Overview

The London and South East Young Members Forum is hosting a career talk event for both industry and academia. Four women from industry, academia and start-ups will share their chemical engineering journey and experience as a woman in engineering, as well as tips on what to consider when choosing a university degree.

This event will be open for the students at the Kensington Aldridge Academy. 

We look forward to seeing you all.

Speakers

Andrea Iliopoulou, Senior Advisor - Trading Commodity Financing, Shell

Andrea works for Shell's Trading & Supply Commodity Financing team in London, UK, managing a global portfolio of loans and relationships with external counterparties across all commodities, while growing the Group’s energy transition strategy. She has held different roles, from engineering to finance and commercial sales / business development, has cross-sector experience in upstream, midstream and downstream and cross-commodities exposure – because variety is the spice of life! She wants to give people a reason to wake up in the morning and go to work, other than money. Andrea holds an MSc in Chemical Process Engineering from University College London, and a BEng and MEng in Chemical Engineering from Aristotle University Thessaloniki, Greece. She has dual Greek/English nationality, speaks Greek, English, German and Spanish and in her free time she enjoys horse-riding, cycling and playing the piano.

Paulina Quintanilla, Postdoctoral Researcher, Imperial College London

Paulina is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Sargent Centre for Process Systems Engineering at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London. She is a Chemical Engineer from Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María (Valparaíso, Chile) with a PhD in Earth Science and Engineering from Imperial College London. Her research interests are dynamic modelling for model-based control strategies, and the application of chemical engineering tools for modelling, process control and optimisation. Paulina has received several awards for her excellent academic performance, including being the top student in her cohort and the Award to the Best Chemical Engineering graduate 2017 from the Chilean Engineering College. Her PhD is fully funded by the Chilean government, with a scholarship awarded to the very best students in Chile. The Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) recognised her research potential by awarding her a prestigious Messel scholarship in 2020 and, in 2022, the Minerals Engineering International (MEI) institution recognised her with the Young Person’s Award for her outstanding contribution to the mineral engineering research area.

Maria Kalli, Product Development Engineer, MicrofluidX

Maria is a Microfluidics Engineer at MicrofluidX, a start-up working towards automating cell and gene therapy manufacturing platforms to precisely bring medicines to patients and accelerate research. She graduated with a First-class Honours in MEng Chemical Engineering from UCL with a scholarship from the Ministry of Energy, Commerce, and Industry of Cyprus (EU). She then completed her PhD in the fields of microfluidics and surfactants, where she was awarded with the AJV Underwood Exhibition prize as the most successful PhD student from UCL Chemical Engineering. With experience in both research and industrial sectors, as well as the President of Chemical Engineering Researchers’ Society (CheERS), Maria is currently the Chair of IChemE Young Members Forum L&SEC.

Despoina Rigou, Production Planner & Detailed Scheduler, Johnson & Johnson

Despoina holds a MSc in Process Systems Engineering from Imperial College London and a MEng from the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Patras. She works at Johnson & Johnson as a Production Detailed Scheduling Planner. Despoina deals with production planning optimisation issues in terms of total supply chain cost and customer order fulfilment while simultaneously targeting at minimum stock levels. She loves digging into real-life problems that need to be solved regardless of the industry. She has cross-sectional experience as a researcher, chemical engineer and market analyst. She has worked at Dialectica as a knowledge broker and she has pursued an internship in Switzerland to study the volumetric and rheological behaviour of the dental implant. Before IChemE and her social media coordinator role, she was the Marketing Communications Associate at Imperial College Engineering Society.