A mechanical engineer at the UK’s Lancaster University, Lucy Rogers turned an accidental PhD into a career spanning Robot Wars and extreme environments engineering.
Trained as a mechanical engineer at UK’s Lancaster University, Rogers spent her PhD studying how bubbles behave in petrochemical firefighting systems, which earned her the nickname “Dr. of Bubbles.
” A mechanical engineer trained at Lancaster University, Rogers earned the nickname “Dr. of Bubbles” for her PhD work on bubble behavior in petrochemical firefighting systems. Since then, she’s built a career that spans industry, education, and public engagement—from working at Rolls-Royce to judging on Elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2020 and awarded an MBE in 2024, Rogers now focuses on innovation in extreme conditions.
As a visiting professor at Brunel University London and an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury, she is developing the Extreme Environments Engineering Hub , exploring how technologies perform in places like Antarctica and space. Dr. Lucy Rogers: When I was very young, a TV program called ‘Play School’ had a section where you ‘go through the round window,’ that would go into a factory, or a toy to see how things are made.
I always loved learning how things were made, and I enjoyed making things. At school, we had a club that encouraged us to make contraptions. And after one explosive accident, my physics teacher suggested I become an engineer. I did an “Insight into Engineering” course run by WISE for 17/18 year old girls and became hooked.
I like solving practical problems. It took me many years before electronics and computing also became tools in my toolbox. Now I play happily with all things engineering. After completing your studies at Lancaster, you explored how bubbles form during your PhD.
What first sparked your interest in that topic? That was an accidental PhD. After completing the graduate training scheme at Rolls Royce Industrial Power Group, I was looking for a new challenge. There was a scheme that put recent graduates into small businesses to work on research projects.
They knew that the kit they were using that would throw foam onto a petrochemical fire worked, but no one knew exactly how it worked. I was employed to work that out – I used a high speed video camera to see what was actually going on. I was told that if I wrote it up it could be submitted for a PhD.
So I did and became a “Industrial Power group all the way through my degree, including a sandwich year placement between my 2nd and 3rd years at University. This involved three months in many different departments – design, production, purchasing, on-site, etc. It gave me a good insight into how the whole company worked and which areas I most enjoyed. I thought it would be design, but it turned out to be production.
Sadly, after the Graduate Training Scheme finished and I got my first role within the company, I was told by the Senior Engineer that, as far as he was concerned, women couldn’t be engineers. I decided to leave the company rather than fight these attitudes. Following your PhD, you co-founded an IT consultancy during the Y2K era. What did that experience teach you?
I learned that many people working on a common problem can achieve remarkable things, and that automating the dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs can free humans to do more creative work. You’ve also described your time at Singularity University in 2011 as a pivotal moment in your career. Why? Having spent time in IT consultancy, I realized I needed to catch up on current engineering developments.
At the time, Singularity was excellent not just at bringing me up to date but also at propelling me into future technologies.fly’s eyesThrough Makertorium, you’ve developed a number of creative engineering solutions, from animatronic dinosaurs powered by Raspberry Pi to low-cost IoT sensors. What kinds of problems do you most enjoy solving as an inventor? The ones that have an element of fun, the unusual, the quirky. But also the useful.
I’m currently investigating with the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, setting up an Extreme Environments Engineering Hub makes people shut down and ignore things they may otherwise find fascinating. Your new book, Up: A Scientist’s Guide to the Magic Above Us,” just came out. What can readers expect from it? Imagine you’re on your back on a picnic blanket, you’re looking up.
What brings you joy? This book takes you on adventures across the world to discover the extraordinary stories of things we may see as everyday, but often ignore, such as the flight of a butterfly, the formation of a rainbow, or how we get a satellite into space. What inspired you to take a more exploratory, adventure-driven approach to science writing in this book? I love stories.
I’ve been to many storytelling festivals and events and can easily remember many of the stories I have heard there. Stories stick in our minds. I didn’t want this book to be just a reference book. , and an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
I’m teaching creativity and communication skills to engineering students. As children, if we study sciences, we are not often encouraged to also be creative.
However, I believe by not giving our creativity, and curiosity, a chance to develop, we are limiting ourselves to always think like we have always thought. Progress is often made by curious and creative people making things that solve problems for themselves. Failure is extremely important. Imagine a small child, first learning to walk.
If they gave up the first time they fell back down, nobody would ever walk. However, after young childhood, failure is seen as bad. I often put myself in situations where I can have the beginners mind, from learning to Slackline, to trying a new craft or skill like juggling. I accept that I will not get it right the first time, and can learn.
This reflects in my work. Being scared of failure means we sometimes won’t try. Engineering is not often celebrated or acknowledged in the way I feel it should be, so to receive an MBE for services to Engineering is a great honor, and one that reflects the value of engineering to the wider world. Becoming a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering is also a great honor.
I have not had a ‘traditional’ engineering career. I am more of a generalist than a specialist, so this fellowship is not something I expected to be able to achieve.
However, the profession has increasingly recognized the importance of people who connect disciplines, the ‘T-shaped’ engineers who bridge gaps between fields, so it feels like a signal that those kinds of roles are valued and accepted. What is the most important thing young engineers should know as they begin their career? We will see more frequent and severe natural disasters, driven by global warming.
Engineers will be needed to repair damage, reinforce infrastructure, and develop systems that help communities adapt and recover. I think resilience will be key in the next decade. Especially designing technologies and infrastructures that can withstand extreme conditions. Hence my focus on the Extreme Environments Engineering Hub .
Based in Skopje, North Macedonia. Her work has appeared in Daily Mail, Mirror, Daily Star, Yahoo, NationalWorld, Newsweek, Press Gazette and others. She covers stories on batteries, wind energy, sustainable shipping and new discoveries. When she's not chasing the next big science story, she's traveling, exploring new cultures, or enjoying good food with even better wine. Inside ChinaInterviewsBeyond EarthBeyond EarthEnergyTransportation
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