The Society's Special Interest Groups opened with its new website in September 2026. They cover the fields in which members work, every member may join them, and a member may belong to as many as they wish.
Why the Society opened them
Between one SET conference and the next there was no standing forum for members working on the same questions. Work in progress was presented once in the year or not at all, and collaborations formed at a conference had little to carry them through the months that followed. Each group now meets through the year, under a chair.
The groups
Architecture & the Built Environment, Artificial Intelligence & Innovation, Energy Storage & Conversion, Renewable Energy and Water, Waste & Pollution Control.
The workshops
Each group holds workshops twice a year. They run for ninety minutes, are held online and are led by the chair of the group. The dates are on each group's page and are sent by email to everyone in the group.
Speaking at one
Any member of a group may put a contribution on the programme: a title, a short description and a single illustration. A result obtained, a difficulty run into or a collaborator wanted are all welcome, and work that is not yet finished is what the format is for. Each contributor has five to ten minutes, followed by discussion.
Finding colleagues
Each group keeps a list of its members, visible to that group alone and showing institution and research interests, so that a member can find colleagues already working on a question before starting it themselves. A member appears on that list only by their own choice.
Joining a group
The groups page of a member's account shows the groups they belong to and the ones open to them, with the date of the next workshop beside each.