Alumnus wins UK's biggest engineering prize

Former Univ. of Edinburgh Fire Group member Dr Marianne Foley is part of the team that wom the 40th MacRobert Award, the UK's biggest prize for engineering innovation in Arup's visionary Beijing Aquatic Centre, known as the Water Cube.





Dr Marianne Foley is now a Senior Associate and Fire Safety Specialist in the Arup's Sydney Office. She has been awarded for her innovative work on the Water Cube by the National Association of Women in Construction, the Fire Prevention and Fire Engineers Journal in the UK, and also internally within Arup (the Margaret Law Award for Excellence in Fire Engineering).

Marianne graduated with an MEng at the University of Leeds and then joined the University of Edinburgh to do a PhD in Fire Safety Engineering under the supervision of Prof Dougal Drysdale - thesis entitled "The use of small scale fire test data for the hazard assessment of bulk materials". The project was supported by EPSRC and HSE (the Buxton Laboratory). After graduation in 1995, Marianne stayed on for a couple of years as an Research Associate, continuing with the project.


Follow this link to hear Marianne’s interview on BBC Woman’s Hour.