How Engineers Can Crack Science's Toughest Mysteries - with Shini Somara
•February 3, 2026
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Why It Matters
Highlighting engineering’s pivotal role in turning scientific questions into practical solutions underscores the need for diverse, interdisciplinary talent and education reforms to sustain future innovation.
Key Takeaways
- •Engineers translate scientific curiosity into tangible, real‑world solutions
- •Diversity gaps persist; outreach books aim to inspire future engineers
- •Engineers and scientists differ: engineers seek answers, scientists ask questions
- •Historical examples illustrate engineering’s role in advancing scientific discovery
- •Collaborative mindset essential for tackling today’s complex, interdisciplinary challenges
Summary
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.
Original Description
Find out how engineers are finding answers to the mysteries that have puzzled science.
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This lecture was filmed at the Ri on 1 November 2025.
We often hear about the biggest challenges posed by modern science. How can we make fusion a viable power source? How can we supercool a quantum computer? How can we build trust into an AI system?
The role of answering these questions falls to engineers. But often, engineering is overlooked or misunderstood. So how does this process work, and how does it impact our lives?
Join mechanical engineer and broadcaster Shini Somara as she demystifies the role that engineers play in the ecosystem of innovation. She’ll explain how engineers are finding practical solutions to everything from the biggest problems in nuclear physics, through to underappreciated breakthroughs in household plumbing, and digs down into the engineering process to celebrate how scientists and engineers collaborate to solve the problems of the future.
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Shini Somara is a multi-award-winning engineer and broadcaster. She completed her EngD in Computational Fluid Dynamics at Brunel University of London, where she is now Pro Rector. She is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and a Chartered Mechanical Engineer. Shini has produced and presented for the BBC, Sky, PBS and more. She has written seven STEM books for a range of ages, featured on numerous podcasts, and spoken at TEDx events.
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