Events

All In For Engineering: Co-designing a neuro-inclusive future

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Date: 20 Jun 2024

Time: 10:00 - 16:00

Location: The Roundhouse, Dyson Village, Tetbury Rd, Malmesbury SN16 0FQ

Organised by: Engineering Professors' Council / The Dyson Institute for Engineering and Technology

We believe that an inclusive and positive university experience for neurodiverse engineering students is fair, healthy, and what the engineering profession – and society – needs. Universities and engineering faculties have varying responses to the needs of their neurodiverse students, from the legally dubious to those which allow individuals to genuinely flourish.

This work aims to capture these different areas of performance and express them as a neuro-inclusion maturity framework for engineering education. In going about this, we are committed to an approach of co-design – working with a community of students, academics, and professional services colleagues to shape a maturity framework that will help universities to understand and improve their own neuro-inclusive practices.

To catalyse this work, we invite teams of 4 (an academic, a professional services colleague, and two neurodiverse students) from 15 HEI engineering faculties to attend an in-person design workshop at the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology in Malmesbury on Thursday 20th June. There will also be a follow up webinar taking place on Thursday 25th July.

If you’re interested in participating, please pre-register below.

If you can’t make this workshop, or prefer to engage in a different way, join our follow-up webinar event on Thursday 25th July at 14:00 hours, where you can hear about the work so far, and have an opportunity to be involved moving forward.

10.00 Arrival and refreshments, ‘Try and Talk’ workshop (please see next tab)

11.00 Welcome and scene setting

11.10 Workshop 1

12.30 Lunch

13.15 Workshop 2

14.30 Break

14.40 Workshop 3

15.40 Next steps

For our colleagues at Dyson, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging are important values. Our global strategy aims to support the design and development of our products through inclusive teams. There are many dimensions of diversity and neurodiversity is an important one, as it takes all kinds of minds to make our technology so unique.

Join Dyson’s Neurodiversity Network for an opportunity to try their Neurodiversity Simulation Lab, an employee led initiative to increase awareness and understanding of different neuro-types and their neuro-inclusion in the workplace. Simulations include touch, olfactory, auditory and visual simulations, as well as dyslexia and examples of tools and workplace adjustments.

Nathan Watson, Senior D&I Manager
Mark Johnson, Senior Principal Engineer and founder of Dyson’s Neurodiversity Network
Charlotte Law, Head of Studio and Neuro-Inclusion Champion