Punjab Engineering College (Deemed to be University) hosted a discussion between Dr Praveer Sinha, CEO & Managing Director of TATA Power and the Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering Departments of PEC in the presence of the Director of PEC, Dr. Baldev Setia on 15th February 2022 in the Senate Hall. The discussion was attended by HODs, Faculty members and PhD students of both departments. Dr. Sinha is a member of the Board of Governors (BoG) of PEC and an alum of the 1984 batch of the Electrical Engineering Department. Dr. Sinha has nearly 36 years of experience in the Power Generation and Distribution sector in India.
Dr.Sinha is also a visiting Research Associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston, USA and is also a Visiting Scholar at the Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science, Ryerson University, Canada.
In his welcome address, the Director of PEC, Dr. Baldev Setia expressed his appreciation for Dr. Praveen Sinha's keen interest in his alma mater and encouraged TATA Power to collaborate with PEC in order to increase research throughput from the institute. He emphasized that collaborations such as these would definitely contribute to boosting the Institutes NIRF ranking. In addition to this, He also encouraged PhD student tie-ups and projects with TATA Power to solve actual industry related problems to make PhD programs more relevant and industry-ready.
Dr. Praveer Sinha addressed the gathering and presented the work done by TATA Power in the past 6-7 years with various higher education institutions in India and abroad including MIT (Boston, USA), Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada), University of Florence (Italy) and various IITs. He advocated for investing in higher educational institutes to research and develop groundbreaking new technologies rather than playing catch up with the global electrical industry. He also shared his valuable experience in teaching and collaboration with institutes abroad and expressed his interest in working with PEC.
TATA Power is currently conducting research with Indian universities such as IITs and PEC in the fields of wireless charging EVs, sun tracking solar panels, automated solar panel cleaning systems etc. Dr. Praveer Sinha exhorted M.Tech. and Ph.D. scholars from PEC to submit project proposals and discussed the feasibility of PEC co-partnering such research projects. The Electrical Engineering Department of PEC will be sending multiple project proposals for review by the end of this month. The Director and the Heads of all departments thanked Dr. Praveen Sinha for his presentation and visit to the institute.