Category: NEWS

MentorConnect 2023: Mentorship in Challenging Times

Asei 2021 New Initiatives And Launch Of Mentor Connect

February 28, 2021

The only thing constant in our lives is change and with the turn of the year, a new ASEI Board took shape and we have pledged to make a difference. We did not let the pandemic driven crisis go to waste and launched our social media and digital efforts . Building on the momentum from our recent 33rd National Convention held virtually, with fresh ideas and new vigour, our 2021 Annual General Meeting with Chief Guest UC San Diego Chancellor Dr Pradeep Kosla kicked off ASEI’s 2021 activities and initiatives into high gear.

The four Pillars of our strategy are:

1.MentorConnect (1:1 Mentoring with Engineering Executives)

2.UniversityConnect (Connecting with Indian origin Faculty and Students across Universities & Affiliation with Engineering and Sciences Bodies)

3.KnowledgeSharing (Engineering Tales spotlight series on exceptional ASEI members & Getting Real with Engineering Webinars)

4.Youth & STEM (Continue programs like Scholarships, Science Fairs and Youth Technology Exposition)

On Feb 27th, we had a launch event for Mentor Connect where ASEI Treasurer Ram Ramanujam kicked off with introductions and Sri Gavini moderated a panel discussion with 3 seasoned engineering executives Raj Gupta, Subu Subramanian and Ankur Ganguli shared lessons from their respective creer journeys. MentorConnect is a unique member benefit available for Free to all ASEI student and professional members. Registration is open now till March 21,2021

*** Post by : Piyush Malik , ASEI President *** Picture Credit: Divya Ashok, LifeMember ASEI Silicon Valley ***

Inspiring Youth Inventor And Budding Engineer- Sidharth Jain

National Engineers Week – (February 21 To 27)

February 23, 2021

The celebration of National Engineers Week was started in 1951 by the NSPE (National Society of Professional Engineers) in conjunction with George Washington’s birthday because he is considered as the nation’s first engineer, notably for his survey work. It is observed by more than 70 engineering, education, and cultural societies, and more than 50 corporations and government agencies. The purpose of National Engineers Week is to call attention to the contributions to society that engineers make. It is also a time for engineers to emphasize the importance of learning math, science, and technical skills.

Engineers Week is a time to celebrate their important work and engage the next generation of innovators. Even with social distancing, you can make a difference.

Interesting Fact: The Ferris Wheel is One of the Greatest Engineering Wonders:- The very first Ferris Wheel was created by Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania engineer, George W. Ferris, in 1893. The 140-foot steel towers and 45-foot axle were the largest pieces of constructed steel at the time.

Engineering Tales Episode #2 : Dr. Sam Pitroda Joins Our ASEI National Chair Piyush Malik In An Inspirational Conversation On The Path Forward In This World.

February 20, 2021

Dr Sam Pitroda is an internationally respected telecom inventor, entrepreneur, development thinker, and policy maker. Credited with having laid the foundation for India’s telecommunications and technology revolution of the 1980s, Mr. Pitroda has been a leading campaigner to help bridge the global digital divide. During his tenure as Advisor to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Mr. Pitroda led six Technology Missions related to telecommunications, water, literacy, immunization, dairy production, and oil seeds. He was also the founder and first Chairman of India’s Telecom Commission. In these plural roles, Mr. Pitroda helped revolutionize India’s development philosophies and policies with a focus on access to technology as the key to social change.

ASEI and Sam Pitroda have a long time association. In addition to being the ASEI lifetime achievement award winner in 2016 , he has spoken at 2006 and 2016 National Conventions as well as the 2020 convention featured a special message from him for the YTE participants and attendees. However, Piyush has an even longer association with him dating back to 1989 when Mr Pitroda was the Chairman of CDOT and Telecom Commission in India!

In his conversation, Dr Pitroda shared the essence of his 55 year journey as an engineer, inventor and entrepreneur in US and covered broad technology & policy trends that he feels are likely to shape the world going forward.

He pointed out how science and technology has improved all aspects of our life. Science and technology have improved our health, communication, education, transport, and infrastructure. Even with these amazing changes that science has given us, there is still more to do. So where do we go from here?

Current World

Current world order was created post world war 2 and was built around five major area: Democracy, Human Rights, Capitalism, Consumption and Military. These areas gave us worldwide institutions such as the United Nations, World Bank and GDP. However, this world design is now 75 years old and is built on a world view that does not exist anymore. Post-World War we have seen the dismantling of Soviet Union, rise of countries gaining independence, China being a major player in world politics, energy and huge leaps in technology. Downside of this world order is that inequality around the world increased. Finally, we have a major event of COVID-19 pandemic which highlighted the fact that everything is interconnected. So where do we go now?

