Today is International Women In Engineering Day, a day which celebrates the amazing work that women engineers around the world are doing.
Agri-EPI’s support agri-tech innovation at three key stages; pre-farmgate development, commercial farm applications and primary product quality. In this post we wanted to highlight three women on International Women in Engineering Day who engineer solutions to enhance agriculture and the environment.
Dr. Sophie Purser, MIRICO
Sophie began her career as a chemist working as a scientist and then Business Development Manager for a speciality chemicals company in Oxfordshire. She then moved briefly to working with medical devices, before joining MIRICO in 2019 as Commercial Manager. MIRICO are using a revolutionary new technology for gas analysis and want to bring the benefits of the technology to those working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Dr Paula Misiewicz MSc MEng PhD AMIAgrE, Senior lecturer in Soil and Water Management, Harper Adams University
Dr Paula’s research interests are centered around Soil and Water Management and Precision Farming. Current research projects are focused on exploring traffic and tillage interactions using field scale experiments:
Conventional tyre inflation pressure
Low tyre inflation pressure
Controlled traffic farming
Deep, shallow and zero tillage systems
I am also interested in soil mechanics, specifically in soil and tyre interractions: The Evaluation of The Soil Pressure Distribution and Carcass Stiffness Resulting from Pneumatic Agricultural Tyres.
Current PhD supervision: 2 students
Dr Alex Cooke CEnv, MIAgrE is another notable recent PhD (hers from Cranfield) who is having an impact in the Water Management sector. She is the Principal Catchment Scientist at Severn Trent Water and leads their Catchment Management team. She recently presented a ‘lunchtime lecture’ for IAgrE (as well as a guided tour of a water treatment plant for IAgrE members pre-Covid). In her lecture last week she explained how ‘nature-based solutions’ are being adopted as business-as-usual within the water and wastewater industry to deliver assets that provide more for the communities they serve, and the wider environment. This is building on her PhD research which examined “Compost filter socks to control sediment and phosphorus losses from arable land associated with extreme rainfall events”. Farming for Water – Nature based solutions – Dr Alex Cooke CEnv MIAgrE – YouTube
A thank you to The Douglas Bomford Trust for highlighting Dr Paula Misiewicz MSc MEng PhD AMIAgrE, Senior lecturer in Soil and Water Management, Harper Adams University and Dr Alex Cooke MIAgrE CEnv: Catchment Management Scientist.
The objective of The Douglas Bomford Trust is to advance knowledge, understanding, practice, and competence in the application of engineering and technology to achieve sustainable agricultural, food and biological systems for the benefit of the environment and mankind.
