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IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year 2024 winners

Five young women engineers have been announced as this year’s YWE finalists.

Here are your 2024 winners!

These prestigious engineering industry awards celebrate women working in modern engineering – and aim to help change the perception that engineering is predominantly a career for men by banishing outdated engineering stereotypes of hard hats and dirty overalls.

Our 2024 winners

Young Woman Engineer of the Year

Marisa Kurimbokus

Marisa Kurimbokus is a Chartered Engineer with a career spanning over a decade in product design and systems engineering within the automotive and power electronics industries, including Jaguar Land Rover, Triumph Motorcycles and Lyra Electronics. In her work, she has led a multi-disciplinary engineering design team and has been responsible for all engineering activities, including the delivery of projects, R&D, design, testing, and prototyping.

Marisa keenly supports engineers at all levels, and STEM is a huge passion for her, fuelled by her lack of guidance and inspirational role models when she was a student. She has been listed in the Top 50 Women in Engineering: Inventors and Innovators in 2022 for her work in net-zero and green technology.

Womens Engineering Society Prize Winner

Natalie Parker

Natalie Parker is a Technical Specialist/Manager for the Operational Technology Group at Sellafield Ltd. She provides technical advice and project support to front-line engineering teams. She is a line manager to 9 and supports the different facility-facing teams to enable an offsite location to allow engineers to share problems, innovate ideas and learn from experience.

Natalie is co-lead of Sellafield’s Women in Technology group, which helps achieve gender balance at all levels within the department. She also developed a primary school workshop called ‘Get Wired…Get Coding’ to introduce students in Years 5 and 6 to electrical circuits and programming through fun interactive activities and show how STEM skills can be utilised in careers.

Mary George Memorial Prize for Apprentices Winner

Alexia Williams

Alexia Williams is a Through Life Technical Lead for Rolls-Royce Plc. Alexia works to improve assets throughout their life, utilising data and information collected to make informed decisions to extend the products operation life and reduce maintenance periods. She joined Rolls-Royce in 2018 as an Engineering Degree Apprentice doing a BEng in Aerospace Engineering at the University of the West of England.

As a STEM ambassador, Alexia has contributed over 200 hours during the last year promoting STEM to the younger generation through Air Shows, Careers Fairs, Conferences and in schools. She is passionate about encouraging more women into engineering especially via an apprenticeship.

Highly commended for Mary George Memorial Prize

Erin Lowe

Erin Lowe is an Apprentice Electrical Engineer at Yamazaki Mazak UK. Erin is in the third year of her electrical apprenticeship, which specialises in the CV5-500 production line. She has also delivered customer and public educational tours of the European Manufacturing plant, attended numerous career and trade fairs, given countless outreach presentations, and supported our cadetship programme regularly.

Erin is involved in various STEM initiatives, including being the head judge at the final of the Primary STEM Challenge hosted at Mazak, where the goal was to inspire young minds into a career in engineering.

Finalists

Salma Al Arefi

Salma Al Arefi is a Lecturer in Engineering Education at the University of Leeds. Salma holds a PhD in Computing and Electronic Systems. She is an award-winning Lecturer in Engineering Education and Academic Lead for Inclusivity and Student Success at the School of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Leeds. She teaches and supports the learning of the next generation of engineers, focusing mainly on renewable energy systems.

In 2020, Salma was elected by the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) as a Fellow in recognition of sustained encouragement in assisting the society (nationally and internationally) to break boundaries for women in STEM. Her contribution and added value to the women in science was specially commended by the 2020 Water Women at Leeds Award.