Future World

As per Dr. Pitroda, world order should be based on two P’s:

Planet – We all live on the same planet and cannot ignore planet. Focus should be on global warming, pollution, etc.
People – We need to respect every human being. We live in an economy of surplus not an economy of scarcity.
Based on the 2 P’s, we need to have a more inclusive world. Some changes suggested by Dr. Pitroda were:
Democracy needs to be more inclusive.
Reform Capitalism such that it does not create inequality. Provide incentives to solve poor people problems not rich people problems.
Change thinking to Conserve not Consume
Non-violence should be the foundation we build everything on.

In his final comments, Dr. Pitroda said science and technology can lead us to this new world, just as science and technology has shaped our current world. He was very complimentary of the Engineers of Indian Origin in America and commended us all for choosing this noble profession where we have the ability to innovate and positively impact not only US but also India and ultimately the world.

You can see the full video of this EngineeringTales here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRt_WCXWyLI

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Author: Amrish Chopra, Life Member ASEI Silicon Valley

Image credits : Piyush Malik, Sam Pitroda

Mars Perseverance, Ingenuity & The Indian Connections : Kudos To Nasa ‘s Dr Swati Mohan, Dr Bob Balaram

February 18, 2021

After 8 years of hard work, on February 18^th, NASA landed the Rover on Mars at the bottom of the deep valley. Named Perseverance, rover will search for signs of microbial life. Rover’s landing zone is assumed to be a riverbed that may indicate signs of life. Rover will collect rock core samples in metal tubes. Future missions will return these samples to Earth for extensive study.

Perseverance journey to Mars took seven months and about 300 million miles (480 million kilometers). Perseverance was launched on July 30 2020 and multiple trajectory corrections maneuvers were made to point the rover to the bottom of the deep valley. Perseverance’s Route to Mars is shown below.

Leading the NASA Rover Landing is Swathi Mohan, the guidance, navigation and control operations lead, and mission commentator for the Perseverance project. She has been working on Perseverance for 8 years and flying the Rover for last seven months. “Perseverance will be the first mission to fly terrain-relative navigation so while she is descending on the parachute she will be actually at the ground with a camera, seeing where she is with respect to the Martian surface, and choosing a safe spot to land”, said Swathi Mohan. Terrain-Relative Navigation captures photos of the Mars terrain in real time and compares them with onboard maps of the landing area, autonomously directing the rover to divert around known hazards and obstacles as needed.

Landing test can be seen here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaVTxc8uxOw&feature=emb_logo

Another major accomplishment in this mission is to test the first powered flight on Mars, aka Mars helicopter. Vaneeza Rupani, an 11^th grader from Northport Alabama was bestowed the honor to name the helicopter. She submitted her essay into NASA’s “Name the Rover” contest and was chosen among 28,000 essays and named the helicopter Ingenuity. Ingenuity team was led by Dr Bob Balaram. A Principal member of Technical Staff at JPL robotics. Mars has very little atmosphere, only around 1% of Earths. “Flying this kind of helicopter is equivalent to flying a similar helicopter on Earth at a hundred thousand feet” said Dr. Bob Balaram. Helicopter was built using Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and Linux operating system and has a high resolution downward-looking camera for navigation, landing, and science surveying of the terrain, and a communication system to relay data to the Perseverance rover.

Kudos to Indian diaspora to assist in this monumental task of finding life on Mars!!!

Onwards to Mars!!

References:

Mars Landing – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0b_ijaYMQ

Insane Engineering behind the Rover https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqqaW8DCc-I&feature=youtu.be

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By Amrish Chopra, Director VMWare

Life Member, ASEI Silicon Valley

Press Release – Annual General Meeting

February 12, 2021

At the Annual General Meeting held Feb 6th presided by Dr. Pradeep Khosla, Chancellor at University of California San Diego, ASEI members from all chapters across the US joined via Zoom to witness the inauguration of the new National Board of Directors. ASEI President Piyush Malik announced his executive team and launch of new programs and initiatives for 2021.

