Aneesh Ashok Kumar

In 2020, having just completed a master's in Mechanical Engineering, I wanted to gain experience in the design and development of robotic and other related systems.
I therefore applied and got accepted into the Mechatronics Systems Design track of the TU/e EngD program. Over the next two years, I gained diverse technical knowledge and more importantly, key principles to be followed in hi-tech system design. The importance of activties such as stakeholder management, requirements specification, system architecture, risk analysis and project planning, was highlighted to me through the multiple group projects that we had in our first year. Through the group projects, we also got to improve on our team-work, cooperating with teammates having different skill-sets and viewpoints on tackling challenges. Meanwhile, we also had regular interacton with professional development coaches to get guidance on our soft-skills, using feedback from our coaches as well as teammates. This was very helpful. The projects themselves were quite diverse, and I had the opportunity to work on diverse technologies such as vision systems, AI and edge computing devices, RFID systems, and virtual environments with physiscs simulation. The challenge of working on such different projects helped broaden my perspective and improve my collaboration skills with my colleagues.
I believe that the experiences gained over the course of the program will definitely be valuable over the coming years.