JEDI Team Attends the 2026 CERI Conference

On the 18th of June three of our JEDI team members— Alexandra Broderick Khan, Eímear Quinn and Jennifer Keenahan— attended the 2026 Civil Engineering Research in Ireland (CERI) conference at Queen’s University Belfast. Students and professionals across Ireland gathered to discuss several interesting topics such as transport, geotechnics, climate action, bridges, structures, environmental engineering and more. 

During the Innovations and Teachings session, I, Alexandra, presented on the Junior Engineer Development Initiative (JEDI) programme and the JEDI Perceptions Study, while Eímear presented on the co-delivery and collaboration between teachers and engineers within the programme. It was a wonderful opportunity to share JEDI with an audience of professionals from engineering companies, and academics from Irish universities and technological universities. They were very keen to discuss our findings and the challenges that exist for primary school children to engage with engineering. Some even expressed interest in getting involved in future rollouts of JEDI. We were really proud to hear such praise about the project, and how our research on inclusion and diversity in engineering resonated with their own experience working in the field. Other presenters showcased fascinating research and projects during this session including the use of AI in third-level engineering, virtual reality as an accessible engineering learning tool, and more.

The day ended with a conference dinner and awards ceremony at Belfast City Hall, where Jennifer was mentioned for her invaluable contribution as Treasurer for CERI. It was a fantastic event overall and we are looking forward to continuing to disseminate findings and insights from JEDI.

To read our conference papers on JEDI please click the following link and see pages 409 and 429: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vNoYI6SHq1KAOcVk_YSnwN-KbuXDqKHC/view?usp=sharing 

Note: These papers are part of the Civil Engineering Research in Ireland (CERI) 2026 Conference. Copyright of these papers rest with the CERI2026 Conference and are available for noncommercial use only under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Written by Alexandra Broderick Khan.