Profile

I’m a female Engineer by profession from India in my late 20s.. I took up Engineering after school influenced by reports that read there was a shortage of girls who can code. Somewhere in a corner of my mind, taking up engineering was related to a bigger cause of being a girl who can code. I don’t know if that was a good enough reason, but that surely was my reason.

All along my life and career so far, I have enjoyed being a minority. I’m a girl (minority sex), who is an engineer (relatively less girls study engineering and such numerate courses), who has  studied and worked in the UK being from India (relatively less people go abroad to study especially girls), studied signal processing (relatively less people, men or women like and study this subject), working on artificial intelligence jobs (relatively less people are skilled at this) and work in Airbus being a computer engineer (there are far less computer engineers in Airbus compared to engineers from other disciplines).

I like doing things that not many people like and think of doing. Most of my choices are a balance of what I like and what others don’t like. What anyone needs to become something is the right attitude, sense of what’s practical and feasible and the dedication to make it happen. I think I have all these skills in a good proportion which helped me become an engineer which was what I wanted to be. If I wanted to be an astronaut, these very skills would help me be that. What I’m trying to say is that, we all already have what it takes to be what we like. We just need to identify an interest and use the skills we already have.

So that is me..

My work is to innovate new ways of doing things.. I do that by thinking so much that I almost feel like I get paid to think and then creating what I have thought about. It’s mostly about writing softwares.

Currently I’m working on building a search engine. We already have a Google. Right? But still, Google has some flaws which makes it not-so-usable for Airbus internal use. So we are trying to build something more customised for Airbus internal use – a search engine that does all that which Google does – in a “better” way. A way that works for us.

Previously I have worked in the biomedical space in the UK (Cambridge & Oxford). At that time I was working on building medical devices and other activity trackers which people wear these days. Tracking the number of steps a person takes, tracking the hours and quality of sleep a person caught the previous night, tracking how much energy is he burning is all very important to know but difficult to know correctly. I was working on writing softwares that can track a person’s heart rate, breathing rate and activity and give predictions on his vital statistics.

I have a few different thoughts on how to use the prize money. First, create small, effective and catchy flyers around why one should take up engineering as their career option to distribute them I schools. Second, create a website that not only includes communication about why one should take up engineering but also small video helps for topics in subjects like maths and physics.

I’m open to new ideas as well. If someone has a good idea, please suggest. Over th course of the event, I’m hoping I will get a first hand feel of where this money could be best used.