Keynote Speakers
Michael K. J. Milligan, CEO of ABET
Michael K. J. Milligan is the CEO of ABET, a global quality assurance organization focused on college and university programs in the disciplines of applied science, natural science, computing, engineering, and engineering technology.
Prior to joining ABET in 2009, Milligan was a systems director at the Aerospace Corporation, leading a team at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center developing the next generation environmental satellites for NOAA. Milligan served over 24 years as a career U.S. Air Force officer working in operations, engineering education, international research & development, technology acquisition.
Milligan earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, his M.S.E. from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and his B.S. from Michigan State University — all in electrical engineering. He also earned an M.B.A. in Business Administration from Western New England College, is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) in Colorado and Maryland, and a Certified Association Executive (CAE). He is also a certified Master Naturalist for the state of Maryland.
Emma Crichton, Engineers Without Borders UK
Engineering shapes our world, and Emma dedicates her career to reshaping how we engineer to secure a safe and just future for all.
Emma is a chartered civil engineer with over a decade of experience in the water and social sectors across the UK and India. A trained facilitator and passionate advocate for globally responsible engineering, Emma currently serves as Innovation Director at Engineers Without Borders UK, where she has expanded educational initiatives to deliver over a million hours of learning on globally responsible engineering annually.
Beyond her role at Engineers Without Borders, Emma is a trustee at Azuko, an architecture charity, and chair at the Useful Simple Trust, a certified B-Corp and Social Enterprise. She also represents Engineering UK on the board of the Engineering Council, the UK’s regulator for the engineering profession.
Sarah Hitt, Engineering Professors’ Council, Edinburgh Napier University, & NMITE
Dr Sarah Jayne Hitt has been teaching in universities for almost 20 years in both the US and the UK. After earning her PhD in Literature (specializing in Native American Studies and Literature of the American West), she was surprised to find herself establishing a career in engineering education at the Colorado School of Mines. There, she served as the Director of the Writing Center, Director of the McBride Honors Program in Public Affairs, and Founding Director of a First Year Program designed to bring the arts into ethical engineering design and to recruit diverse students to engineering.
In 2019 she moved to the UK to become Founding Professor of Liberal Studies at Hereford’s start-up higher education provider, the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE), specializing in integrating ethics, communication, and sustainability in the project-based curriculum. Now, she acts as Project Manager for the Engineering Professors’ Council’s Ethics and Sustainability Toolkits, is Visiting Professor in the School of Computing, Engineering, and the Built Environment at Edinburgh Napier University, and is Lead for Transferable Skills at NMITE’s Centre for Advanced Timber Technology. She has recently published work in Science and Engineering Ethics and the International Handbook of Engineering Education Research.
Michele John, Curtin University
Professor Michele John is the Director of the Sustainable Engineering Group (SEG), Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. Her teaching and research encompasses a wide spectrum of disciplines including life cycle engineering, environmental impact assessment, climate change, eco-efficient production, industrial symbiosis, waste management and sustainability education.
She has published two books in sustainability education ‘Engineering education for Sustainable Development’ (Wiley, 2022), co-authored with A/Prof Wahidul Biswas and ‘The Routledge Handbook on Global Sustainability Knowledge and Thinking in the 21st Century” (Taylor and Francis, 2024).
Michele has been the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the Recycling Journal since 2014.
Michele’s research interests include sustainable industrial production, sustainability assessment and measurement, corporate stewardship values, sustainability governance models and sustainability education development. Michele’s teaching and supervision programs are committed to the development of multi and trans-disciplinary sustainability education and the development of sustainability leadership ethos and accountability.