EW BrightSparks 2022 profile: Shrouk El-Attar
Author: EIS Release Date: Jul 19, 2022
Now in its fifth year of awards, EW BrightSparks sees Electronics Weekly partner with RS Grass Roots to highlight the brightest and most talented young engineers in the UK today.
EW BrightSparks 2022 profile: Shrouk El-Attar
Here, in our series on the latest EW BrightSparks of 2022, we highlight Shrouk El-Attar, who has been working as a Lead Senior Electronics Engineer at emm Technology and is now starting her own electronics engineering consultancy business (Shrouk El-Attar Consultancy).
Achievement
Shrouk arrived in this country as a child refugee and was barred initially from studying engineering as an asylum seeker for six years, the EW BrightSparks judges learned.
As a trustee for the refugee charity STAR, she led the campaign for equal access to higher education in the UK, which has now succeeded in working with close to 80 universities in the UK. Today, asylum seekers and refugees are able to study engineering and other subjects because of her successful work.
Now, Shrouk is the Lead Senior Electronics Engineer at emm Technology working on smart menstrual health solutions that are more inclusive to transgender people and other under-represented communities in tech. She previously held various engineering positions at Elvie, Renishaw, Intel, and Fujitsu, and she was featured in an issue of IMechE magazine.
During lockdown, Shrouk created and hosted the engineering podcast Badass Engineers where she introduced the world to an amazingly diverse group of engineers: a Canadian Space Agency flight controller, the CEO of a FemTech, a quantum physicist ballerina, a drag queen scientist, a rocket scientist, and an engineering content creator to name just some of her diverse guests.
Her series gained over 60,000 video views, and Shrouk used the series in part to raise funds for the Association for Black and Ethnic Minority Engineers (AFBE).
For her master’s thesis, Shrouk created a machine that used new methods of detecting some organic compounds, including certain cancers, based on electron quantum spin. Her research was a step towards replacing existing current Electron Spin Resonance machines (ESR), which can be bulky and extremely expensive.
It proved that an ESR machine could replace existing technologies that cost over £100,000 and fill an entire room, with a machine that costs £300 to make and fits within one square metre.
In summary, here awards and recognition include:
Named as one of the 100 Most Influential Women of 2018 by the BBC
Named as Young Woman of the Year 2018 by the United Nations refugee agency.
Named as one of the Top 6 Young Women Engineers by the IET of 2019 & 2020
Founder & Chair of Trustees of Shrouk El-Attar Trust (SEAT)
Engineering Content Creator for RS Components
Community / STEM
Shrouk uses her Egyptian heritage as an Egyptian dancer and as a drag performer to raise awareness and funds for the LGBT+ community in Egypt.
She has performed all over the world including in India and Japan, and her performance work has funded, for LGBT+ Egyptians, access to mental health support, safer housing, and safer meeting spaces through her charity, Shrouk El-Attar Trust (SEAT).
Shrouk secured funding with RS Components to teach how to build your own Egyptian dancing robot to 20 LGBT+ refugees and is hoping to secure further funding to reach a wider community.
She is currently doing a residency at Bristol-based Watershed, building an Egyptian dancing robot to join her in performances and spark the interest of the creative community who attend her shows in engineering and robotics.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Shrouk joined a team of volunteer engineers at Helpful Engineering, created by engineer Darren Lewis. Shrouk led the electronics team, some of whom have never designed manufacturable electronics before, to create an open source emergency ventilator called OpenVent.
She is also a public speaker and gives countless talks, including for TEDx, and spoke at the UK’s Westminster Parliament on issues regarding access to engineering and refugee rights. One of her speeches was referenced by Baroness Sally Hamwee for a bill affecting 20,000 Syrian refugees’ access to education.
Recently, she started a new series – ShroukieTronix! The Shroukie Show about Electronics, where she builds an electronics lab in her bedroom to make electronic engineering more accessible and seem more approachable. Mid-term reports for the series show over 60,000 page views so far.
She is pictured above receiving her award from Isabella Mascarenhas (VP, Grass Roots & Shining Stars, RS Group), one of the EW BrightSparks judges, and Richard Watts (emap MD, publisher of Electronics Weekly). Congratulations to Shrouk!