PRESS RELEASE

UCSD Chancellor Khosla kicks off ASEI’s National Board and key initiatives at its 2021 Annual General Meeting
Fremont, CA Feb 7th, 2021

The American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI) has adapted to the pandemic well and digitally transformed itself by holding all programs virtually and making more of them freely available to all. Here’s a glimpse of its last 30 days:

At the Annual General Meeting held Feb 6th, presided by Dr. Pradeep Khosla, Chancellor at University of California San Diego, ASEI members from all chapters across the US joined via Zoom to witness the inauguration of the new National Board of Directors. ASEI President Piyush Malik announced his executive team and launch of new programs and initiatives for 2021.

A distinguished alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and Carnegie Mellon University, the Chief Guest Dr. Khosla is an internationally renowned electrical and computer engineer recognized for his seminal contributions in secure software and intelligent robot systems. He congratulated Piyush and the new ASEI board members on the important role they play in nurturing the next generation of engineers and technologists. Sharing his career story and how despite being an immigrant person of Indian origin with accent and color disadvantage, he broke the prevailing stereotypes and went on to become the CEO of one of the top US Public Universities with annual revenue of $5.4 Billion.

“People of Indian origin are excelling in engineering in the US in companies all around the USA and they have broken the glass ceiling multiple times and very successfully and got visibility. With visibility comes great responsibility towards the broader community to give back and that’s where ASEI fits in” – Dr Khosla said during his speech.

Dr. Khosla complimented ASEI for the significant role it plays in bridging the Industry academia gap as well as skill gap through its knowledge-sharing events, youth programs, student chapters, and the new initiatives such as University Connect and Mentor Connect which aim to help budding and early tenure engineers with career and professional guidance.

ASEI National President Malik emphasized how while rejuvenating the chapters and bringing in more diversity, all of them will work together as “One ASEI“ within the framework of new programs like Engineering Tales, MentorConnect, University Connect as well as continue the successful series “Getting Real with Engineering” and STEM programs such as “Youth Technology Exposition”

The event brought out the exuberance of ASEI National Board Members each of who spoke why they choose to volunteer with ASEI. Later, chapter presidents from Michigan (Muthu Sivananthan), Southern California (Sri Gavini), Waington DC (Venkat Gurunathan) and San Diego (Ashish Mehta) introduced their respective chapter’s board members. Wearing a dual hat as the Silicon Valley chapter President Piyush Malik went on to introduce an expanded and diverse chapter board comprising of seasoned executives, entrepreneurs, educators and technologists.

The launch event owed the attendees the depth of experience amongst ASEI board members and gave a glimpse of the richness of the upcoming programs in the months ahead. It concluded with an interactive “open mike” networking session with all members coming on camera expressing their thoughts and shared excitement for ASEI’s bright future.

Last month, ASEI hosted Ambassador Amit Kumar, Consul General of India, Chicago on Jan 28 2021, on the heels of India’s 72nd Republic Day, for a virtual Fireside chat. ASEI Michigan chapter president, Muthu Sivanantham, opened that event by welcoming Mr. Kumar as well as Radha Krishnan, President, DEP Inc.

Amit Kumar addressed the audience by talking about “Technology and Development” and elaborated the rapid growth that is underway in India. He emphasized how significant India-US relations are and highlighted their collaborative efforts in the areas of Energy, Science and Technology. Radha engaged in a fireside chat with Amb. Kumar and ASEI-MI director Anjali Tiwari moderated the session.

The interactive panel discussed topics ranging from sustainable development, investing in India to immigration-related issues. “Just in the last year alone, India received around 57 billion USD of investment focused on Digital space,” said Amb. Kumar. In conclusion, the Consul General has said that he is looking forward to collaborating with ASEI and connecting the organization with India based entities to help leverage each other’s strengths in fostering investments, growth and youth development.

ASEI launched has also “Engineering Tales” a series of conversations to highlight the accomplishments of its longstanding members and distinguished professionals amongst its member community. The inaugural Episode on Jan 9th featured advanced materials and nanotechnology expert Dr Thomas Abraham who besides being a successful engineering entrepreneur is also a serial community builder and has been an ASEI Board member since 2013.
Visit https://youtu.be/NZ6ndRV5mDc.

About ASEI

The American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI) is a not-for-profit organization that provides a platform for networking, career advancement, community service, mentoring and technology exchange for professionals, students and businesses in the United States and abroad. Members are guided by several objectives, including the creation of an open, inclusive, and transparent organization; providing positive role models, awarding scholarships, and remaining socially responsible. ASEI was founded in 1983 in Detroit, Michigan by a handful of visionaries. Today, the organization has active chapters in Michigan, Southern California, Silicon Valley, San Diego, and Washington, DC with more in the pipeline.

