness steam and electricity, and finally to 20th‑century inquiries into atoms, DNA and renewable energy. Each era’s breakthroughs depended on engineering feats, exemplified by the Hubble Space Telescope’s precision optics and serviceability, which turned abstract astrophysical questions into observable data. Somara concludes that the future of discovery hinges on interdisciplinary collaboration, diverse talent pipelines, and education that celebrates failure as a learning tool. By bridging the cultural gap between scientists and engineers and championing inclusive outreach, she argues, society can accelerate the development of solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.