Engineering by putting people first
- 09 December 2024
- 4 minutes
The potential to combine technology and innovation with a people-first, empathetic approach encouraged Hannah Gillespie (Engineering MPhil 2025) to pursue a career in engineering.
“I saw engineering as the most concrete way I could help other people,” she says. “I like the technical aspects, but I also love to go out, talk to people, and get things done. Some see engineering as a method of solving problems – I like to think of it as a framework for designing better solutions. This puts the human person at the centre of the design process.”
Hannah, a Marshall Scholar at Gonville & Caius College, is reading for the MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development at the University of Cambridge. “The course’s cohort is amazing. I love getting to know my course mates who are from all over the world, of different backgrounds, at varying levels of their professional careers,” she adds.
Originally from Johnsburg, Illinois, Hannah graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2020 with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Theology. After graduation, she worked for three years in the aerospace industry in Seattle before earning the Marshall Scholarship. Marshall Scholarships fund United States citizens for postgraduate study in the United Kingdom. Up to 50 scholars from the United States are chosen each year.
Her dedication to human-centred engineering began during her time at Notre Dame, where she had the chance to work with community members in Léogâne, Haiti, through the Kellogg International Scholars Program. Traditional WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) methods had failed to deliver sustainable solutions; wells built following the 2010 earthquake were broken and unable to be fixed by locals after the sponsoring NGOs left, she explains. Hannah worked with locals to redesign a biosand filter for water purification, reducing the cost of traditional designs by 50%, and proposing the distribution of the filter through a social enterprise.
“The experience of working in Léogâne really impacted me,” she says. “Eight years after the earthquake, there were still piles of rubble in the streets. They were still rebuilding the church where people were praying. The experience was transformational. It got me into this question of how we engineer in a sustainable way.”
She is not simply interested in WASH. She completed a Masters in Computing at Imperial College London last year in her first year as a Marshall Scholar. She likes to work at the intersection of hardware and software, often with aerial robotics (drones). “I’m interested in how communities can use unmanned aerial vehicles for use in agriculture or mapping – surveying land, post-disaster reconnaissance, mapping biodiversity…” she says.
She cites a company in Rwanda which uses fixed-wing drones to deliver blood to hospitals in remote locations in minutes, hours faster than if delivered by road, and a start-up in Seattle which drops biopackets in the aftermath of wildfires as a catalyst for reforestation. Another company has developed an underwater robotics system to map seabeds for plotting sites on which to build wind farms.
The taught masters – two terms of lectures, plus a thesis – covers many aspects of sustainable development, including, for example, negotiation skills and managing the innovation process.
Hannah attributes her people-focused approach to her Catholic faith, and she has joined the Fisher Society in Cambridge.
She says: “I really value the community that comes from the faith. It comes from this understanding that each human person has dignity and is deserving of life. The circumstances around them should reflect that dignity. As an engineer, what is the best way I can help with that?”
She is enjoying the course at Cambridge and life at Caius, where she has joined the Boat Club.
“Both the course and Cambridge are environments where people can ask meaningful questions and have the space and the time to think,” she adds. “I really love how different opinions can be proposed and talked about and thought about in a way where we can hold different ideas and have a conversation about it. Cambridge provides the space to engage with people you don’t always agree with. That’s a strength of the University.”