I always felt a bit guilty working as a chemical engineer and requested assignments that were aligned with my environmental values from the outset.
I was born in the city of Nagpur, India. My mother was a secondary school teacher for 40 years and both my father and brother were engineers. I was fortunate enough to attend a good school and to consistently secure scholarships. My dad was an avid reader and although I didn’t travel much – even in India – until I was 22, I saw the world through his stories. After studying chemical engineering, I was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania at 22, where I did my master’s degree. From there, I moved to Norway to join a graduate training programme at Hydro Aluminium’s technology centre (the equivalent of a corporate lab). It was a picturesque town of 3,000 people at the end of a beautiful fjord. I had a great female manager at the time (and my luck in female managers continues to this day at ENGIE), who taught me some amazing leadership skills and how to manage a diverse team in terms of experience, culture, technical acumen, and so on. I moved a few times after that, including to Portugal and back to the US, completing short stints in start-ups to ensure I had time to spend with my family. Eventually, we moved with our 2-month-old son to Singapore, where I began my PhD.
I always felt a bit guilty working as a chemical engineer and requested assignments that were aligned with my environmental values from the outset. So, from CO2 capture feasibility studies in Norway, to research related to offshore wind turbine tribology for my PhD, to post-doctorate decarbonisation strategies for the Cambridge CARES Laboratory, I have stuck with this theme and looked at it through a range of extremely different lenses. Over the past year, I have handled various tasks for Lab Singapore that include managing their research programme, leading an amazing team and overseeing the REIDS testing platform.
I thrive on variety and challenges, and this position gives me both. The challenges inherent to remaining relevant in research are significant. Over the last year, I have enjoyed exploring ENGIE’s position on various topics and its relevance in the decarbonisation landscape, and how all this can be applied to my team and the issues we address.
I have also been handling a legacy topic for the Lab related to EMS (Energy Management Systems) and I’ve enjoyed watching my team evolve in relation to its various aspects and improve day after day. We have also looked at a wealth of new topics that include solar, e-fuels and hydrogen, in a lesser capacity. I love having the flexibility to probe these topics to ensure that we, as a lab, remain agile in our approach. Having both a site team and a research team has also been a great learning experience considering the differences in theory and practical implementations involved. In addition to the aforementioned topics, my team also supports the Green Data Centre, which we lead from the Singapore Lab, and interacts with the Cooling team (also in the Singapore Lab) on certain projects.
As a relatively small lab, I also get the chance to contribute to some lab-related duties that give me a bird’s eye view and experience aspects that go beyond research. We also have a great relationship with our local Business Unit and I have enjoyed learning how I can support them with research insights.
Considering the breadth and depth of my work, there hasn’t been a dull moment in the last year!
Yes, I do! I have been learning an Indian classical dance called Kathak and I just did my Year 5 exam.
In addition to reading, I also love to write. I’m not very regular these days, but I have tried my hand at poetry and children’s stories. It would be great to get published one day!
I also love travelling with my family and those are the memories I cherish the most. Our most amazing holidays have been in the Himalayas. Let me know if you need any tips or recommendations!
Yes, I write in English mostly, although I have written some pieces in Hindi and Marathi, my mother tongue.
I speak Hindi, Marathi and English fluently. Hindi is not a national language, but it is spoken very widely in India. Marathi is my mother tongue and English was the language in which I was educated. I speak basic Norwegian as well, but I used to be much better than I am now. Of course, I plan to start learning French soon!
I think it is ‘I will figure it out’. This was not my mantra growing up, but something I have retrospectively realised is in my nature. I have experienced uncertainty and several setbacks along the way, but the ‘I will figure it out’ attitude has helped me to stay afloat, especially in recent years. It helps me to maintain a very objective outlook on most things and to stay calm. I apply it both at work and at home.
I guess so. I also realised that sometimes it’s okay to only figure things out partially. You cannot always fully comprehend what is in front of you, so you just try to figure it out as far as you can and move on. That’s okay.
Yes, this is definitely a very important issue for me. I recently had a chat with our Chief Sustainability Officer in the AMEA region, Daxita Rajcoomar, about our CSR initiatives. Women in STEM is one of the pillars we are working on and looking to support at ENGIE. The more female role models schoolgirls see in STEM, the more they can imagine themselves doing it.
In my previous roles, I have personally come across a lot of regressive attitudes in these contexts, where pregnancy breaks were equated to ‘holidays’ or ‘not being serious about work’. I think it is up to big corporations like ours to facilitate and introduce mechanisms to enable women to re-enter the workforce after a break, to safeguard against large numbers of female dropouts.
I think the three words would be empathetic, objective and calm (the calmness is more recent!). These characteristics are what enable me to approach people, really understand their perspective and be solution-oriented. I refer to this as emotional quotient (EQ) or emotional intelligence.
In research settings, I wish that EQ was as venerated as IQ. I think it is just as important – if not more. I can see how it helps me, and I think it can help to make a team work better together and maintain motivation and mutual respect.
Emotional intelligence, I believe, is a crucial element to incorporate at work (and in life) if we want to care for our fellow human beings.
