Around 600 people are expected to attend AFBELive 2024, which will take place on Tuesday, April 23, at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London.
Scotland-connected industry speakers include Paul de Leeuw , director of the energy transition at Robert Gordon University ; Dr David Leiper , company medical officer at Harbour Energy ; Edafe Onerhime , executive director and intelligent automation lead at JPMorgan Chase & Co. ; Dushyant Sharma , strategy implementation lead at bp and Ibim Diri , transition programme manager at AFBE-UK.
Dr Ollie Folayan MBE (PhD CEng FIChemE) , co-chair of AFBE-UK Scotland, said:
AFBELive will be held on AFBE-UK’s 15th anniversary to showcase its work over many years in towns and cities across the UK. The one-day conference will highlight the contributions of people from minoritised groups in the UK through innovation.
The first conference will be held on Friday 22 April 2022 at the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in Savoy Place, London.
Challenging the perception of engineering
AFBE-UK was founded by siblings Dr Nike Folayan MBE and Dr Ollie Folayan. It was founded following the shortage of engineering skills in the workforce and the under-representation of people from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds.
Dr Nike Folayan is on the Board of Trustees at EngineeringUK and is a chartered electronics engineer. In a recent interview with EngineeringUK, Nike commented on AFBELive:
“AFBELive is going to be electric. There will be opportunities to network with professionals and if you are a student then there are opportunities to network with other students as well. There is also an opportunity to meet our sponsor organisations, to find out about the possible career moves that you can make and obviously there is an inspirational element where people will be inspired to think about engineering as an inclusive space for them to work in.”