An Engineer
We gave a variety of responses to that question; our lecturer listened to us patiently and at the end he gave us his answer.
" If you give an Orange to a Mathematician, he ' ll look at it and he ' ll tell you the size, shape and weight of that Orange ".
( Image courtesy: Severin Winkler, FreeImages. com)
" What ' s the difference between a Mathematician and an Engineer?"
This one question that our lecturer asked 28 years ago, while we were in 2nd year Electrical Engineering at OUCE, changed the way I approached my course work, profoundly influenced the choices I made in my profession and positively impacted my career progress years to come.
" But if you give that Orange to an Engineer, she ' ll peel it and eat it." " Mathematics is the foundation. Engineering is the application of that knowledge."
Yes. I learnt a lot more at OU. But this one lesson remained with me, traveled with me around the world and became part of me ever since.
Before that class, I would look at V = IR and tell myself: hence, I = V / R, i. e. the current is inversely proportional to resistance.
After that class, I started looking at V = IR and started telling myself: hence, one can control the speed of a fan by controlling the resistance of the circuit.( Agreed: That ' s not the best way of controlling the speed, as it results in high energy loss, but you get the point about formula vs. application).
After I completed my Masters in Engineering in the USA and applied for a job at an Advanced Technology firm, they felt that I can take one of the 3 roles and left the choice to me- A) Product R & D B) Consumer Applications of the new technology and C) Platform Development. I chose the 2nd option, Consumer Applications of the Technology. Our early work resulted in many applications and one of the popular applications of that technology that came into being later on, is now the ubiquitous iPhone Siri. The choice I made that day was completely driven by the lesson I learnt at OUCE years before. That choice proved to be a perfect option for me as I enjoyed immensely the challenges and the pleasure of dreaming up, rolling out the applications and conducting consumer studies. Nothing else could have beaten that experience of seeing that the applications that I am a part of being used by millions of consumers worldwide daily.
I owe that to my undergrad lecturer and that is my keepsake from OU. What is your takeaway from OUCE?
Vijaya Kurada, EE 91,( MS and MBA from USA) worked for BHEL, Nuance Communications( USA and India), GE Money Americas( USA) and Acxiom Corporation( USA) in the past, and currently lives in London. She ' s currently teaching, writing, mentoring and consulting in topics related to AI, Mobile Apps and Emerging Technologies. Vijaya is a co-author of an US Patent in Natural Language Dialog Analysis.
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