On Tuesday 20 October 2020, Dr Janet Wilson was formally recognised as a Fellow of Engineers Australia at a ceremony held at Frazer-Nash's Adelaide office.
Janet shared her journey to Fellowship with Jonathan Armstrong, Director – Australian Business. Here you can read her story:
Janet grew up in Belfast during “the Troubles”, the euphemistic term for three decades of political violence that claimed the lives of 3500 people. Bomb scares, security cordons and robots exploding suspect cars were the norm. Her parents made huge sacrifices to allow her to attend Belfast Royal Academy, a school that pre-dates the First Fleet’s arrival in Australia, where she found she had a natural aptitude for the STEM subjects and even studied the first computer studies O-Level.
An initial interest in medicine was tempered by a lack of interest in biology and when the school’s Headmaster lamented that none from the school had prioritised engineering in their university applications she decided to look more closely. Wanting a vocation, she duly signed up for civil engineering and became the first in her family to attend university.
At university she specialised in structures, something that has been defining in her career. But not to begin with, because Janet was tempted into banking and is actually a lapsed – some would say reformed - Chartered Banker. Despite the money she found banking boring and returned to university to study the new field of computational engineering, excelling in her Masters Degree. This led to a PhD, this time in the emerging field of artificial intelligence (AI), using genetic algorithms to creative adaptive meshing for finite element analysis (FEA).
From here she moved to Turner and Newall, once a leading UK manufacturing business where she joined an exciting engineering analysis department, using ABAQUS to support the design of innovative automotive components. Next came Glasgow-based IDEAS, bringing computational engineering to the oil and gas industry. Then followed Babtie, where again Janet was involved in the novel application of computational engineering into mainstream civil engineering. As an example, the Faslane-based Shiplift can lift a 15000Te nuclear-powered submarine out of the water. This was being built at the same time as the Sizewell B nuclear power station. At the Sizewell public enquiry the question was asked: “Can it withstand an earthquake?” This question also needed to be answered for the Shiplift and Janet was integral to modelling the seismic response of a suspended nuclear submarine in the Shiplift.
Janet joined Frazer-Nash’s Glasgow office in 2007. A key trait of an engineer is to have the integrity to always provide the engineering truth, even when that may not be initially welcome. This was tested as Janet advised the UK’s Aircraft Carrier Alliance as it sought to assemble the enormous jigsaw modular blocks of the UK’s new aircraft carrier in a series of critical 1000Te lifting operations. Any damage and the parts of the jigsaw would not fit. Acting with courage and integrity, Janet had to advise 20 men that changes were required. Her expertise carried her through this, and as is often the case out of conflict came real respect as this team gradually came to realise that she was right.
In 2012, Janet relocated with her family to Australia and now leads the specialist assessment team for the Innovation Hub, a role she loves and describes as “being paid to read the New Scientist” as she assesses how the latest technology can support Australian Defence capability needs.
Janet’s journey to Fellowship includes overcoming both gender and British class bias to rise to the highest levels of the engineering profession. What a great role model.
Further, she has played a substantial role in diversifying what the engineering profession is by bringing advances in technology into mainstream engineering. That openness to new technology is key to her role today in the Innovation Hub. Having grown up with Belfast’s troubles, she's glad that part of this role is to help keep people safe and secure by advancing the role of autonomous systems in high threat situations.