Dr. Steve Mackay is the founder of the Engineering Institute of Technology. He firmly believes in Nelson Mandela’s mantra that, “Education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to change the world.” His leadership has inspired EIT’s unique and distinctive approach to engineering education.

Since 2008 three core objectives define the essence of the institute:

Collaborating comprehensively with industry to ensure graduates are job-ready.
Employing platforms of learning to facilitate student accessibility and engagement.
Keeping the business of education student-centric.

Dr. Mackay has enjoyed a varied career in engineering, having worked in automation, data acquisition, instrumentation, data communications, and process control throughout Australia, Europe, Africa, and North America over the past 35 years. He has successfully pioneered the application of new technologies in Australia and overseas, installing industrial data communication systems and implementing live online education, (including remote laboratories), for engineering students worldwide. Dr. Mackay has been involved in a range of industries, including power stations, mining, mineral processing, oil/gas/petrochemical plants, and platforms. He has presented courses on industrial data communications, data acquisition, instrumentation, and process control to over 30,000 engineers and technicians worldwide for clients such as NASA, Rolls Royce, and BP. He has also co-authored and edited 25 engineering books that have been published across the world. Dr. Mackay is a Fellow of Engineers Australia with a license to practice as a Chemical, Mechanical, and Electrical Chartered Professional Engineer. As Dean of the Engineering Institute of Technology, Dr. Mackay leads the institute in providing microcredentials and engineering qualifications to over 2000 students per year from 140 countries. He has an unswerving focus on student outcomes and on excellence in education.

And now for the weather…from an unmanned submarine

April 2, 2019 11:37 am
Chinese scientists have developed an unmanned vessel upon which weather rockets will be launched. It is called rocketsonde and was launched from the semi-submersible vehicle (USSV) network built by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics. It is reportedly expected to generate ‘long-term, continuous and real-time marine meteorological measurements, including atmospheric sounding...Read More

20 years of service: The ladies who run EIT in the UK

April 2, 2019 8:11 am
Carol Moverley and Alison Brown have been at the helm of the Engineering Institute of Technology’s (EIT) branch in the United Kingdom for the last twenty years. Their story not only details how technology has impacted on education and training over the years, but how the company itself has adapted...Read More

As Engineering Professionals Lying Simply Ain’t Cool

April 1, 2019 2:29 pm
The Art of Support: EIT’s Learning Support Officers InformationCategory Education10 September 2020Written by: Quintus Potgieter The Engineering Institute of Technology (EIT) is a unique global institute, delivering online engineering short courses, diplomas, and degrees. Students around the world log into EIT’s synchronous online virtual campus to network with other... Read...Read More

Internet of Things, alive and well?

April 1, 2019 2:17 pm
It seems engineering terms are becoming buzzwords within the industry. For example, words like The Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, the Blockchain — and more — are all misused in quickly rattled off articles and political speeches. In fact, it seems that the people peddling these...Read More

South Africa’s ‘darkest hours’ could be an opportunity for engineers in-training

March 29, 2019 3:13 pm
A decade of corruption, mismanagement, sabotage, poor power station designs, and a recent natural disaster has led to the implementation of more rolling blackouts in South Africa's energy sector. At the end of 2018, Eskom admitted that they were unsure when the next break in transmission was going to be....Read More

NASA cancels all-women spacewalk over suit sizing issue

March 29, 2019 9:57 am
It was close to being the first giant leap for womankind but is now a very public stumble for one of the world's leading space agencies. NASA announced on Monday that the first all-female spacewalk in history would be cancelled due to a somewhat confounding mistake from the same agency...Read More

A university and all TVET colleges in crisis in South Africa

March 25, 2019 3:51 pm
Students at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) and at the Technical Vocational Educational and Training (TVET) institutions in South Africa are facing a horror situation at the beginning of their academic year. At DUT some of the students are responsible. Their protests have been followed by vigorous retaliation from...Read More

New remote invigilation innovation to legitimize online education

March 25, 2019 11:40 am
Remote invigilation - otherwise known as online proctoring - might just be the critical factor when measuring the success of online higher education. Online education without digital supervision would naturally be a sticking point for education accreditation boards across the globe. It is not surprising, therefore, that online proctoring solutions...Read More

Are engineering graduates actually getting jobs in engineering?

