This February, with the flick of a switch, there was a vast shift of power on Europe’s borders. The Baltic states’ electrical grids, built in the 1960s while these countries were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, had been under the control of Moscow. In one weekend, the transmission system operators in Latvia, Lithuania, and...

The post #324 A Shift of Power on Europe’s Borders first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Engineers from around the world gathered at the Postal Museum in London for the Engineering Matters Awards 2025, presented in partnership with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, IMechE, and Engineers Without Borders UK, EWB UK. In this episode, we introduce the award gold champions. In episodes to come, we will look in more detail at...

The post #323 Engineers Deliver Impact: The Engineering Matters Awards 2025 first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Seagrass meadows are the engineers of the marine ecosystem. They provide habitats, support biodiversity, prevent coastal erosion and sequester carbon dioxide. For this reason Italy has embarked upon a world leading project to map these coastal ecosystems at a national scale, enabling it to plan protection and restoration measures that will improve ocean health and...

The post #322 Engineering Ecosystems: Italy’s Seagrass Meadows first appeared on Engineering Matters.

We can reuse and retrofit buildings to extend their lifespans, and reduce their embodied carbon impact. But some structures may not be suitable for full reuse: some will have reached the end of their safe life; others will have no viable reuse; and some retrofit projects may require partial dismantling to reduce loadings on the...

The post #321 Circular Construction – Designing for Disassembly first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Quantum mechanics has transformed our understanding of reality, but how did we get here? In this episode, we celebrate the International Year of Quantum, marking 100 years since the birth of this groundbreaking field. From the fierce debates between Einstein and Bohr to the mind-bending implications of superposition and entanglement, we explore how quantum mechanics...

The post #320 International Year of Quantum: 100 Years of Quantum Mechanics first appeared on Engineering Matters.

Britain’s biodiversity has been declining sharply over the last 50 years. The country is now one of the most nature-depleted nations in the world. Despite legislation and efforts to stem the tide of wildlife population decline, little has helped. In February 2025, the UK government announced a new approach to reintroductions of beavers in England....

The post #319 Revisited: Green Engineering, with Bison first appeared on Engineering Matters.

At a unique hackathon in Manchester, a diverse group of hackers, coders, and gamers gathered to design digital solutions for the nuclear industry, blending innovation, teamwork, and pressure-driven problem-solving.  The event, called HackAFuture, served as a groundbreaking careers initiative, offering the winning team not just bragging rights, but jobs with AtkinsRéalis developing their solution.  This...

The post #318 Gaming Out a Career in Nuclear first appeared on Engineering Matters.

When we search for causes of accidents, we often assume a binary: either mechanical failure, or human error, were to blame, and we must pick between them. But labelling an accident as caused by human error doesn’t teach us anything. It makes no effort to understand what caused people to make the decisions they did....

The post #317 Human Factors, Human Error, and Safety by Design first appeared on Engineering Matters.

AI is evolving so fast it eludes definition. The potential impact of the field is barely understood, even by those working in it. ‘Move-fast-and-break-things’ practitioners are deploying AI systems in autonomous vehicles, in courts, in medical diagnosis, and now even at the heart of the US federal government.  Few of the constraints that govern individual...

The post #316 What Can AI Engineers Learn From Medical Professionals? first appeared on Engineering Matters.

How should engineers think about their duty to design safe structures? For IStructE’s head of climate action Will Arnold, this duty extends beyond the structure, to the safety of everyone on the planet. With renewable energy cutting operational carbon emissions, the majority of the engineering sector’s impact on climate change now comes from embodied carbon....

The post #315 Renewing the World, Without Costing the Planet first appeared on Engineering Matters.