PUBLIC EVENT
Our 2026 Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Conference will centre on the theme Engineering for Communities. The day will explore the power of leveraging the engineering community, bringing together engineers from different sectors, regions and disciplines to collaborate, exchange ideas, and co-create equitable engineering practice that meets the needs of the full breadth of communities in society.
The event will explore the importance of creating psychological safety for the engineering community to enable engineers to speak up, add challenge, and share ideas that lead to more inclusive and equitable engineering outcomes for engineers and for wider society. The conference hopes to balance inspiration and learning with practical application.
A morning keynote address, delivered by Dame Judith Hackitt DBE FREng, and panel discussion will explore what psychological safety means in engineering and why it is critical for enabling physical safety for engineers working in industry and for wider society. Speakers will examine how the everyday mindsets and behaviours of engineers can impact who feels able to speak up, share ideas and raise concerns, and how this impacts engineering culture and outcomes. We hope to offer some practical and actionable steps for delegates to support them to embed psychological safety into everyday practice.
This event is also in-person from 9.30am - 5.30pm at Prince Philip House. It will include an interactive workshop on creating inclusive and equitable engineering outcomes in the afternoon followed by a networking reception. If you would like to attend in-person, please complete our register of interest form.
Programme*
| 10.00am | Opening remarks |
| 10.15am | The importance of psychological safety in engineering by Dame Judith Hackitt DBE FREng, Former Chair, Enginuity and Office for Nuclear regulation |
| 10.30am |
Panel discussion: Safe to speak: Turning voice into value
|
| 11.30am | Break |
| 12.00pm |
Micro talks
|
| 12.45pm | Event ends |
*Programme subject to change
Recording notice
Please note this event will be recorded and published on the Royal Academy of Engineering website. Your video will be off and your account will be muted throughout the entire event. Only the speakers and presentations will be visible on your screen.
Accessibility
It is very important to the Royal Academy of Engineering that our events are accessible to all. If you have any accessibility requirements, please contact the Events team at your earliest convenience so that necessary arrangements can be made. Contact details: [email protected].
Diversity monitoring form
The Academy is committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and one of our goals is to develop an engineering community fit for the future. To help us achieve this, we would like to collect some basic anonymous data about the event attendees. If you would like to help, please complete the diversity monitoring form by logging into your user account on our website and completing ‘Update my D&I data’
Dame Judith Hackitt DBE FREng
Dame Judith Hackitt is a chemical engineer by training and spent the first half of her career working in the chemicals industry – both in manufacturing and also as an advocate for the industry at national and international level. She is a former President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and a Fellow and Trustee of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Throughout her career she has championed the importance of Engineering in delivering solutions which provide benefit to society and has been a role model particularly for young women wanting to enter the profession. She cares deeply about safety in the workplace and more broadly. From 2007 to 2016 she was Chair of the UK’s Health and Safety Executive and in 2017 conducted an Independent Review for UK Government into Building Regulations and Fire Safety in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster. Since publishing her final report in 2018 she has continued to press for regulatory change and for industry culture change and her recommendations for radical reform of the regulatory system received Royal Assent in the Building Safety Act 2022. The change has been described as the biggest shake up in Construction regulation in a generation. She is currently Chair of the RAE’s Membership Committee and also of the Engineering X Safer Complex Systems programme
Dr Joshua Macabuag FREng
Dr Joshua Macabuag is Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Renew-Risk and Engineering Manager at Search and Rescue Assistance in Disasters (SARAID). He has provided technical advances in catastrophe risk modelling, quantifying disaster risk for renewable energy (via his own company, Renew-Risk) and for developing countries (via the World Bank). Josh is also an exceptional engineering leader in disaster response, leading and growing the UK’s largest engineering team for urban search and rescue. He has deployed to the Nepal earthquake (2015); Hurricane Irma (2017); Albania’s earthquakes (September to November 2019); lead the UK support team for the Beirut port explosion (2020), and also deployed to Haiti in August 2021 and Turkey in March 2023. He inspires young and practising engineers and has had films and videos commissioned for This is Engineering and the Institution of Civil Engineers.
Professor Danail Stoyanov
Dan Stoyanov is a Professor at UCL Computer Science and Co-Director of the UCL Hawkes Institute. His research is focused on surgical AI and robotics with a particular focus on computer vision in surgical endoscopy and minimally invasive surgery. He is a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies, in addition to leading large-scale projects from the Wellcome Trust and EPSRC. He was Chief Scientist at Digital Surgery (acquired by Medtronic plc); and co-founder of Odin Vision Ltd (acquired by Olympus), Panda Surgical Ltd, EnAcuity Ltd, Helico Technologies Ltd, and Invexo Ltd. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Academy of Medical Sciences, IEEE, IET and the MICCAI Society.
Chris Taylor
Chris Taylor currently heads a team responsible for the safety and assurance of new technologies being deployed into Air Traffic Control operations for both civil and military customers of the Air Navigation Service Provider, NATS. Over the last 26 years, he has worked in a variety of roles including engineering, commercial and operations at the Swanwick and Prestwick Centres and various UK airports. Chris is a chartered engineer and chartered manager with a degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Liverpool and a certified project manager. He is an experienced change manager with a background in Lean Six Sigma and business improvement and innovation. . He is a Fellow of both the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Chartered Management Institute.
Chris graduated from the Academy’s Inclusive Leadership Programme in 2025, leading the delivery of a company project to increase psychological safety and inclusive leadership with senior leaders.