On the 22nd July Simran Kaur, Kaya Brooker with teacher, Margaret Jobsis, travelled to Auckland to attend the Women in Engineering breakfast at Auckland University. This was to celebrate international women in engineering day.

There were sphero robots to trial, engineering students to speak to, winning 3D printing entries and a great breakfast.

Then we heard from a range of 3rd year students who shared experiences in their own exciting and creative fields. All with very different expectations and fields of study, but sharing a common theme of finding unexpected and new pathways in their academic journeys. Most saw Mechanical engineering as a useful field of study, but included Biomedical, mechatronic and software engineering in their study.

• One student who had an interest in music and sport when they started, ended up working with how the human brain controls muscles.
• A student who worked with interfaces between the human voice and computers, eg Suri, has extended her work to linguistics to expand the number of languages these interfaces work with.
• Another student developed a medical device for patients who have had a tracheotomy.

An overwhelming theme of the day was how diverse the opportunities the school of engineering at Auckland University could provide.

After making contact with the outreach team, we also look forward to a reciprocal visit to Kamo High.