| Royal Academy of Engineering | |
| Formation | June 1976 |
| Location | London, United Kingdom |
| Membership | 3 Royal Fellows, 1,493 Fellows |
| President | Sir John Parker |
| Vision | To bring engineering to the heart of society |
| Website | http://www.raeng.org.uk |
Contents |
The Royal Academy of Engineering is the UK’s national academy of engineering. The Academy brings together the most successful and talented engineers from across the engineering sectors for a shared purpose: to advance and promote excellence in engineering.
The Fellowship was founded in June 1976 with enthusiastic support from HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senior Fellow and continues to fulfil that role to this day. The Fellowship was granted a Royal Charter in 1983 and became The Royal Academy of Engineering in 1992, having been granted a Royal Title. [1]
The Royal Fellows of the Academy comprise HRH The Prince Philip, HRH The Duke of Kent and HRH The Princess Royal. [2] The Fellowship currently stands at over 1,400 distinguished engineers from across the sectors and disciplines, who lead, guide and contribute to the Academy’s work and provide expertise.[3] Up to 60 engineers are elected each year by their peers, distinguished by the title 'Fellow of The Royal Academy of Engineering' and the postnominal designation 'FREng'. Honorary and International Fellows who have made exceptional contributions to engineering are also elected.The current President of the Academy is Sir John Parker FREng. The Immediate Past President is Lord Browne of Madingley.
The Academy’s activities are focused on positioning engineering at the heart of society by:
It is a national Academy with a global outlook and conducts a number of international activities with partners across the world.
The Academy is also an instrumental player in two policy alliances setup in 2009 to provide coherent advice for engineering education and policy across the profession: Education for Engineering(E4E) and Engineering the Future.
The Academy invests in world class research, supporting the best people and focusing on areas that address specific issues and challenges. It also encourages and builds strong links between academia and industry, opening up opportunities for research to be translated into real world applications, products and services which in turn will generate wealth and jobs.
Academy activities also focus on how the UK can create the right climate in which innovation, entrepreneurship, business and industry can flourish.
Example activities: Engineering enterprise fellowships Post Doctoral Fellowships
The Academy works with the engineering profession and other partners to increase the diversity and number of people that study science, technology, engineering and mathematics and focuses on enriching the experience by bringing real-world engineering practice into schools, further education colleges and universities.
The Academy also hosts the professional engineering alliance Education for Engineering (E4E) which provides a unified voice in education debates and advice on all aspects of engineering education policy.
The Academy harnesses the collective pan-engineering expertise of its Fellowship to act as an advisor to the British government by providing recommendations, analysis and solutions on a number of topical policy areas. At present, the Academy’s policy work focuses on energy, infrastructure, transport, sustainability, innovation, education and skills in addition to the issues that concern business and industry and rebalancing the economy.
The Academy is also host to the professional engineering alliance Engineering the Future to provide a unified voice for engineering on matters that require expertise and advice from a number of engineering bodies.
Example activities UK offshore wind supply chain Heat: degrees of comfort
The Academy organises a number of events and debates in addition to the production of a quarterly magazine Ingenia to reach a variety of difference audiences and enhance greater awareness of engineering and how it impacts on the wider world.
The Academy also recognises and celebrates the most talented engineers by awarding prestigious prizes, including the annual MacRobert Award, Britain’s top prize for engineering innovation.[4]
The Academy’s public spaces in its building at 3 Carlton House Terrace are currently undergoing renovation works and will be re-opened in spring 2012 to provide a central platform for the UK to become the Forum for engineering engagement, debate, discussion and celebration.[5]
The Academy’s premises at 3-4 Carlton House Terrace are housed in a Grade I listed building overlooking St James’ Park, designed by celebrated architect John Nash and owned by the Crown Estates. The Academy shares the Terrace with two of its sister academies, the British Academy and the Royal Society as well as other institutes.
Conceived in the late 1960s, during the excitement of the Apollo programme and the buzz of Harold Wilson’s ‘white heat of technology’, the Fellowship of Engineering was born in the same year as Concorde’s first commercial flight.[6]
The Fellowship met for the first time on 11 June 1976 at Buckingham Palace where 126 of the UK’s finest engineers were enrolled, including jet engine genius Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, design guru Sir Ove Arup, radar pioneer Sir George MacFarlane, bouncing bomb inventor Sir Barnes Wallis, father of the UK computer industry, Sir Maurice Wilkes and the Fellowship’s first President, Lord Hinton who had driven the UK’s supremacy in nuclear power.[7]
The Fellowship focused on championing excellence in all fields of engineering and activities began in earnest in the mid-1970s when the Distinction lecture series, now known as the Hinton lectures, was founded; the Fellowship was asked to advise the Department of Industry for the first time and the Academy became host and presenter of the MacRobert prize.[8]
In the 1980s, the Fellowship acquired its own Royal Charter, its first government grant-in-aid in addition to significant industrial funding, initiated its research programme to build bridges between academia and industry and opened its doors to International and Honorary Fellows.[9]
The Academy’s first major education initiative, Engineering Education Continuum began in 1990 and has now evolved into the BEST programme and Tomorrow’s Engineers.
The Academy’s increasing level of influence – both in policy, research and education – was recognised when it was granted a royal title and became The Royal Academy of Engineering in 1992.[10]
The Academy strives to ensure that the pool of candidates for election to The Fellowship better reflects the diverse make-up society within which it exists. It set up the Proactive Membership Committee in 2008 to identify and support the nomination of candidates from a range of underrepresented areas, aiming to boost the number of women candidates, engineers from industry and Small and Medium Enterprises, those from emerging technologies and ethically diverse backgrounds.[11]
The Academy’s current logo is inspired by human’s first technological advance: the Neolithic hand-axe, which was taken to be a symbol appropriate to the Academy, representative of the ever-changing relationship between humanity and technology.[12]