Milestone Moments becomes a master class

At a time when technology companies were struggling to find enough qualified engineers and computer scientists, Rahul Panat received a phone call that was intended for his roommate.

No, sorry, he’s not here right now. Oh, okay, what do you do—microelectronics? No, fracture mechanics and fatigue. Great, you’re hired!

Although Panat, who was a graduate student at that time, did not accept that specific job, he ended up working at Intel Corporation on microelectronics research, an area in which he had no prior background. The lesson, according to Panat, is that industry looks for great problem solvers and not just experts in specific fields, so students should use their doctoral degrees to develop problem solving skills.

Such recruiting practices are now obsolete but the many lessons that Panat shared during his Milestone Moments talk were a modern-day master class for graduate students in the audience who are preparing for careers in academia, industry, or, like Panat, both.

He emphasized identity, vision, and people at the recent Center for Faculty Success event.

• He encouraged the students to establish an identity that would signal to others what they were doing and what they wanted to be known for.
• He told them to adopt a vision by deciding what grand challenges they wanted to tackle—cautioning them to align their ambition with their institutions and potential funders.
• Most importantly, he said they should build and nurture a community that would engender and sustain the collaborations they would rely upon throughout their careers.

Panat’s own success is no surprise. His parents were both physicists, nearly all his relatives were teachers, and growing up he was always surrounded by university people.

“I was lucky from day one,” he declared.

But luck aside, he made choices that drove his success beginning with establishing his professional identity by choosing between becoming a scientist, which he saw as a way to investigate what is or an engineer, a career which would allow him to create that which does not yet exist.

As an engineer, Panat has done just that. After earning a mechanical engineering degree from Pune University in India, he strove to become a creator and inventor. At first, though, he took what was considered a prestigious job with Tata Motors. When its prestige did not make up for the repetitive nature of the work there, he chose to attend the University of Massachusetts where he earned his master’s in mechanical engineering. At UMass, he was introduced to the subject of solid mechanics through a problem of breaking/fracture of glass windows used in NASA space shuttles.

He further honed that identity by then choosing to earn his Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Although the shift away from traditional mechanical engineering and toward solid mechanics, mathematical modeling, and simulation would take more work and time, he believed there would be a future payoff.

“If I’m making something, I can make it better using compute power,” he reasoned.

After earning his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, he took that Intel job—spending 10 years working in microprocessor manufacturing research and development. He won several awards, there including one for developing manufacturing processes for the world's first fully green integrated circuit chip.

He credits some of that success to purposely cultivating the identity of an engineer who wanted to and could make better devices and products.

“It’s extremely important to work hard, smart, and develop the skill to sell your ideas,” he added.

But he had also begun to realize that he was always executing Intel’s vision, not his own. Thanks to what he said was a very understanding wife, he found his way back to academia by spending nights, weekends, and vacation days conducting research at nearby Arizona State University to obtain the academic teaching and research experience he would need for his next move.

It’s extremely important to work hard, smart, and develop the skill to sell your ideas.

Rahul Panat, Professor, Mechanical Engineering

His own vision was beginning to take form as he discovered that he wanted to focus on advanced manufacturing and work on “crazy” ideas that only academia would allow researchers to pursue.

“Manufacturing was very exciting to me because as a result of your work, you will have an actual product in your hand.”

He spent three years as an associate professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Washington State University before coming to Carnegie Mellon in 2017.

And at a college with such a strong culture of collaboration, Panat found the community that has helped him to become one of the most innovative researchers working in additive manufacturing today.

He cited specific examples of productive partnerships including an early one with UPMC to develop the fastest known COVID-19 antibody test using unique 3D printing technology. Working with faculty members from CMU’s neuroscience department, he developed a new manufacturing technique to fabricate advanced fully customizable brain-computer interfaces. And his collaboration with electrical and computer engineering faculty that resulted in 3D printed flexible, electronic decals that can be used to monitor vitals of elderly patients.

In 2021, at the urging of Allen Robinson, then department head of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Panat accepted a position as the associate director of research at MFI. He says the opportunity helps him to know what others are doing in advanced manufacturing across campus.

The role checks off all three boxes for Panat—strengthening his identity as an advanced manufacturing innovator, guiding his vision to solving grand industry challenges, and nurturing a remarkable community of colleagues with similar ambitions.