{"id":1918,"date":"2017-02-20T13:53:49","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T21:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.plm.automation.siemens.com\/t5\/Academic-News\/Engineering-as-a-Career-Introducing-Dr-V-C-Rao-Komaravolu-at\/ba-p\/392591"},"modified":"2026-03-26T08:09:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T12:09:55","slug":"engineering-as-a-career-introducing-dr-v-c-rao-komaravolu-at-michigan-technological-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/engineering-as-a-career-introducing-dr-v-c-rao-komaravolu-at-michigan-technological-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineering as a Career: Introducing Dr. V.C.Rao Komaravolu at Michigan Technological University"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><P><EM><STRONG><span class=\"lia-inline-image-display-wrapper lia-image-align-left\" style=\"width: 136px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2019\/09\/Dr-Rao-2.png\" alt=\"Dr Rao.png\" title=\"Dr Rao.png\" \/><\/span>When did you know you wanted a career in engineering?&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/STRONG><\/EM><\/P><br \/>\n<P>&#8221; I came from a remote village with no electricity, no transportation and not well connected&nbsp;with communication (around 1955). While I was in high school I had no idea what engineering is. It is my brother, who travel extensively who suggested I shoulddo engineering. In spite&nbsp;of our weak economic situations, I ventured into engineering and worked hard. I&nbsp;came out&nbsp;successfully, passing Bachelor of Engineeringwith &#8220;honors.&#8221;<\/P><\/p>\n<p><P><STRONG><EM>Tell us about your education.<\/EM><\/STRONG><\/P><br \/>\n<P>&#8220;I joinedas junior engineer (JE) in the State Electricity Board.&nbsp;After six months I applied for &#8220;Technical Teacher Training&#8221; (TTT)program&#8221; offered in several universities by the government of India. I applied for this program for two reasons. One &#8211;&nbsp;I can go to Chennai and see the Cleopatra movie and the compensation is higher than what I was paid at that time as JE. Additionally I can get a master&#8217;s&nbsp;degree. The committee members asked me whether I would like to join <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iitm.ac.in\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) &#8211; Chennai<\/A>. (I have not heard&nbsp;much&nbsp;about IIT&nbsp;&nbsp;at that time). I said yes and rushed to see the movie as it&nbsp;was getting late. As expected I got selected.&nbsp;I got my master&#8217;s and also PhD at IIT Chennai. After completing my PhD, I got several offers as a lecturer from different universities including IIT Chennai and I&nbsp;accepted the IIT Chennai offer.&nbsp;That decision changed my life for good.&#8221;<\/P><\/p>\n<p><P><STRONG><EM>How has engineering technology changed over your career?<\/EM><\/STRONG><\/P><br \/>\n<P>&#8220;As&nbsp;faculty at IIT Chennai it opened up several opportunities. IIT Chennai is in collaboration with&nbsp;Germany I was able to visit several times to German universities and worked on research projects.&nbsp;I spent around a total of&nbsp;two years at University of Stuttgart and University of Karlsruhe and a&nbsp;four month language course at Heidelberg under <a href=\"https:\/\/www.daad.org\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">DAAD<\/A> fellowship. In the meanwhile I was trying to go on sabbatical for&nbsp;two years for which I am entitled from IIT. I applied to few universities, got an offer from Turkey. I asked for a salary (not knowingly), perhaps higher than the highest paid in that university. I got another offer from University of Mosul, Iraq; the year before the war started. I got my leave sanctionedfrom IIT Chennai and was about to collect the papers from Iraq embassy at Delhi. I also got an offer from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mtu.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Michigan Technological University <\/A>(MTU) Houghton for&nbsp;three months visiting faculty. I used my leave to come to U.S. hoping that I can extend my visiting faculty position until the end of&nbsp;two years. This is the best decision of&nbsp;my life.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>My desire&nbsp;for&nbsp;two years became 20 years at MTU and continues. MTU sponsored me to Ford Motor companyto be a trainer&nbsp;on CADC3P software. I became a certified instructor to Ford and had the opportunity&nbsp;to travel to Australia (one year) China, Thailand Phillipines in addition to India to conduct C3P training all over the Asia Pacific region. Based on my experience in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plm.automation.siemens.com\/en_us\/products\/nx\/index.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">NX<\/A>, MTU asked me to&nbsp;join as <a href=\"http:\/\/pacepartners.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">PACE<\/A> coordinator&nbsp;and teach&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.plm.automation.siemens.com\/en_us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Siemens<\/A> NX courses to the students. I had the good opportunity to use NX extensively for teaching and use it&nbsp;in the PACE sponsored projects with other universities internationally. PACE gave me an opportunity to visit several countries like Germany, China, South Korea, Canada&nbsp;and share knowledge among the engineering community from other universities.&#8221;<\/P><\/p>\n<p><P><STRONG><EM>What advice would you give future engineers?<\/EM><\/STRONG><\/P><br \/>\n<P>&#8220;In life, opportunities come and go. You need to keep your eyes and ears open. When they knock on your door, you need to take a chance. If it works; good, proceed, otherwise change the course. Be happy while you keep trying for new opportunities.&nbsp;Every one cannot reach the same goal. Each one can achieve their best with hard work and perseverance.&#8221;<\/P><\/p>\n<p><P>Learn more about <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.plm.automation.siemens.com\/t5\/tag\/engineering%20as%20a%20career\/tg-p\/board-id\/SiemensPLM-Corporate-Blog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><FONT color=\"#0066cc\">engineering as a career<\/FONT><\/A>. Check out all the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usa.siemens.com\/en\/jobs_careers.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"><FONT color=\"#0066cc\">engineering related job opportunities<\/FONT><\/A> at Siemens. If you are a student, look at our open <a href=\"https:\/\/jobs.siemens-info.com\/jobs?page=1&amp;keywords=internship&amp;brand=Digital+Factory\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\"><FONT color=\"#0066cc\">internship and co-op positions<\/FONT><\/A>.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When did you know you wanted a career in engineering?&nbsp;<br \/>\n &#8221; I came from a remote village with no electricity, no transportation and not well connected&nbsp;with communication (around&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57565,"featured_media":1922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-pace"],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2019\/09\/Dr-Rao-2.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57565"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1918"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1923,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918\/revisions\/1923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1918"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=1918"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=1918"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}