For more information, or to join this professional body, visit: www.aseiusa.org.

Links for media coverage of the event:

New India Times

India West

Asei Virtual Convention Media Coverage

January 5, 2021

American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI) hosted its 33rd Annual National Convention focusing on Global Engineering & Technologies (GET2020). This virtual convention was held on December 5th and 6th, 2020. While the speakers and participants were on the Zoom platform, it was live-streamed worldwide through YouTube.

Attended by scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders across the USA, the two-day event featured keynotes and multiple interactive sessions with prominent business and technology leaders, scientists and engineering entrepreneurs. At the Finale session on the second day, ASEI recognized four engineering achievers and four service excellence and contributors to ASEI.

Links for extensive media coverage of the convention:

Press Release – ASEI Hosts Successful Virtual Convention

December 29, 2020

PRESS RELEASE

ASEI HOSTS SUCCESSFUL VIRTUAL CONVENTION

American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI) hosted its 33rd Annual National Convention focusing on Global Engineering & Technologies (GET-2020). This virtual convention was held on December 5th and 6th, 2020. While the speakers and participants were on the Zoom platform, it was live-streamed worldwide through YouTube. Attended by scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders across the USA, the two-day event featured keynotes and multiple interactive sessions with prominent business and technology leaders, scientists, and engineering entrepreneurs. At the Finale session on the second day, ASEI recognized four engineering achievers and four service excellence and contributors to ASEI.

The convention started with a welcome by ASEI President Jwalant Lakhia. It was emceed by Anu Gopalakrishnan. The first keynote speaker Deval Desai, VP Magna Int. spoke about Contributions of Indian Technologists and weaved the storyline from mythology to history to modern era in a very short span of time. From making the best steel in the world to teaching the world to count, India was actively contributing to the field of science and technology long before the modern world evolved. One of the oldest civilizations in the world, India has a strong tradition of science and technology. Many theories and techniques discovered by the ancient Indians have created and strengthened the fundamentals of modern science and technology. While some of these groundbreaking contributions have been acknowledged, some are still unknown to most, and he shared some of the profound inventions that have and will continue to shape the future of humankind. It was heartening to see the contribution of Indian women scientists and engineers highlighted in a field typically dominated by men. There were so many factoids about things and achievements of unsung engineering heroes that would make anyone hailing from the Indian subcontinent proud!

The first technical session Quantum computing by Dancing with Qubits was a keynote by Dr Robert Sutor, VP Quantum, IBM Research. Quantum computing aims to solve complex problems the world’s most powerful supercomputers cannot solve. Leading the race in this field is IBM, though Google, Microsoft, Amazon and lot of others are all putting heavy investment bets in Quantum as well. Considering application in life sciences, an example was presented as follows: On average, it takes 10 to13 years and more than $2.5 billion to bring a new medical therapy from the discovery bench to the patient. The odds of success are overwhelmingly weighted in favor of failure. Harnessing the power of quantum computing can deliver the potential to significantly accelerate the timelines for, and enhance the quality of various stages of pharmaceutical research and development processes. That was very futuristic and sounded exciting.

According to Dr. Sutor, Quantum promises to tackle classically challenging problems across a variety of industries, from optimizing traffic control to refining supply chain logistics, and from discovering new drugs to detecting fraud more rapidly. Also, anyone can now try out the power of quantum on the IBM cloud for free with toolkits and resources available freely!

The next speaker was Prof Solomon Darwin, often known as the “Father of Smart Village Movement.” Dr, Darwin spoke on Agritech innovations for a Smarter Village. Dr Darwin shared how UC Berkeley Haas School defines the concept and after that shared about his books and publications in addition to the agricultural innovations that have the potential to make villages smarter with minimal resources.

The next session was on User Experience Design (UXD), which is a design process whose sole objective is to design a system that offers a great experience to its users. Thus, UXD embraces the theories of a number of disciplines such as user interface design, usability, accessibility, information architecture, and Human Computer Interaction. The first speaker Urmila Kashyap, Senior User Experience Designer with VMware, talked about UX design systems for enterprise products based on her 10+ years of UXD experience working with large companies like Moody’s & VMware. Surbhi Kaul, GM and Head of Product at Juniper Networks, built on it and shared from her own experience of building and launching products over two decades at Netflix, Cisco, YouTube, Google and Juniper Networks covering why UXD is critical to a product’s success and highlighted design systems using examples of AIML products she has helped launch.

