“Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to practical use.”
The words of this quote portray the character of today’s speaker Dr. Anuradda Ganesh. On the 6th of September the students of Mushtifund Aryaan Higher Secondary School MAHSS were graced with the presence of Dr.Anuradda Ganesh.Dr. Anuradda is the Director and Chief Advisor to India CTO at Cummins in India. She advises on the future technology trends, future regulatory policies and R&D and innovation policies and helps Cummins build strategic technology and product pipelines. She also advises on University and Government collaboration areas and strategic partnerships. Dr Ganesh is keenly interested in academic-industry – government-society relationship development. She is currently serving in various National level Committees representing Cummins and as Subject Matter Expert. With a Ph.D in Chemical Engineering, she brings in a unique combination of excellence in academia as well as industry. Prior to joining Cummins, she was heading the Department of Energy Science and Engineering, and was a Professor at IIT Bombay for 25 years. She is a global expert on Biomass and Coal conversion, Alternate fuels and their applications and has contributed to intellectual property with over 60 journal publications with over 2000 citations, couple of chapter publication and granted patents.
She has a flair for societal cause exemplified through development of technology for rural applications and by participation in various national level projects for rural development, alternate fuels and emission control. She contributed actively to the report on “Clean Air in Delhi” project sponsored by Cummins Inc, partnered with CII and NITI AAYOG. She has conceived and established the Centre for Research and Intellectual Entrepreneurship at Cummins College of Engineering for Women, wherein the objective is to inculcate research, innovation and entrepreneurship skills to Faculty as well as the women engineers in the making.
She received the “Most Innovative Energy Saving Product” Award under the CII National Awards for Excellence in Energy Management 2010. She was conferred the ‘Best Woman Achiever for Excellence in Area of Expertise’ for the year 2012 by The Women Pilot Association. Amongst other achievements – she was invited to address select Senate Members at Capitol Hill, USA on ‘The Road to Copenhagen: Energy Solutions for Emerging Economies’. She has recently been elected as Fellow of the INAE for this year.
Dr. Anuradda Started the session by giving the students a brief idea about her career. Like all great things Dr.Anuradda’s story too had a small beginning. It was her final B-tech year at Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh. She was in search for inspiration for her project. She approached the chemistry department at IIT Bombay, where she met an inspiring professor. He suggested that she should build on something from her day to day life; rice. He hinted that she should work on converting the husk of the rice into activated carbon. This caught Dr. Ganesh’s attention. The idea of transforming something seemingly useless into a substance with marvellous implications fascinated her. Even after successfully completing her project, her interest in the subject kept growing. She mentioned that her professor was very pragmatic and in her words, her guide, God and mentor. A great teacher more often than not makes an interesting subject even more intriguing. Dr.Ganesh wanted to continue working under him. Initially she was also keen on taking up a job apart from her research. But after facing rejection for being a woman, she realised that it was more important to empower women and to motivate them to give their best. She Returned to the chemistry department with twice the determination to continue with her research work. She was offered a daily wage of rupees 12.80 ,and her passion towards the subject drove her to accept the offer.
Her Next research project dealt with gasification. It involved producing energy from biomass by feeding it into a gasifier which was brought in from the US.She firstly, tried to understand the gasifier, and how exactly it works. Basically, it is the solid organic material which goes under a series of reactions to produce gases like carbon monoxide and Hydrogen, which can be used to produce energy. She gave the analogy of wood getting oxidised. The wood produces a flame and then gives ash and CO2. But the reaction must be stopped before the carbon is completely oxidised to give carbon dioxide. But If no oxygen is supplied the wood will give off fumes and get reduced to charcoal. Therefore, the material in the gasifier is partially oxidised, to obtain carbon monoxide and Hydrogen gas. These gases are then oxidised to release energy. But sometimes the volatiles would not contribute in giving energy, and a black tar-like substance was produced.
This posed as a serious concern, and Dr. Anuradda was trying her best to find a solution. Once, when she had returned from work she mentioned to her mother about the tar-like substance. Her mother, who often asked about her progress in her research, commented that they were using the wrong type of wood, and that was creating the problem.She knew this as her grandmother used to carry out a similar process for domestic purpose. Then it struck Dr. Ganesh that the kind of biomass they were using was erroneous! She Understood that it was very important to classify the biomass based on its calorific value and pollution it creates, to obtain the expected results. She also learnt that one must never underestimate somebody just because he is not a professional, in this case an engineer. A solution can come from anywhere and experience is invaluable. Thus, along with her professor she set to work ongrouping the biomass. For this she drew inspiration from nature, through observations like, if you keep rice in water it will get spoilt however rice is a crop which requires a large amount of water to grow. Therefore, it is the outer covering( the husk) that protects the grain inside the same way the peanut shell protect the nuts. She also spoke about the waxy coating on the sugar cane which prevents the juice from oozing out from the crop during the rains. Ergo,based on its function in nature one can discern how biomass behaves. Realising this, she fell in love with the subject, and went ahead to pursue her Ph.D in this field.
