Keynote speakers

Caroline is Professor of Integrated Engineering and Social Justice at the University of San Diego, and Director of MESH – MS in Engineering, Sustainability and Health. She brings over 30 years of experience in teaching engineering across multiple engineering disciplines and countries, research and development in engineering and education as well as community development and social justice work. Previously she was Chair of Engineering Education for the Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics at University of Western Australia, Chair of Engineering Education at Queens University, Canada, educational developer and materials lecturer at Imperial College, UK and the University of Sydney as well as holding a three year position founding and running the Materials Engineering Subject Centre in the UK.

Baillie’s research considers socio-technical processes and systems, which enhance social justice, and educational systems that promote these. She brings lessons learnt from these studies and practices into the curriculum and the classroom to facilitate the transformation of future generations of engineers. In 2006 Baillie founded Waste for Life (wasteforlife.org), to ‘practice what she preached’ as a socially just engineer. WFL ‘socialises knowledge’ about materials engineering with communities wishing to transform waste into composite material products for income generation. Her most recent program, ‘Standing People Together’ http://wasteforlife.org/spt/ adapts forest school / nature based pedagogy in support of grassroots community action. Baillie also co-founded the Engineering Social Justice and Peace network in 2004 (esjp.org).

She has published 27 scholarly books, an edited series of books on ‘Engineers, Technology and Society’ and over 200 book chapters, peer reviewed journal and conference papers. Her most recent book, (Coedited by Paul Kadetz )‘Reimagining Engineering Education: Health. Justice. Sustainability’ with Springer will be out in 2024.

Rod was appointed Chair of He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission in December 2019. Prior to that he had spent ten years as Vice Chancellor of University of Canterbury, five years as Chief Executive of Jade Software Corporation Limited and in his time served as Deputy Governor, Acting Governor, non Executive Director and Chairman of the Board of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. His first career was in Banking and Finance with the Bank of New Zealand and National Australia Bank. Since 2018 he has been a director of ASB Limited, the wholly owned New Zealand subsidiary Commonwealth Bank of Australia. He Chairs ASB’s Risk and Compliance Committee.

Rod holds a PhD in Insurance and Risk Management and an MA in Applied Economics and Managerial Science, an MBA in money and finance and both an honours degree in law and an honours degree in economics. He was a director of Littleton Port Company for ten years and was a director of Crown Entity Otakaro which has overseen a billion dollars of construction in Te Pae, the Christchurch Convention Centre, and Metro Sports Centre in Christchurch. Rod was a founding trustee of the $100 million Christchurch Earthquake Appeal Trust and was a Trustee of the Christchurch Arts Centre which has been involved in a decade long $220 million restoration after the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes.

Jan is currently Pro-Vice-Chancellor Sustainability at the University of Canterbury, having previously been the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Engineering at the same university. Jan is also the President of Engineering New Zealand, a role she will hold for two years. Her previous governance experience includes many engineering startups, together with Transpower for seven years.

Jan specialised in electronic engineering during her earlier academic career in the UK, producing over 100 peer reviewed papers and supervising many PhD students. She also developed and led a 42 partner, 14 country European Union research project.