An engineering and technology conference can’t be complete without covering Artificial Intelligence (AI). One might imagine that artificial intelligence is only something the big tech giants are focused on, and that AI doesn’t impact your everyday life. In reality, Artificial Intelligence is increasingly penetrating both our work and personal lives. Yet, many organizations in traditional industries are still grappling with justifying the ROI beyond proof-of-concept stage and struggling with operationalizing AI/ML. From a research to engineering to business perspective, a complete CXO view is needed which was provided by an IBM Fellow and Master Inventor with over 45 patents to her name – Rama Akkiraju, CTO AIOps addressing this daunting challenge and shared some best practices in this session on Artificial Intelligence in the Enterprise.

Autonomous Vehicles and Future Transportation is an interesting topic in which Jeff Hannah, Director, NA SBD Automotive & Akshay Desai, Associate Partner, McKinsey presented their POVs and tried separating fact from fiction about autonomous cars. Whether you are an automotive expert or newbie, one could gain valuable insights into the future of mobility and learn exciting ways to participate in this growing industry. Desai focussed on the future for autonomous vehicle adoption and the changing AV mobility market. The session was moderated by Convention Co-Chair Bhavesh Joshi.

The objective of the YTE was to provide a forum for young engineers, students and budding scientists to showcase their projects in science, engineering and technology topics that can have an impact on our world. The finalist students faced a barrage of questions from the judges Amrish Chopra and Mutthu Sivanathan. This competition and session was conceived and coordinated by the Conference Content Chair and President of ASEI-Silicon Valley Piyush Malik.

It was a tight race to pick winners based on combining scores from responses to judges’s questions, audience poll and quality and depth of engineering and research in their submissions from prior rounds. Finally, the top 3 winners declared were: (1) Nidhi Mathihali (2) Jyoti Rani and (3) Isha Jagadish.

The second day started with ASEI President Jwalant Lakhia welcoming the audience back and laying out the plan for the day. At the outset it became pretty clear to the audience that they would hear some high-powered content led by industry leaders lined up for the day.

Opening keynote on Leadership in turbulent times was delivered by Dr. Satyam Priyadarshy, Chief Data Scientist & Technology Fellow, Haliburton. Leadership in turbulent times is a critically important topic and pertinent considering the current socio-geo-politico-economic scenario in the COVID era. Dr. Priyadarshy, is a globally recognized leader for his expertise in leveraging disruptive technologies, strategies and talent transformation to increase business value. He applied ancient Indian wisdom from Hanuman Chalisa to talk about a framework to face disruption in tumultuous times. According to Dr. Priyadarshy, every challenge from the past looks smaller. Paradigm shifts, Leading the transformation with a mnemonic “Karma Matters” and putting the essence of all management texts with 20 words from the religious prayer, he beautifully showed the audience some leadership lessons that have helped him as well as the teams he has led from academics to corporate life.

The next keynote session Career Management in a Disrupted Economy was delivered by Dilip Saraf who is an IIT Alumnus and has reinvented himself 5 times to be a Career and Life Coach besides being an Author and speaker. Dilip very succinctly brought out the problem and solution pertinent to those facing career challenges during this Covid-19 pandemic which has jolted us into action with a career wake-up call with uncertainty about how future jobs will emerge. Using examples from his own career shifts as well as couple of his high-profile clients, Saraf’s talk on career management was about strategies available to all of us to better manage our career and to develop resilient options for us to deal with this uncertainty and to stay in control of our own destinies.

The next session was an inspiring fireside chat conducted by Piyush Malik, SVP SpringML, with Naveen Jain, CEO Viome & Founder/Chairman – Moon Express on Exponential Technologies for Humanity’s Grand Challenges. The session saw both engaged in a high energy conversation on exponential technologies and life sciences. For the uninitiated, exponential technologies are those which are rapidly accelerating and shaping major industries and all aspects of our lives. For a technology to be “exponential,” the power and/or speed doubles each year, and/or the cost drops by half. As in Moore’s law!

Exponential technologies include artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual reality (AR, VR), data science, digital biology and biotech, medicine, nanotech and digital fabrication, networks and computing systems, robotics, and autonomous vehicles. Solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges lie at the intersection of these exponential technologies.

