Life After IIT - Manish Sinha

  

 

It’s been a while since graduating from IITB. IIT was indeed a “Fourier” (four-year) transform from a young boy coming out of protected/safe environment of St. Xavier’s school in Bokaro to a metro of Bombay. My dad had warned me to keep some money tucked away as he was sure my pocket will be picked in the crowded subways. I am happy to report that, yes, once I did find a stranger’s hand in my pocket in the crowded subway at near VT, but wallet never got picked. I have lot of such anecdotes and stories about the wonderful friends and experiences at IITB but this blog will focus more on life after IIT.

After finishing undergrad, I briefly joined my BTP advisor for an R&D assignment at Pune but within a few months left for US. Thanks to excellent course of Prof K.P. Madhavan which sparked interest in process control, I have since continued in that area in grad school and professional life. I am now a staff technical specialist developing control system for hydrogen fuel cell engines for applications both GM and Honda. Picture above is an autonomous zero emission hydrogen fuel cell platform/chassis that can be used in multiple applications such as trucks, cargo delivery, emergency recovery, more at this link.

Some of my first experiences in US was that things were less formal and focus was more on learning and solving problems and less on formalities. Professors did not like to be called “Sir” or even by their last name and preferred first name basis. Another thing struck me was how many of my classmates were juggling family life, kids, second job, and still pursuing higher education funded by student loans. Even with scholarship, I too worked part time at burger king during lunch to fund my extracurricular hobbies! For research, I dabbled into neural network and pattern recognition for nonlinear control in my MS and continued with similar area in PhD in model predictive control and nonlinear optimization. Course work was a breeze, thanks to solid foundation at IIT, but most of the time in grad school was on research activities. I was fortunate to find an advisor with an entrepreneurial mindset and jointly developed a control system design and training simulator which has now spawned into a startup company – www.controlstation.com. Another experience that comes to mind is that to formally getting admitted into PhD one had to go through a rigorous full day exam (reminded me of JEE!) which was open book with an emphasis on not cramming things up but on being able to find information and building on existing knowledge. So, I showed up with a suitcase full of books (many of the tattered paperback version of classical books from IIT days) and one of the problem was a from a solved example from Octave Levenspiel’s reaction engineering book. So, I just wrote the answer without any derivation and referred the page number of the book. Again, the point here is that as we start going from undergrad to real life, emphasis is on understanding the big picture and connecting dots rather than reinventing things from scratch.

You will end up spending most of your adult life working, invest some time in introspection and find an area that will give you joy - you will have much easier and fun time excelling and reaching your potential. Many in US change their career path even after MS, one of my classmates switched to medical after finishing MS in chemical engineering, and now is a heart surgeon. Many other classmates from IIT have become successful applying analytical skills in other areas like finance and management. I stayed with engineering and enjoy every day solving fuel cell puzzles and have authored about 40 patents in this area. Whatever floats your boat. Keep your eyes open, gather as much data as possible, and don’t close your mind to possibilities. You have the best asset of being part of IIT, use it and reach out to seniors who may be in different areas and seek advice and help, if they can do it, so can you. Most will be happy to help.