Sanjana is a third year undergraduate studying Electrical and Electronic Engineering with Management. She’s an active member of Imperial’s Indian Society where she is the head of 'Just Bollywood' — the UK's largest inter-university Bollywood fusion dance competition.

A head for business

Sanjana’s love of physics and maths, and a keen interest in economics, led her to choose our EEE with Management degree course, which combines studying electrical and electronic engineering alongside the skills and knowledge that help equip students for careers in industry and business.

“Studying a combination of technical and business modules allows you to gain a more informed perspective on business through a technical, engineering lens. Whether working for a company or creating a startup, you’ll be in a better position to judge and justify the commercial expenses side of things, as well as the technical operations side.”

A significant part of our undergraduate degrees involve real-life engineering projects, which combine designing products and considering economic and commercial engineering in practice.

Last year, Sanjana led a team developing Breathcomm – a communication device for patients with motor neuron diseases and other speech disabilities coupled with paralysis.  “The device functions by detecting and differentiating between long and short breaths, encoding and then decoding these breathing patterns with corresponding phrases. The phrase the user intends to communicate is then displayed on an LCD screen and a mobile app – which also plays an audio file that reads out the phrase in real time. This was one of the most challenging yet rewarding experiences I have had so far.”

Engineering is a lot of fun, and Sanjana believes we need to get that message out to young people to help improve diversity in the industry. “Showing the fun, hands-on side of engineering can definitely inspire more students from a variety of backgrounds, skills and interests to pursue it at a higher level. Hold sessions where high school students can work with robotics, breadboards, coding — anything that will help them gain an insight into the practical aspect of engineering, as it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the maths and difficult theory involved.”

Like many of our engineers supporting Tomorrow’s Engineers Week, Sanjana is inspired to teach. “If I wasn't an electrical and electronic engineer, I would like to teach Physics. I absolutely loved Physics, especially in years 12 and 13. As a teacher, I would be able to expose lots of students to the wonders of Physics and its various applications in engineering. It would be wonderful to be able to work within a field that I love, and inspire the next generations of engineers at the same time.”