Motivation Lies Within Oneself
Interview with Chemical Engineer Mr. Gaurav Garg
Do we all know what we want to do and why we want to do it? It could be great if we knew, right? The key to knowing what you want may not be sitting and getting engaged in some deep meditation that is the world. Just pursue whatever you find interesting and you never know maybe that is what you want to do just like the engineer I interviewed for this assignment. His name is Mr. Gaurav Garg and he is currently a Chemical Engineer at Evoqua Water Technologies, NJ.
Mr. Garg studied for bachelors in Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala, Punjab, India. During his career research, he got interested in Chemical engineering. He felt truly motivated once he started doing internships. He realized that he likes to work on the production floor, fix things and solve problems and be creative. He got his first internship in a fertilizer company during the summer of his junior year of college. He did his second internship during the summer of his senior year in a paper manufacturing company. He did his third internship in a company where he designed carbon filters for water treatment.
He got his first job as a full-time Chemical Engineer in Reliance Industries’ Gujarat (branch), India. Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) is an Indian conglomerate holding company owning businesses across the country that engage in energy, petrochemicals, textiles, natural resources, retails, and telecommunications. He worked there for about two years.
He went to SUNY Buffalo for his graduate studies. He finished his masters in two years along with his thesis titled “Magnetohydrodynamic Drop-on-Demand Liquid Metal 3D Printing”. He also did two internships during the masters for two different companies. His graduate years were the hardest part to get through for him in his whole career He recalled the struggle of adjusting to a new country and getting used to its lifestyle and education system. He finished his Master’s in September 2017.
Upon completing masters, he applied to nearly three hundred companies among which he got a job in Eurofins in CT as a chemical engineer. Eurofins is an international group of laboratories headquartered in Brussels, providing testing and supporting services to the pharmaceutical, food, environmental, agriscience and consumer products industries and to governments. So, as a chemical engineer, he had to do a lot of lab work and research. Writing reports was also a big part of the responsibilities. He also had to design machines if needed. He had to work overtime if anything went wrong with the machines. He also had to do research outside of the working hours.
From November 2017, he started working as a chemical engineer in Evoqua Water Technologies, NJ, USA. He is still working there in the technology department. He is one of the two engineers the plant has. He works on the production site where he gets to have his hands on the production related work. In his current job, he doesn’t have to work overtime usually unless something needs to get done in a very short note. However, he doesn’t need to work outside of the working hours because most of the work requires physical presence at the plant. One of the main parts of the responsibilities is (R&D) research and development which require the chemical engineer to develop new products or processes. He also does production related work which involves improving existing processes in a way that is most cost-effective and reproducible, can produce a high-quality product in the shortest amount of time. Process designing is another crucial part of the job. For example, he designs what machines with specifically what capabilities are needed for a certain process.
According to him, the most important skills for a chemical engineer are technical skills and communication skills. He has to spend 50% of the office hours working with other people. It can be a teamwork, can be meetings, writing emails, can be a presentation or public speaking. So, all three parts of communication skills- writing, speaking and listening- have to be on point. Writing emails is one of the most important daily responsibility since emails are the main communication system with clients and teammates. He writes about 10-15 emails a day. For any project, he must work on projects in teams. Both teams and projects are decided by the company. There are about 2-3 team meetings every week. He has to read regularly to stay up to date about the marketplace, new products or services and of course updates about the other companies in the industry. Other than technical and communication skills another vital skill for an engineer is time management. Every project has a deadline. Not being able to meet the deadline may cause the company irreparable damage. Creativity is important as well for a chemical engineer to come up with innovative solutions to arising problems and new ideas.
It was overall an interesting interview. From the interview, I was more inspired to pursue Chemical engineering career. Not because the chemical engineer I interview liked chemical engineering but because I may find the motivation at some point along the journey considering that I don’t have any other profession in my mind.
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