Dr Shreekant Agarwal is a quintessential ASEI “Lifer” In this conversation with ASEI President Piyush Malik, he shares his professional journey as well as origins of his ASEI Involvement till date. He also shared how he selected his engineering branch and followed his passion for Aeronautical engineering and how he has been involved with design and development of Flight systems, defence fighter jets, missiles as well as now very cool urban air mobility autonomous machines. It was fascinating to learn more about his passion for his chosen field where he uses principles of maths and physics on a daily basis on the job till date!
His journey from India to US started from IIT Kharagpur where he earned a BTech degree and came to US for Masters at University of Maryland. He went on to get his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan.
His involvement in ASEI started in 2005 when he planned for and chaired a successful National Convention in Los Angeles held in 2006. He was an executive board member of the Southern California chapter from 2004 until 2009. He served as the president of the SoCal chapter from 2007 to 2009. He also served as the treasurer and board member of the ASEI National from 2010 to 2011, and then as the chairman of the ASEI National from 2011 to 2013. Since then, he has served as an advisory board member.
Dr. Agrawal has been in the aerospace profession for 4 decades. For his contributions to the industry, he was selected Engineer of the Year by the Chinese Institute of Engineers, USA,in 2004.
He is currently the head of Flight Technology at the Urban Air Mobility Division of the Hyundai Motor Group. He joined at the beginning of 2021. Earlier, he was at the Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems in Redondo Beach, CA, where he worked for over 6 years as a director of Flight Sciences within the Vehicle Engineering directorate. In that role, he provided functional excellence in terms of people, processes, tools, and products. Prior to joining NorthropGrumman, he worked at the Boeing company for about 29 years, where he had a variety of assignments in functional, program management, and technology management, and was a technical fellow since 1996 in the Boeing Research & Technology Flight Sciences organization,managing and working on supersonic low-boom research projects, strategic planning for technology development for future products, and corporate initiatives.
He also spoke about an interesting stint where he has served as the chief operating officer and director of operations for a joint venture between Boeing and Tata in the Boeing Defense Military Aircraft Division.
He was the program manager for the Boeing Defense Engineering common process development and implementation across all sites and new programs. He also worked in the Boeing Defense Air Force Space Systems engineering management organization, where he led the processes and tools effort (systems engineering, program management best practices, CMMI, etc.) for military satellites, and was the sector technology integration leader.
As a leader of the High-Speed Aerodynamics Technology group and as a leader of the NASA/Industry High Speed Research program, he led the aerodynamics, flight controls, stability control, laminar flow control, propulsion/airframe integration, and sonic boom research efforts.
His contributions range from developing and applying advanced aerodynamics/computational analysis and design optimization methods for military aircraft, supersonic commercial transport, hypersonic missiles, and space launch vehicles. He has contributed to the development of products such as F/A-18E/F, T-45, Air Refueling Tanker, hypersonic missiles, and several development programs. He has 12 publications in the archival journals, over 50 papers in various conferences, and 1 patent on supersonic aircraft design.
The conversation also touched on the latest space industry trend- Space Tourism and the commercial and entrepreneurial opportunities it offers. He shared his thoughts about the euphoria on opening up space tourism with Sir Branson and Jeff Bezos going onto space in July and all the hoopla about us becoming a multi planetary species. He had a clear message for audience wanting to explore Space Tech- “it’s red hot and get involved!”
During this discussion Dr Agrawal also emphasized the role that organizations like ASEI play and their importance and why should folks join hands with ASEI. This very inspiring discussion went from zoom to youtube live chat to an extended audio chat session on Clubhouse, the latter being the latest “experiment” in social media that we at ASEI are exploring for spreading our message to a wider audience. Would love your feedback on our programs, especially this episode of Engineering Tales!
This article is based on conversations Aditya Guthey, an ASEI Silicon Valley chapter member and a career coach has had with Sania Jain for ASEI Youth Corner. A short excerpt is here ASEI has a partnership with MoonshotJr – a Silicon Valley based startup that accelerates youths’ path from STEM education to entrepreneurship. Click to avail special offers for ASEI community.
