My Engineering Journey
That journey gave me the confidence to go bigger. I designed rocket interstage shells at the Indian Space Research Organisation, then worked as a Product Design Engineer at Embedite Pvt. Ltd., leading rapid prototyping cycles under real-world constraints.
Somewhere along the way, I started flying real planes. After building 32 model aircraft, I flew a Cessna 172, and now I am learning to glide. My love for flight and speed led me to Imperial College London, where I studied Master’s in Advanced Aeronautical Engineering, focusing on aerodynamic design, CFD pipelines, and experimental testing.
Today, I carry the same excitement that started with a model airplane and an F1 race on TV. Now I have the tools, experience, and drive to turn that spark into race cars, rockets, and aircraft that push the boundaries of performance.
Ever since I was a kid, my world has been full of wings and wheels. I spent school afternoons sketching aircraft, building model planes that actually flew, and tinkering with little robotic projects just to see what I could make move. Then I discovered Formula One. Watching Sebastian Vettel race sparked something in me. I wanted to build the cars, but it felt like an impossible dream until way after college.
In my undergraduate years, I found myself building cars for Shell Eco-marathon, first a bamboo–glass fibre car that explored sustainable materials, and later a 3D-printed electric prototype that we panelised, recycled, and raced. I transitioned from a driver to a designer and then to a team manager, leading a 25-member team that won international recognition for innovation and safety.
Our next step was to create something uniquely ours. This was the first car where I took ownership as the body designer. I was responsible for creating the surface design, running structural checks, and helping bring the body from CAD to track-ready hardware.
We sourced pre-woven bamboo mats from our college’s Bamboo Research Centre, cut them to shape, resin-coated them for weather protection, and formed them over wooden moulds to create a continuous shell. I worked on aligning and joining the cut sections at precise angles to maintain stiffness and surface continuity while keeping weight low.
On the chassis side, I contributed to the design of tube joints and attachment points, ensuring the bamboo shell and tubular frame acted as a single structure under load. Once assembled, I participated in stiffness and crash tests, iterating to improve joint strength and weight distribution.
This car went on to win the Shell Eco-marathon Technical Innovation Award, proving that a bamboo-based vehicle could perform at an international level. For me, it was my first experience in design-for-manufacture, composite forming, and validating my CAD and structural work in real-world racing.
Apprenticeship:
The Golf-Body Car
I began my journey as an apprentice on a car whose shell was designed to mimic a golf ball’s dimpled surface for better flow attachment. I learned from the senior team, maintained the prototype, and observed how aerodynamic ideas translate into real-world performance.
The car taught me about Reynolds number regimes and why ideas that work at one scale (like a golf ball) don’t always translate to full-size vehicles. The flow over our car operated at a much higher Reynolds number, far past the “drag crisis” regime where dimples trigger early transition to reduce pressure drag. Instead, we just increased surface roughness and turbulence, hurting aerodynamic performance.
That was my first major lesson: good aero isn’t just about copying clever ideas — it’s about applying them in the right regime, with precision.
The Bamboo Car:
This was the car where I moved from contributor to technical lead. I spearheaded the development of a bamboo–glass fibre hybrid composite, working with the team to create layup schedules, carry out resin infusion, and run destructive tests to validate strength and stiffness.
The new composite reduced body weight significantly while improving surface quality and crash safety. I designed the panels in CAD for manufacturability, ensuring that they could be moulded with minimal material wastage, and introduced swappable panels that allowed quick overnight repairs during competition.
I also coordinated closely with the chassis and drivetrain teams to refine mounting points, improve load paths, and balance weight distribution. This was where I learned to manage an entire design-to-manufacture workflow — from CAD surfacing to material testing to final assembly.
The car performed exceptionally well at competition, earning high praise for its structural innovation and reliability under race conditions. More importantly, it was the first time I saw my engineering decisions translate into better performance on track — a huge step forward in my development as an engineer.
The Hybrid Composite Car
For the final car, I led the design of a tiger-shark-inspired aeroshell to delay flow separation and ran CFD iterations in ANSYS Fluent, achieving a 17% drag reduction. I panelised the body for 3D printing, added orthogrid reinforcement for strength, and printed it using recycled plastic filament. Despite last-minute logistics challenges, we shipped the car internationally, secured a podium finish, and won Technical Innovation and Safety Awards.
3D-Printed Aero Shell
Project 02
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