March 25, 2019 11:03 am
Twenty-five percent of engineering graduates are jobless in India, according to a study published by the All India Professionals Congress. Whereas a study published 1,618 miles away, in the United Arab Emirates, indicates that there are not enough graduates to go around. This is in a region where engineers are...Read More

Australia’s drones deliver vaccines to those who need it most

March 25, 2019 10:52 am
Conflict and war are commonplace around the world and civilians are inevitably trapped in the midst of them. It is gratifying to report that engineering skill, in conjunction with technology, are working to alleviate some of the fall-out for the people caught up in these situations. This doughty combination of...Read More

The Western Cape’s big find is good news for engineers

March 14, 2019 3:02 pm
South Africa is a country with 27% of its population without work. Spirits have not been high for at least a decade; a struggling economy has been limping around entrenched and widespread governmental corruption. Thanks to a recent discovery, however, followed by an announcement by integrated oil and gas company...Read More

Engineering under the microscope after new aircraft disasters

March 14, 2019 2:35 pm
It is never pleasant to focus on engineering industry shortcomings. However, when new aircraft fall out of the sky, with multiple fatalities the result, the ugly business of discovering the faults commences. On Sunday, 10 March 2019, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 (flight ET302) belonging to Ethiopian Airlines crashed just...Read More

The company that launched the largest fleet of satellites in human history

March 13, 2019 11:27 am
Planet Labs has launched 146 satellites into space — officially it's the largest fleet of satellites in human history. The company began engineering the satellites with the intention of making each one roughly the size of a loaf of bread. They each weigh 12 pounds (5 kg). The satellites are...Read More

New surf park will be a civil engineering marvel

March 12, 2019 4:35 pm
Surely civil engineers who get to work on the world's largest and most up-and-coming vacation spots are the envy of their profession! South Korean (and Spanish) civil engineers will be hard at work on the world’s largest man-made surf park in Turtle Island, South Korea very soon. Spanish wave pool...Read More

The robot that might withstand a radioactive wasteland

March 12, 2019 4:03 pm
Toshiba Corp and General Electric have unveiled the robot that will again try to achieve what no robot has been able to accomplish before it; locating and removing the spent, melted nuclear fuel of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor number three. The cleanup and decommissioning of the three nuclear reactors...Read More

South Africa’s energy utility a failure of electrical engineering

March 12, 2019 3:41 pm
South Africa's energy utility is in dire straits. On the 11th of February 2019, the utility's engineers implemented Stage 4 load shedding on South Africa's main energy grid. Stage 4 load shedding indicated that the country was short 4,000MW of the peak capacity requirement of 27,000 MW due to what...Read More
Indumathi V -Deputy dean

Happy International Women’s Day, engineers! There’s work to do

March 8, 2019 11:12 am
Today is International Women's Day. EIT is celebrating the women who are currently filling positions in the engineering industry across the globe. However, most experts are cognizant that more needs to be done to encourage women to enter the engineering industry. The World Economic Forum reports that women account for...Read More

How to engineer around a polar vortex?

March 8, 2019 9:32 am
In the United States, the Midwest and Northeast have shivered their way through a winter they won't forget. They are calling it the coldest temperatures in a generation. If boiling water was thrown into the air, it would instantly freeze. The deep freeze is reminiscent of the Sci-Fi film The...Read More

Industrial automation growing manufacturing economies

March 7, 2019 1:31 pm
Industrial automation can transform the landscape of a country's workforce and economy. Countries are transitioning from mining economies, into manufacturing economies with the sometimes unseen fourth industrial revolution's slow march. Berg Insights reported that 4.6 million wireless devices were shipped globally in 2018 for the purpose of industrial automation. Industrial...Read More

Low-cost C02 water treatment tech developed

March 5, 2019 1:47 pm
Universal access to clean drinking water is a challenge our world continues to face. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 2.1 billion people lack safe drinking water at home. That equates to 3 in 10 people worldwide.  Moreover, twice as many people don't have access to basic sanitation. The...Read More

Reviewing Engineering Projects with a Meticulous Pre-Assessment or Pre-Mortem

March 1, 2019 4:05 pm
The Art of Support: EIT’s Learning Support Officers InformationCategory Education10 September 2020Written by: Quintus Potgieter The Engineering Institute of Technology (EIT) is a unique global institute, delivering online engineering short courses, diplomas, and degrees. Students around the world log into EIT’s synchronous online virtual campus to network with other... Read...Read More

A giant leap for AI and machine learning

February 25, 2019 10:56 am
Making computers think like humans is undeniably the next frontier that scientists and engineers are to trying to reach. However, machine learning, a field of computer science that programs computers with the ability to learn from data and make informed, adaptive, dynamic predictions, is currently reinventing the wheel in engineering...Read More

