SWE CCEW Holds Workshop on Career Development
The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Global Affiliate at Cummins College of Engineering for Women (CCEW) in India organized a guest lecture on September 1, 2018. The session was conducted by Anand Lalwani.
About Anand Lalwani
Lalwani is currently pursuing his PhD at Stanford University in electrical engineering. He completed his Bachelor of Science in Engineering Physics with an emphasis on Photovoltaic Energy from Brown University of Engineering. Previously, he worked at E-14 Technologies on data analysis and design. He moved on to Mahindra Susten as a robotics intern in the research and development department and worked on an autonomous solar panel cleaning robot project. He did his third internship at Thermax Global where he worked for solar thermal and solar photovoltaic departments. Lalwani also interned at the Nuclear Power Corporation of India where he got in-depth knowledge about physics in nuclear reactors. He’s presently working as a consultant at Ampere Energy where he has worked on home and solar battery technologies and developed software for prediction algorithms using AI to reduce electricity bills.
Anand started off by talking about an incident that motivated him to get into this industry. He talked about how there were so many real world problems and situations that needed simple but efficient solutions. He cited as examples several small villages in India that don’t get enough electricity and water and the traffic problems in India. Next, he proposed a few thought-provoking solutions.
He went on to talk about how he led his team to build a satellite for NASA, the challenges they faced, and how they met their deadline. He also spoke about LiFePO4 batteries and their uses. Then, he spoke about how he found his projects and
internships only through networking and trying to solve real world problems. He explained the pros and cons of studying in the US, the difficulties Indians face in other countries, and he spoke about how they can apply and get into universities abroad.
He emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary work and how we could solve a lot of problems through communication, learning and co-working. He also spoke about start-ups and entrepreneurship. Students were encouraged to ask as many questions as they wanted. After the session, they had an opportunity to interact with him one-on-one.