The IET (The Institution of Engineering and Technology) Achievement Awards celebrate the incredible talent within engineering and technology, with a wide range of categories to recognise people who have made a real impact in their industry. This year’s shortlist sees Kainos Product Consultant Lauren Burns, who joined Kainos through our Earn As You Learn Scheme during her undergraduate Computing Systems degree, marked as a finalist for the prestigious industry award.
Since Lauren joined Kainos in 2016, she’s grown into a fantastic developer that adds enormous value to any team she joins. Throughout her career, Lauren has gone above and beyond her day-to-day role, including leading on our Kainos CodeCamps and Earn As You Learn scheme.
Lauren’s passion for technology expands far past her day job, and as a result she regularly attends hackathons to continue exploring new technologies. Recently Lauren won the Women Who Code (WWC) global hackathon with a machine learning (ML) solution that predicts the likelihood that a patient admitted to hospital with COVID-19 would require admittance to the ICU. This system can help hospitals manage the supplies required to save critically ill patients.
Last year, Lauren lead the “Corgi Undergraduate Women in Tech Community” based in Belfast. This is a community group aimed to support young women just starting their STEM careers by building a support network and teaching them the key skills needed to kick-start their careers. Lauren was responsible for overseeing all committee activities and the committee’s 6 members. Lauren’s proudest achievement is not only sustaining such a new community throughout the pandemic but expanding it and providing support for all the new undergraduates that are struggling to cope with this new way of living.
As well as this, Lauren is currently embarking on a project to decrease the diagnosis times for women suffering from endometriosis, to help to close the gender health gap by securely collecting this data for research purposes. With the value Lauren has already contributed to the technology industry, and the sheer number of people she’s supported, she is truly a fantastic role model to inspire the bright new engineers of tomorrow.
Lauren has always worked hard, putting her absolute best into everything she does. This has translated into her being awarded the Ulster University Gold Dean’s List Award for consistent academic excellence throughout her degree, the WWC Youth Advocate Award, and now this shortlisting from the Institute of Engineering and Technology.
Speaking on her shortlisting, Lauren said:
"I felt so honoured that Kainos wanted to put me forward, so when I found out that I was a finalist I was over the moon! To even be considered when there are so many apprentices out there doing incredible things was just so special. It’s the perfect way to sum up the incredible personal, and career journey that I’ve been on for the last 5 years."