As a part of her project work Dr. Ganesh went to a village in the Gondia taluka in Orissa. The aim in their mind was to electrify the village, which was 18km away from the main power grid. They worked with the rural women, who collected ‘Karanj’ seeds. They depoded the seeds with the help of a depoder, designed by Dr.Ganesh and her team. They ground the seeds, and with the help of an electric oil expeller they extracted oil, which was used to run the engine and generator. They realised they had no way to put up the electric poles, but using a tractor they managed to put them up. On August 15 2010 they succeeded in lighting the village for the first time. Being an applied scientist she finds satisfaction in seeing her work put to practical use in real life. Also, seeing girl children study gives her immense happiness.
VPD sir pointed out that engineers usually find biology difficult and asked whether she found the subject involving biomass difficult at initial stages since it involves a lot of biology.She replied that research involves multiple disciplines. reading about the subject helped her a lot in the primary stages.And in the matter of engineers being weak in biology she commented that one is only weak in something one doesn’t know how to apply. Once you start to find its applications, then you will start to find the topic interesting. These brilliant words portrayed the subtle relation between learning and applying and the profound understanding it provides.
She remarked on the dislike shown by the students towards chemistry. In accordance to her this is a wrong approach. Chemistry is a wonderful subject which has a lot of real life implications, giving the instance of how what she had learnt in school often helped her on various occasions. She could recollect the sweet smelling esters, the rotten egg smell of hydrogen sulphide gas,etc. In fact her primary love for chemistry drove to take up chemical engineering. She was surprised to find that contrary to her expectations there was hardly any chemistry involved. But nevertheless her passion for this field kept growing.Her research included different types of biomass and how they behave. She told the students about the cashew shell, when heated at 85°-100°C produced oil with high calorific value, but it caused a lot of pollution. But cashews also have good chemicals, like anacardium, which Goa exports, and is used in manufacturing resins, medicines etc.
Dr. Ganesh then answered questions asked by the students. VPD sir asked whether education should have a more practical approach to aid the students in the future. Her Reply was that what she had learnt gave her a good background and that all her work was hands on. And when you have to apply the knowledge you can use it as a backbone , she gave the analogy of a child learning the alphabet. If you would tell him that he is learning the letters to one day learn to make sentences he would not understand anything. She mentioned the current education policy focuses on things like more internships and academic projects, but there are not enough facilities. Therefore,it is important to put in your own efforts. VPD sir also inquired about the scope in energy sciences. Dr. Anuradda answered that even though it used to be a interdisciplinary programme under Mechanical engineering it is now a full fledged department. It has a graduate, undergraduate and Ph.D program.It is a dual degree course and is fairly popular. Manali Manjerekar asked her where she saw India in the next five years in terms of renewable energy and what are the career options that will come up.Dr.Ganesh replied that we are bringing down coalusage from 70%to 40% by 2035, thus use of renewable energy will go up, especially solar, hydrogen and wind energy. Jobs in renewable energy,microgrids, electrification in the energy sector, will become popular.
Next question was asked by Shrawani Waigoaonkar about the hurdles faced in the shift towards alternative fuels and how the characterization of biomass was done. Dr Ganesh answered the first question by saying that segregation is very important and that there is a slow progress due to the difficulty in collection of the waste and the amount of money required in its transportation. Nilay Kamat Asked about what criteria one should focus on while choosing a field. Her Advice was to keep it simple. Just listen to yourself and if are still unclear you can just ask your parents to help you decide. She pointed that you can shift your field even after you have joined. VPD sir asked a very relevant question regarding the preference shown by students for IIT Bombay, he inquired whether a student should join IIT even if he is not getting his desired field. Dr. Anuradda Ganesh sincerely requested the students to try to get into IIT, but in the end it is passion which wins the duel. It is, in a students life, merely a gamble of 6 hours.“Don’t allow this to decide your life”, she said. Shivam Salgaonkar’squestion was about the amount of physics and mathematics involved in chemical engineering.“Everything is about physics and maths!”,was her reply. She gave a real life example, when we are pouring out talcum from the container, we are holding it with a specific angle. Thus, even without realising we use plenty of physics and maths in our everyday lives. Aditya Parsekar’s query was regarding the characteristics of good entrepreneurs. Dr Ganesh replied that the most important is positive thinking, accepting mentorship and daring to take risks.
Finally, Marushka Fernandez, a 11th grade student came forward to propose the vote of thanks. Marushka thanked Dr. Anuradda Ganesh for this wonderful session and put into words how much this session had inspired and motivated her.
The students of Mushtifund Aryaan Higher Secondary School (MAHSS ) received a lot of information and also were inspired from the way Dr.Anuradda worked with devotion and dedication.She taught us the importance of experience, and the joy of learning through practical experiences.Meeting a extraordinary yet humble personality such as Dr. Anuradda Ganesh, has been not only our privilege but a joyful and enriching experience.
Written by
Himansi Dhuri
A 11th standard student