Yesterday afternoon, a group of pupils from MCS and several other local partner schools in the Oxfordshire STEM Forum gathered in the Sixth Forum Seminar Room to listen to a presentation from Ella Podmore MBE, Senior Materials Engineer at McLaren. Ella, who won the IET Award for Young Woman Engineer of the Year in 2020, gave a talk about ‘A Day in the Life of a Supercar Scientist‘. Topics included her life leading up to her career in engineering and the work she does now in McLaren’s Advanced Materials division.

 

 

Ella began by speaking about her A Level choices and Sixth Form studies at Headington School, before going on to explain why she chose to read an MEng degree at the University of Manchester. Through her placement year at the university, Ella managed to secure an internship with McLaren and an offer of employment following the completion of her degree.

Ella also went into some detail about her work currently, such as conducting tests to examine why certain materials used in McLaren cars fail when under extreme pressure. Touching on the issue of women in STEM, she noted that while she has seen improvement over the last five years, there is always room for more improvement and encouraged the girls present to consider a career in engineering.

 

 

As a final surprise, the pupils were invited down to the car park to see a McLaren 720S and shown certain features of the vehicle first-hand. Ella even let the pupils experience the excitement of her revving the engine!

 

We are very thankful that Ella took the time to come and visit the school and look forward to hosting the next Oxfordshire STEM Forum event in May.