In the next session Cybersecurity: Opportunity of Threat? the audience learned about the latest trends in cybersecurity from Anand Oswal, SVP and GM at PaloAlto Networks and was joined in conversation with popular cybersecurity strategist and influencer Matthew Rosenquist who is currently the Chief Information Security Officer at Eclipz

Cybersecurity has taken center stage in the enterprise executive mind as cases of ransomware and denial of services attacks and data breaches have kept the CISOs of the nation occupied. However, currently the biggest threats are often also the biggest opportunities. Cybersecurity is imperative for enterprises as well as nations today. Projections are that cybercrime will exceed $6 trillion annually by 2021 from $3 trillion in 2015, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. Probably the most a significant factor driving this acceleration is the increasing efficiency of cybercriminals. The dark web has become a thriving black market where criminals of all means can gain the capabilities necessary to launch sophisticated cyberattacks.

Anand talked about the 3 concurrent mega transitions in enterprise IT that are impacting network security viz. Rise of a mobile workforce, Shift to hybrid cloud and Direct to app architectures. The fireside chat drew a number of interesting questions from the audience which kept the session flow lively.

The enterprise technology landscape has increasingly become difficult to manage for a CIO whose role has evolved from a Chief Information Officer to a Chief Innovation Officer in the past few years. With digital transformation mandate becoming table stakes, rapid adoption of Cloud and work-from-anywhere becoming a norm, the technology woes of an enterprise CTO or a CIO seems to be unending and may have been exacerbated due to the current pandemic.

The next session was the powerful CXO fireside chat focusing on Innovation in the Enterprise with Manoj Prasad, VP & Global CTO, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Prakash Kota, CIO Autodesk, moderated by Rakesh Guliani. What does a CTO of a public company worry about? How does the CIO become indispensable in M&A decisions? How will this pandemic change the pace of innovation in enterprise technology? These and many more topics were central to this conversation where we also found how Thermofisher Scientific is at the forefront of fight against COVID!

“Space – the final frontier” these words from Star Trek can hardly be erased from memory of those who grew up watching the science fiction TV series. Many of the innovations shown have transcended from fiction into reality as commercial space tourism is set to start and our exploratory missions to either colonizing the moon or to become a multi planetary species have been progressing well with many successful missions with robots to Mars and beyond in the past decade thanks to NASA, ISRO, European Space Agency, SpaceX and other commercial aerospace companies. The next session speaker was a super smart NASA/BAERI Space scientist Dr Sreeja Nag who also happened to be a Robotist at Nuro. Speaking on Robotics and Space, she shared her experiences on autonomous robots that work on earth as well as in the space.

The last session of the Convention was the ASEI Awards which was anchored by Dr Thomas Abraham, Chair Awards Committee. Chief Guest was Ambassador Amit Kumar, Consul General India in Chicago. Consul General Kumar emphasized the importance of Indian American engineers and scientists pooling their talents to help India. He also presided over the function where 8 industry and ASEI awards were given out and each recipient gave a brief acceptance speech. The awardees are as follows:

ASEI Lifetime Achievement -Naveen Jain

ASEI Entrepreneur of The Year – Jyoti Bansal

ASEI Engineer of The Year (Mech/Solar) – Dr Yogi Goswami

ASEI Engineer pf The Year (Industrial Operations and Product Management) – Deval Desai

ASEI Service Excellence Award – Rakesh Patel

Hari Bindal ASEI Founders Award – Vatsala Upadhyay

Leadership and Contribution to ASEI – Rakesh Guliani and Sunita Dublish

Dr Neeraj Bindal, son of ASEI Founder the Late Dr. Hari Bindal gave a moving tribute to his father as he presented the Founder’s award to Vatsala.

The convention was put together by ASEI President Jwalant Lakhia along with Convention Co-chairs Rakesh Patel and Bhavesh Joshi. The Program chair was ASEI Michigan Chapter President Vatsala Upadhyay. ASEI Silicon Valley Chapter President Piyush Malik served as Convention Content Chair.

About ASEI

The American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI) is a not-for-profit organization that provides a platform for networking, career advancement, community service, mentoring and technology exchange for professionals, students and businesses in the United States and abroad. Members are guided by several objectives, including the creation of an open, inclusive, and transparent organization; providing positive role models, awarding scholarships, and remaining socially responsible. ASEI was founded in 1983 in Detroit, Michigan by a handful of visionaries. Today, the organization also has chapters in Michigan, Southern California, Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Washington, DC. For more information, visit: www.aseiusa.org.

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Note to Editor – If you need more information, please contact Dr. Thomas Abraham at 203-329-8010 or [email protected]

The National Board Of ASEI Needs To Conduct Its 2021 Election

November 5, 2020

Leadership Passion Experience Professional Skills Time

Dear ASEI Members,

The National Board of ASEI needs to conduct its 2021 election to fill the Board of Directors’ open positions. Hence, the purpose of this communication is to request nominations from the membership or the ASEI National Board of Directors. There are five open positions that will be filled through this nomination process.