As Engineers Always Stick to Simple English

February 19, 2019 12:33 pm
Dear Colleagues, Surely, the KISS principle is one of the most useful engineering tools we have in our armory (KISS means Keep it Simple Stupid, for those who have forgotten). This should be applied to our writing so that it is simple and easy to understand. But this principle is...Read More

Aviation engineering changing shape

February 14, 2019 1:49 pm
The prototype of the world's longest aircraft is being retired, with new aircraft innovation promised to hit the market soon. The aircraft in question was the Airlander 10: a weirdly shaped plane-airship/blimp that showed what the future of air travel could look like. Needless to say, it does not look...Read More

The social value of civil engineering

February 14, 2019 1:39 pm
India's most famous civil engineer, Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, once said: ‘Work is worship.' Gustave Eiffel, the French civil engineer responsible for the Eiffel Tower, said: “Can one think that because we are engineers, beauty does not preoccupy us or that we do not try to build beautiful, as well as...Read More

Mechanical engineering, AI, and software driving the future

February 14, 2019 1:26 pm
In January 2019, the Consumer Electronics Show kicked off in Las Vegas, Nevada. And it seems mechanical engineering, propped up by artificial intelligence, is the talk of the town. Mercedes-Benz rolled their latest marvel of mechanical engineering out on the floor, touting some impressive artificially intelligent add-ons. The car’s name...Read More

Making bridges and buildings safer with lessons from steel

February 13, 2019 1:38 pm
Pearlitic steel, or pearlite, is one of the most durable materials in the world. This microstructure occurs in steel and can be made into steel wire. You might have seen these wires bundled together into ropes for suspension bridges or steel cords for tire reinforcement. They are also prevalent in...Read More

The oncoming battery revolution

February 13, 2019 10:14 am
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been working on nano-electrofuel (NEF) flow batteries for electric aviation. This means they could eventually power aircraft with non-explosive liquid rechargeable batteries. The development of these flow batteries is being done by the Armstrong Flight Research Center's Aqueous Quick-Charging Battery Integration for Flight...Read More

5G smart factories on the industrial automation horizon

February 7, 2019 4:07 pm
The World Economic Forum is inviting other industrial companies to study nine world-leading smart factories they have identified as having the latest in automation technology. Not surprisingly, these ‘manufacturing lighthouses' as the WEF call them, utilize the Industrial Internet of Things, and in their opinion show the most promise in...Read More

AI and technology, leaving no student behind

February 7, 2019 11:43 am
Artificial Intelligence may be the key to empowering rural education and ensuring a future where no students get left behind. At least that's what venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee believes. The momentum behind Artificial Intelligence does not seem to be slowing down. Some of the biggest companies in the world are...Read More

EIT in Nepal

February 7, 2019 8:52 am
The Engineering Institute of Technology visited Kathmandu in Nepal, meeting with students and families in the area to encourage ongoing engineering education and skills development. Nepal is a landlocked country in South Asia and is located mainly in the Himalayas. It has an estimated population of 26.4 million people. It...Read More

Australia’s Education Bias Revealed

February 7, 2019 8:31 am
The Australian government is favouring universities and neglecting the vocational training sector. This is according to recent reports issued by the Australian Industry Group (AI Group). They charge the government with funding bias. The AI Group says that tertiary education is “seriously unbalanced, has no coherent policy and lacks a...Read More

As an Engineering Professional Always Work Hard on Getting Accurate Feedback

February 1, 2019 2:29 pm
Dear Colleagues It is always hard to know genuinely how well or badly you are doing in your job when you try and get honest opinions from those around you. Especially if you are leading a team. The last thing on their mind is for a team member to give...Read More

In focus: Zimbabwe’s internet shutdown

February 1, 2019 1:48 pm
The week of the 14th of January 2019 was an eventful week in Zimbabwe. Weekend protests against the doubling of the fuel price in Zimbabwe spilled over into the Monday - and the government was ready to retaliate. Citizens woke to an SMS alert from their biggest mobile operator, EWZ:...Read More

Remote Lab Upgrade Incoming

January 14, 2019 8:23 am
Hi everyone, A few weeks back we sent an email out to our students regarding their overall experiences with the Remote Labs. The feedback we received was extremely comprehensive; allowing us to identify and mitigate the primary points of confusions. To subsequently amend this, we are rolling out a new...Read More

A ‘kite’ could provide electricity for many around the world in 2019

January 11, 2019 1:54 pm
Mechanical engineers are ready to unveil the mechanical clean energy technology that has been 10 years in the making. The engineering firm behind it is named Makani, a company tied to Alphabet’s Google X Lab. The purpose of the company is to ‘create radical new technologies to solve some of...Read More

