Iron Man, The Transformers, Stephen Hawking and Top Gear Star James May are among the characters, real and fictional, who could help inspire a new generation of engineers, a charity has said.
Career Academies UK, which helps young people prepare for the world of work, said its research has suggested blockbuster movies and celebrities help project a positive image of engineering to would-be students.
Other celebrities mentioned in the survey included TV scientist Brian Cox and comedian Dara O'Briain.
Nearly half of respondents (47%) recognised that engineering opens up a wide range of job opportunities, but nearly 40% never considered it as a career and the same proportion thought they needed a top degree to enter the profession.
The results were published a few days after the Hays Global Skills Index claimed that a talent mismatch was hampering economic recovery, with too few skilled engineers to work on major infrastructure projects such as the new Queensferry Crossing.
The survey was conducted among students enrolled in the charity's Career Academy programmes, running in more than 140 schools and colleges across the UK. Nearly one third of the charity's students are in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Career Academy.
It coincides with the start of a campaign today to change outdated perceptions about engineering careers among young people, their parents and teachers.
Despite modern technology which dominates today's engineering, the survey found the sector is still seen as a dirty, outdoors career best suited to men (33%). The majority of the students (78%) said they have not received enough careers advice on engineering, and only 20% could name a famous engineer (Isambard Kingdom Brunel was the most popular answer).
Anne Spackman, executive director of Careers Academies UK, said: "Engineering is an area rich in job opportunities but lacking the skilled workers to fill them. Career Academies UK is helping to grow the number of potential recruits through its 50 STEM programmes in schools across the country."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article