You can self-nominate or nominate someone else for the ASEI National Board position. If nominating someone else, please get concurrence from your nominee before submitting the nomination.

To be eligible to become a board member, the person must be an ASEI paid member in good standing for one year, actively participated in ASEI activities, and must have exhibited leadership qualities from experiences that would add significant value to the board. The nominee must be ready and willing to participate in all (or almost all) board meetings and contribute by participating in ASEI activities including membership of various committees of ASEI.

Please copy-paste the following link to submit your nomination. The deadline to submit nominations is November 30th, 2020.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1F5CPse6c2dbf1d83TNLoyS_iDSbFshLcgYO1P-KooFM/edit?usp=sharing

Sincerely,
Bhavesh Joshi
Vice President, ASEI National Board
Chairman, 2020 ASEI National Board Election Committee

Election Committee: Bhavesh Joshi, Ananth Sarkar and Suresh Ladva

Digital Transformation And The Education Technology Industry

May 26, 2020

With the rise of Artificial Intelligence in recent years, disrupting almost every industry it touches is inevitable. Rise of “new collar” jobs requiring skills and not degrees” has been evident since the past couple of years. Leaders who are in tune with social trends know very well that we need to prepare citizens and youth for job descriptions that have not yet been defined. Means of doing everything better is continually being explored and with traditional jobs being threatened, the “future of work” has been a common theme of discussions in corporate circles. Over the past few years there was already a debate about the efficacy of our K-12 and college education system and how “flipping the classroom” would challenge the traditional expensive college education system.

And then COVID-19 struck the world. Major economies and life itself seemed to come to a standstill. However, thanks to the internet and advancement in Education Technologies, while maintaining social distancing, students were able to stay at home and get connected to their schools and teachers virtually. Work from Home (WFH) became the norm rather than a desirable perk. In such a transformed word, acceleration of digital transformation of all industries is happening rapidly and we are now living in a world that has to deal with everything being reimagined. Including Education.

Education technology (EdTech) is a term we use to describe the industry that combines education and technological advances, revolutionizing the conventional landscape of education. EdTech not only allows educational institutions to serve a larger and more diverse audience, but also enables educational participants, both teachers and students, to foster relationships in an interactive fashion.

As you can appreciate, EdTech solutions have been becoming part of our everyday lives whether you are a student, parent, educator or knowledge worker in the industry or a professional from any field who is keen on keeping their skills up-to date.

In our “Getting Real with Engineering” series of virtual events, ASEI brings together domain experts and we discuss things from an engineering mindset. This time we decided to focus on Education Technology and conducted a webinar with 3 panelists representing different perspectives of education technology Academics, Technology, Venture Capital and Business. This post provides a bird’s eye view of what transpired when Amrish Chopra and Piyush Malik hosted Dr Preetha Ram, Rohit Chhabra and Narendra Shankar.

First, we had, Dr. Preetha Ram, who previously was an educator and dean of Emory university and went on to start an education technology startup which had a successful exit a few years ago. She is currently working for Pier 70 ventures and investing in the next generation of educational technology companies. Dr. Ram defined the current state of affairs at universities whereby universities and colleges with low endowment and low ranking may not survive the current crisis of low or no enrollment due to COVID-19 pandemic. This crisis now provides us with an opportunity for disruptive innovation in the academic field. New technologies will be used for educating students such as AR/VR immersive learning, using AI and adaptive learning to tailor education to specific students. With several universities going online, we may also see partnership’s with big tech companies and educational institutions.

Next we had Rohit Chhabra who is Vice President of educational technology operations at Zovio which runs an online-only university called Ashford University. Ashford University offers associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in more than 50 areas. Rohit’s view from an already established online university which is already supporting 20,000 plus students. Rohit talked about the challenges in running an online university from a student as well as schools’ point of view. From students’ viewpoint some challenges were: adapting to online learning, keeping motivated, finding the right school, etc. From the school’s point of view, it is challenging to convert a regular course to an online course, train faculty, technology help desk for teacher and class and define the value proposition for online education. Given all this there are opportunities available for providing better online education. Some areas were providing better learning and collaboration tools, assessment automation, target course work for individual needs, etc. Finally, Rohit talked about increase in online enrollment numbers as students look for university’s having online presence as it provides them the flexibility.

