If you’ve walked through Mechanical Engineering over the last decade, you’ve felt the impact of Mykal Riley – our Communications, Marketing and Events Manager. He is featured as one of our ‘Faces of UCL’, a campaign celebrating the incredible people shaping the UCL community through their ideas, energy and impact.
When Mykal joined UCL MechEng in 2014, he noticed the department needed what he beautifully calls “a bit of a hug”—a stronger sense of belonging and shared life. Ever since, he has been using his unique background in commercial music, radio, and TV to inject a little bit of showbiz and a lot of warmth into the engineering world.
From student socials and legendary Christmas parties to massive public events, Mykal has transformed how the department connects. He took engineering storytelling institution-wide, producing The Wonders live show for the UCL Festival of Engineering and bringing science, comedy, and music together on stage at The Bloomsbury Theatre for Cosmic UCL.
For Mykal, UCL isn’t just a workplace - it’s his “little town” in the middle of London. His efforts to build an unstoppable community have won him prestigious staff awards, but his absolute favourite memory here? It’s the time MechEng students custom-designed a fake currency for Lunar New Year with his own face printed right on the notes.
If you’ve been on a MechEng trip, joined one of our events, or happen to have a “Mykal dollar” tucked away in your wallet, you know exactly how much joy and culture he brings to campus.
Read the full interview here: http://ucl.ac.uk/about/search-faces-ucl/engineering-community-mykal-riley-heart-ucl-mecheng
