PSG Tech opens window to Power Conversion technology
A brief coverage on the opening ceremony of PSG tech’s new CoE for Power conversion
“There’s a way to do it better – find it”
– Thomas Edison
On the noon of the 26th of October, the D-block conference hall was on the verge of saturation as the chief guest witnessed the curious crowd in attendance for the opening ceremony of the ‘Centre of Excellence in Power Convertors’, a collaboration with Schneider Electric. Adding to the thirty two existing CoEs, this one was introduced with the scope of creating ‘clean power’, which is a theory that is sure to redefine the field of Power Technology.
After a short hymn to the almighty, the dignitaries namely, Dr.R.Rudramoorthy (Principal), Dr.M.C.Bhuvaneswari (Head Of Department, EEE) and the chief guest Ms.Rekha Anil (Director, ITD, Schneider Electric), took to the stage. The gathering was welcomed by Dr.M.C.Bhuvaneswari followed by the keynote address by the principal, Dr.R.Rudramoorthy, who expounded the gravity of the project and pointed out the merits and benefits of this joint collaborative venture on the ‘Centre of Excellence in Power Convertors’, with Schneider Electric. He also articulated the importance of micromanagement of electric power and ended his speech with a demand for young aspiring engineers to take up this challenge in making India self-sustainable.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was exchanged by the Principal and Ms.Rekha Anil. Ensuing this was a short speech by Dr.M.Sundaram (Programme Coordinator, Robotics and Automation) who elaborated on the new open elective course titled, ‘Industry based design for Power Convertors’ that will be introduced from the next semester for the students of the M.E programme.
Answering the cordial invite by Dr.M.M.Rajan Singaravel (Assistant Professor, EEE), Ms.Rekha Anil came forward to deliver the chief address of the ceremony. Contrary to people’s assumption on receiving a technical speech, she elaborated on the fabric of life under the topic ‘Learn! Lead! Live!’. She started the thread by sorting a techie’s life into three: College life, the Cross roads and Corporate life, and claimed that the learning process is common to all three, independent of whatever stage of life he/she is in. She also shared her experience in interviewing a candidate from IIT-M who had successfully made it through the interview on account of his passion, soft skills and experimental attitude in spite of hailing from an undesired branch of engineering.
“Corporates prefer innovation, speed and customer connect over any abilities the candidates consider to be necessary”, she said. She then cited two tales of Steve Jobs’ Apple Inc. and Nike, Inc. who stitched their stories, elevated their pitch and etched their legacies into the history books of their respective fields and delivered her success mantra, ‘Stitch your story and Elevate your pitch’. As the final bead in the thread, she contemplated the results of an 80-year old survey on ‘What makes humans happy?’, stating that it completely depended upon maintaining a good relationship with their commune. The hall echoed with applause on her detailed speech. The ceremony ended with a vote of thanks by Mr.A.Angamuthu (Assistant Professor, EEE) and the crowd wasted no time in hurrying to grab a look at the newly inaugurated centre at E Block.
“The main motive behind this collaboration is to bridge the gap between the laboratory and hands on training received by the students after their graduation, in order to satisfy industrial standards”, said Dr.Rajan Singaravel during a brief conversation. “This was also the motive behind the framing of the new open elective titled ‘Industry requirement for Power converters’, offered for Postgraduate students”, he added.
The CoE for Power Convertors is a Student-Industry-Institute coopetition set up to effectuate students’ hands-on learning and offer assistance to the industry in power conversion. The scope of this CoE is to draft, analyse and design high efficiency AC and DC converters to meet both domestic and industrial demand and to standardize the units for universal applications.
