Women at the workface: the variety of roles in engineering

As well as being a professor of chemical engineering at UCL, Paola Lettieri is also the vice-dean of strategic projects in the engineering faculty. Right now that role is keeping her very busy, as the university develops its UCL East campus in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

She is also the first female engineer to be awarded a RAEng Fellowship, and is a fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE). Energy systems are a particular area of expertise, and she is currently involved in research on energy from waste gasification, as well as the life cycle of nuclear waste management.

“During my fellowship, which was entitled ‘Fluidisation for Sustainable Development’, I had a vision of working on fluidised processes that would have applications related to the incineration or gasification of waste,” she told The Engineer.

After honing her skills with BP for a number of years across a range of projects, Lettieri got a chance to build on her initial fellowship and explore the commercial possibilities of waste gasification. Working in collaboration with energy company Advanced Plasma Power (APP), she helped develop a process that combines gasification with plasma conversion, using waste to produce a synthetic gas (syngas) that is highly versatile.