Roma Agrawal | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Roma Agrawal at theNASA Goddard Space Flight Center | |
| Born | Mumbai, India |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford Imperial College London |
| Occupation | Structural Engineer |
| Employer | AECOM |
| Known for |
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Roma Agrawal is an Indian-British charteredstructural engineer based in London. She has worked on several major engineering projects, includingthe Shard. Agrawal is also an author and a diversity campaigner, championing women in engineering.
Agrawal was born in 1983[citation needed] inMumbai, India, before moving to London.[1] She also lived inIthaca, New York for five years.[2] She completed herA-Levels atNorth London Collegiate School. In 2004, she gained a BA in physics from theUniversity of Oxford, and in 2005, an MSc in Structural Engineering fromImperial College London.
Agrawal attributes her enthusiasm for engineering to her love of making (and breaking) things, cultivated by playing withLego as a child.[3] Agrawal attributes her entry into engineering to a summer placement at the Oxford Physics Department where she worked alongside engineers who were designingparticle detectors forCERN.[4]
In 2005, Agrawal joinedParsons Brinckerhoff (later called WSP) on a graduate program, becoming a chartered engineer with theInstitution of Structural Engineers in 2011. She spent six years working on the tallest building in Western Europe,the Shard, designing the foundations and the iconic spire.[5][dubious –discuss] She describes the project as a career highlight: "I think projects like that only come once or twice in your career, so I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work on this".[6] The 1,016-foot (310 m) tall structure required a top-down construction methodology, which had never been done before on a building of this scale.[7] The spire requiredmodular construction that could be built and tested off-site, enabling quick and safe assembly at height in central London.[8]
Alongside the Shard, Agrawal worked onCrystal Palace Station and theNorthumbria University Footbridge.[citation needed] She worked for WSP for ten years before joiningInterserve as a Design Manager in November 2015.[9] In May 2017, Agrawal joinedAECOM as an associate director.[10]
In 2018 Agrawal was appointedMember of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).[11] She was appointed a Fellow of theInstitution of Civil Engineers in 2018[citation needed] and elected an Honorary Fellow of theRoyal Academy of Engineering in 2021[12]
Following her six years working on The Shard, Agrawal found herself presenting on her work to children at school and students at university and found a passion for raising awareness of engineering.[19] She has since presented to over 15,000 people worldwide.[citation needed]
Agrawal's career has been covered extensively in both online and print media.[20] She was a founding member of the Your Life Campaign, designed to change school children's perception of science and engineering backed by theDepartment of Business, Innovation and Skills.[21]
In 2014, she was part of Marks and Spencer's Leading Ladies campaign, alongsideAnnie Lennox,Emma Thompson andRita Ora.[22] Later that year, she was chosen as one of six women engineers to follow on Twitter byThe Guardian.[23] She has given twoTEDx talks, "City 2.0" (2013)[24] and "Three Moments that will Change the World" (2015).[25] She has featured on several BBC,Channel 4, andScience Channel television programs. Since 2017, she has appeared as a judge on the Channel 4 reality programmeLego Masters[26] and as a structural engineer expert onMysteries of the Abandoned.[27] She judged the trophy design competition for theQueen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2015 and 2017.[citation needed]
Agrawal's book, titledBuilt: the Hidden Stories Behind our Structures, an introduction to structural engineering, was published in 2018.[28] The IET E&T magazine described it as a "a treatise on structural engineering". They went on to say
Roma Agrawal has a knack for taking complex concepts, stripping them down and reducing them to their most basic form ... What makes 'Built' so enjoyable is the way Agrawal applies her enquiring mind ... to an engineering world that she finds simultaneously invisible while being no less than fundamental to modern society.[29]
In 2013, Agrawal was voted one ofManagement Today's Top 35 Women Under 35.[30] She raises awareness through social media, podcasts and interviews.[31][32][33][34] After being a finalist herself in 2012,[35] she was a keynote speaker at theIET's Young Women Engineer of the Year award ceremony in 2016, and in 2017 was listed as one of the "Inspiring Women in Engineering" by theWomen's Engineering Society.[36]
| Year | Title | Publisher | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Built: The Hidden Stories Behind Our Structures | Bloomsbury Publishing | ISBN 978-1-4088-7037-2 |
| 2021 | How Was That Built? | Bloomsbury Publishing | ISBN 978-1547609291 |
| 2023 | Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (In a Big Way) | Hodder | ISBN 978-1324021520 |
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