Society joins the global body for engineering and technology

By joining CAETS, the Society is now a member of all three major peak bodies across science, technology and the humanities – the others being the International Science Council (covering natural and social sciences) and the Union Academique Internationale (covering humanities). Through such memberships we have a voice in the peak global bodies, can benefit from their activities at an international level, and have the opportunity to learn from others.  Other national members of CAETS include the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), the National Academy of Engineering (USA) and the Academy of Technology and Engineering (Australia). Serbia and Nigeria also joined at the same time as ourselves.

CAETS is very much grounded in both research and the advancement of engineering and technology through world-class intellectual endeavour. Its national members typically have Fellows drawn from academia, applied research organisations and from the innovation communities within the private sector. By sharing practices with such academies, we hope to learn how they draw on their diverse groups of Fellows to strengthen activities such as the giving of expert advice to governments. Working with imprecise information but needing to develop practical solutions is very much part of the ethos of engineering and technology outside academia. On practical issues such as adapting to climate change, expert panels which put together engineers and technologists working outside universities  with social scientists, humanities scholars and scientists can be expected to develop richer and better quality expert advice.