TMP Student Spotlight: Rahul Sangodkar, PhD in Chemical Engineering

TMP Student Spotlight: Rahul P. Sangodkar

Rahul P. Sangodkar is graduating from UC Santa Barbara this June 2016 with a doctoral degree in Chemical Engineering and a certificate in Technology Management.

He participated in the Technology Management Program’s New Venture Competition this past year and together with three team members formed OSMO, a water quality device business. Rahul is originally from Mumbai, India and enjoys reading, cooking, and exploring Santa Barbara’s wine country.

Your learning experiences in TMP

You got selected to be this year’s graduate student speaker, congrats! How do you feel and can you share any insights into your speech for the TMP Award Ceremony? I am delighted and honored to be chosen as the speaker at the TMP Ceremony this year and hope to speak, on behalf of the graduate TMP students, towards the unique and enabling perspectives and insights that TMP provided to complement my technical background as a doctoral student in Chemical Engineering. I am confident that such complementarity between TMP and the home Departments are reflective of the experiences of other graduate students at the Ceremony. Watch a clip of Rahul's speech here!

How did you hear about TMP and why did you decide to join the program? Several graduate colleagues had previously completed coursework in TMP and spoke highly of its interdisciplinary nature and the diverse insights, perspectives, and experiences it presented, especially for STEM graduate students. Looking back I am glad that I joined the program, especially since it exposed me to avenues/practices that I knew little about and which I am confident will be crucial as I embark on my industry-based career after graduate school.

What are some of your influential learning experiences going through TMP? Any challenging but rewarding TMP courses? While TMP was a conglomeration of diverse courses and instructors with equally diverse and complementary backgrounds, two courses were likely most influential. “Managing for Innovation” (TMP241, taught by Prof. Dave Seibold) was my first course in TMP and was instrumental in motivating me to pursue additional courses and eventually the Certificate. The breadth and depth of the course covered managing at individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels that were especially relevant to the technology sectors where my STEM research was directly relevant.

“Business Strategy and Leadership” (TMP240) was a challenging and rewarding course, and characterized a cohesive intersectional relationship between readings, lectures, and implementation. Moreover, Prof. Gary Hansen’s teaching methods were dynamic, where he would cover substantial fractions of the coursework in lectures, but crucially also necessitated and encouraged students to research/read outside of class to deepen their knowledge. Such a framework paired well with the application-oriented sections of the coursework, and importantly facilitated independent learning.

Did you have any key mentors or people who deeply influenced you while you were in TMP? While each of the TMP faculty played key roles at different segments of my evolution through the program, Prof. Dave Seibold was notably influential. In fact, Dave was the instructor for the first ever TMP course I enrolled in and his passionate teaching made the course easy-to-follow, especially for a STEM graduate student who had minimal academic background in management-related subjects. Subsequently, Dave was always approachable and available for discussing the direction of my TMP curriculum, choice of electives, and most recently in providing valuable inputs during the interviewing process.

What were the benefits of a program like Technology Management on campus to you, which is a combination of business and management education, and entrepreneurship? The Program was beneficial in personal and professional dimensions. Personally, there were practices and approaches that I applied to my own work. For example, I was able to extend and apply these concepts to my research-related interactions and collaborations, which facilitated the associated deliverables. The professional implications, broad relevance and benefits of the program were evident during my job interviews for engineering-based positions at companies in diverse technology sectors, including pharmaceuticals, energy and chemicals, and semiconductors. Although the crux of the job descriptions for these positions were based on technical expertise, the insights I gained through TMP were noticed and discussed by large fractions of my interviewers, which served to establish my capability to work in large organizations with multidisciplinary team structures where inter- and intra-team requirements and interactions were continually revised in compliance with the broader objectives.

Your advice to students/parents about UCSB’s TMP

How would you explain to students and parents what you can do with a Technology Management Certificate? For a graduate student, the TMP Certificate provides a fundamental understanding of how organizations and businesses of different scales sustain themselves and the various interpersonal, team-based and organizational functions that are involved in their daily activities, which if missing or sub-optimal, can detrimentally affect overall productivity and efficacy. In contrast to most out-of-university candidates that typically possess technical or business acumen, combining TMP and STEM graduate programs yields robust technical expertise complemented by fundamental management and business understanding. As I mentioned in a preceding response, this was identified and appreciated by several industry-based experts during my interviews and reflects the enabling aspects of such insights in the workplace, especially for a newly hired out-of-school graduate student.

Your Goals after UCSB and TMP

Where are you going after graduation and what are your plans? (e.g. job, grad school, etc.) In addition to finishing the TMP certificate, last week I successfully defended my PhD in Chemical Engineering. I am excited to start as Senior Engineer at Amgen in Cambridge, MA in late summer.

What has been your biggest accomplishment so far at UCSB and TMP? At TMP specifically, successfully completing the Certificate while simultaneously balancing the demanding doctoral-research commitments has been among one of my most notable accomplishments. Most recently, the icing on the cake involved participating and winning first place in the New Venture Competition, along with my team members in OSMO. This provided a unique entrepreneurial experience that included a diverse array of opportunities to interact with experts in the field and allowed for the first-hand application of TMP coursework, under real-time business conditions of continuous revisions, innovation, and uncertainty.

Photos courtesy of Rahul Sangokar.