A new year of engineering innovation commences

January 7, 2019 2:04 pm
As 2019 begins another year of engineering innovation lies ahead. This year’s engineering buzzword is: REVOLUTION. The cutting edge technologies that have begun to change the way engineers are educated and the way they perform their tasks in the workplace will only increase. The Engineer, a UK based engineering magazine,...Read More

Quick repair on earthquake damaged roads

January 7, 2019 12:02 pm
An earthquake rocked the city of Anchorage in the state of Alaska on Friday the 30th of November 2018. On the Richter scale, it measured in at 7.0. Since then 1,000 aftershocks have been observed. Not since 1964 had there been such an intense earthquake in the area. Thankfully, there...Read More

The skills you’ll need in the next three years

January 7, 2019 11:58 am
A substantive reduction in the global workforce - due to automation - is expected to occur in the next 3 years. However, according to a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF), some businesses are more excited than anxious. The WEF report states that 38% of businesses are positive about...Read More

In the name of manufacturing, mechanical engineers study Wombat faeces

January 7, 2019 11:42 am
Engineers often borrow from the natural world and biological processes for their work. But there was one natural process engineers could not fathom, or rather failed to take the time to figure out. Why, or how it is that a wombat’s faecal matter is cube-shaped. The process of copying some...Read More

Low cost sensors to produce better air quality data

January 7, 2019 11:23 am
Another Black Friday and a Cyber Monday have come and gone, as has Christmas and Boxing Day. According to VOX, it is estimated that the US Postal Service makes 850 million deliveries from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. That equates to a lot of parcel deliveries via a host of...Read More

Industrial automation’s effect on the electricity industry

January 7, 2019 10:55 am
With the proliferation of renewable energy, industrial automation and electrical engineers are banding together to create the power grids of the future. The latest automated mechanisms making factories more efficient are also making their way into the electricity distribution industry - for smarter power grids. Future-proof energy grids which use...Read More

EIT’s Australian Graduate Gala

December 14, 2018 9:37 am
On Friday 23rd November the Perth team at the Engineering Institute of Technology was all dressed up and in celebration mode: we were delighted to be gathered to congratulate our 2018 Australian graduates. A number of these clever people had convened, from all around Australia, and were also joined by...Read More

The 2018 TEQSA Conference – EIT’s Dean of Engineering presents a paper

December 14, 2018 8:18 am
At TEQSA’s third annual conference in Melbourne, at the end of November, Dr Steve Mackay presented a paper on the Development of a Career Advisory Site; it summarised his research to date - applying machine learning techniques to millions of job adverts around the world. Caroline Patterson also attended the...Read More

Holographic lectures now a reality

December 13, 2018 4:02 pm
The technological advancement in education has lagged behind other industries. Yet there are technologies available that would transform the classroom, the lecture hall, or even a person’s home, and ultimately transform learning. The Future of Management Education Alliance wants to bring these technologies to the learners of the 21st century....Read More

Mechanized warfare: Remembering the introduction of the tank in WWI

December 11, 2018 8:05 am
2018 marked 100 years since the end of World War I. On the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, of the eleventh hour in 1918, the Allies of World War I and Germany signed a treaty that ended the war. World War I was a turning point in warfare. In...Read More

An undersea hotel room is the latest civil engineering marvel

December 10, 2018 3:48 pm
With the festive season just around the corner, it might be time to start planning your next vacation. While on holiday, you might be able to admire some impressive feats of civil engineering. That much is true if you're visiting the Maldives this year. A structural engineer from Auckland is...Read More

Trump says Navy must use steam, not electromagnetism

December 10, 2018 3:13 pm
President of the United States, Donald Trump, phoned American Navy service members on Thanksgiving to discuss their aircraft catapult system. On the phone with the commander of the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier, Trump asked a few questions about the system they were using. Catapults are used to get the...Read More

Powering ships in a new (rotten) fashion

December 5, 2018 9:13 am
It's the year 2021. You are on a cruise ship, soaking in the sun, inhaling crystal clean air, and drinking a cocktail. While you're on this vacation, it never occurs to you that the very ship you are on is being powered by rotten fish. Yep. The Norwegian cruise liner...Read More

Fix it or replace it? Troubleshooting engineers save a city $10 million

December 4, 2018 3:47 pm
For 15 years, the city of Gweru in central Zimbabwe has been increasingly dry, with water failing to flow into one of their reservoirs. However new water infrastructure would cost the council US $10 million. Since Zimbabwe is enduring extraordinarily tough economic times, an expense of this magnitude was daunting....Read More