Our third panelist, Narendra Shankar is currently the global head of business at Udacity – an educational startup ‘unicorn” providing focused education and skill training for students. Narendra talked about how there will be increased loss of jobs due to automation and still companies are saying that talent shortage is their number one risk.

Narendra talked about how they have built a new type of degree, called NanoDegree, which provides practical and specific skill training for less cost than the Universities program. All education is done online. Udacity delivers their educational material by providing an immersive curriculum with support from mentors and real-world projects. Narendra mentioned that traditional universities are working with Udacity to provide more of a blended experience for students.

Key Take Aways:

Some key takeaways from the panel discussion and audience questions that ensued:

Current educational system is ripe for disruption and COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the process

Low ranking and low endowment universities will have to adapt to new technology or become defunct

Future of education is more and more online with traditional universities partnering with technology companies to provide education. Google-Stanford University anyone?

Traditional University may be replaced or supplemented with online degrees (such as NanoDegree.)

There are a number of opportunities for technologists and engineers to take the education Industry to the next level . Some areas are Augmented Reality, Blockchain, Assessment of exams, etc.

Overall this session was full of ideas and thoughts on current and future of educational technology and opportunities for engineers. The future of EdTech in a Post COVID word seems promising. Some PreCovid era projections placed the US Ed Tech market at nearly $50 Billion by the end of 2020 growing at 9% year over year but now it will grow much rapidly. Schools, businesses, parents and individuals, everyone wants to be part of the EdTech evolution- why would anyone not want to capitalize? If you would like to know further, watch the video and get in touch for more info.The Video for this session is being posted for the ASEI members here.

Healthtech Trends And Future In A Post Covid World – ASEI Webinar 04/20/2020

April 14, 2020

Healthcare in the US is broken. The current COVID-19 Pandemic is not the first one and certainly not the last one to hit us. Beset with high costs and convoluted workflows, it takes many years to find a cure and drug approvals for humans can take upto a decade. Last few decades has given all the necessary platforms in the form of Internet, Mobile, Big Data and Cloud. With technology advancement, more and more investors are investing into Health tech.

Smart inhalers, robotic surgery, wireless brain sensors, artificial organs, 3-D printing, telehealth are just a few of the major advancements in the recent years. However, we are still in the early innings in the advancement and utilizing technology in the Health industry.

As we were hopeful to see the next version of Healthtech and benefits to society, the world economy has come to a standstill because of a pandemic. How will this pandemic shape the future of healthtech and its advancement? Will this be the catalyst that is required to catapult healthtech or will the slowdown in the economy stop the healthtech juggernaut in its stride?

ASEI Silicon Valley Chapter will be hosting a panel discussion next week (April 20th, 2020) with HLS experts and innovators in conversation moderated by Santosh Ankola, Head of Product at TechCrunch

Our distinguished speakers of this online session are
1) Dilip Goswami (Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Molekule)
Dilip’s chronic struggle with allergies and asthma issues from a young age inspired his father, Dr. Yogi Goswami, to develop the technology behind Molekule. Together with Dr. Goswami and his sister, Jaya, Dilip co-founded Molekule to commercialize this life-changing technology.

Dilip previously served as VP of Technology at Advanced Technologies & Testing Laboratories where he led research & development. He holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Florida.

2) Dr Sriram Iyer

Dr Sriram Iyer is a senior Respiratory & Sleep Physician based in Liverpool, UK. He works in one of the largest sleep disorder centers in England. He is currently providing expertise at the forefront of the National Health Service Covid-19 response in Northwest England.
He has previously held senior management and education roles in the NHS and was a visiting sleep consultant at the Univ of British Columbia Hospital in Vancouver.
He has a sub-specialist interest in lung cancer, pleural disease and sleep disorders and is published extensively in these fields.
He is also the Director/Founder of a private sleep health company, Sleep Vitality, which provides expertise in management of sleep disorders. He is a sleep expert for the Welsh Rugby Union.
He qualified as a doctor in Bangalore and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London. He holds a creative writing certificate from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver).

In this session, we will focus on few major aspects of Health Tech:

Effect of Pandemic like Coronavirus

More focus on Telehealth
Better predictive models; Using Data effectively; IoT
Economic impact and the effect on funding in future
ML/AI – Large advancements in NLP, is this the time for computational chemistry

Challenges of using technology :

Training physicians with use of new technology
Data privacy and security for patients and physicians affordability

Looking beyond the pandemic:

Innovation Avenues in HLS
Latest trends