Dr. CD Rajaganapathy is currently serving as the Director at KSRM College of Engineering, Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh. With an extensively vast experience of working in various corporate companies and academic institutions across India, he has been recognized by “Consistent Achiever Award” for 5 consecutive academic years (2014 to 2018) in placing all eligible students in various IT, ITES & Core Companies. He has organized a number of Guest Lectures by Industry Experts; Industrial visits, In Plant Training & Internships for students, and defence interviews like Indian Army and Navy as well. Also, he is a member of many professional bodies across the country. 

KSRM College of Engineering

What is your philosophy of leadership?

“Be Simple, Be Sample”

Leadership is setting and achieving goals, tackling the competition, and solving problems decisively and quickly. I always believe in leadership being direct and try to lead by example. I enjoy delegating tasks and taking the lead on projects, but I also like to stay involved and inspire my team by showing that I’m working hands-on to help them too. 

How does the curriculum of KSRM ensure the best practice of industry?

“Aligning industry needs and expertise”

In today’s educational system, the participation of industries in curriculum design and delivery at institutions and universities is very much essential to prepare the students for employment. This helps bridging the gap between the industry and institutions, and enables the students to become industry ready. This also reduces the time, effort and resources spent on the students at industries, before they will take up the real projects. Most of the institutes, as a general practice, involve industry people during their Board of Studies meetings and design the curriculum with their inputs. Apart from the regular activities, we are conducting a regular event called Corporate Voice Function. This monthly event brings in industry people to address our students department wise.

What do you think your roles and responsibilities to the students are?

“Student training, placements and academics-related activities”

Developing strategies for student internships and training, networking with leading industries in India and with business and other organizations for student placements are my major roles being the Director of the college. Moreover, I regularly organize specialist training programmes for students in order to improve their employability skills. Campus interviews for students, coordinating with members of the faculty for career advice to students and organizing career advice sessions from specialist invitees is my responsibility as well. I also generate periodic performance reports of students and share with the University performance review committee and plan the annual budget for the operation of the Directorate 20.

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How does the college ensure that students are being prepared for the future?

“Training in the industry through collaborations”

We have signed many MoUs and collaborative programs with top leading companies worldwide such as Tesla, IBM India Pvt Ltd.etc. As a part of MoU, the company offers courses for every semester and certifies the student in the trending technology which is internationally recognized and the students hereby receives a co-branded degree which is jointly offered by the company and KSRMCE. This degree is highly reputed and helps the students to secure good placement with high salary packages. During these programs, students get an opportunity to interact with industry experts and polish their skills to face this competitive world. The students also will get an opportunity to work with the industry while they study in the campus KSRMCE. These MoUs are a milestone in the history of KSRMCE to further its cause in helping the rural community in accessing world-class technical education and thus set a bench-mark for emerging technologies using AI and ML.

What types of projects are students working on through these programs?

“Dynamic seed funding and consultancy projects”

We are doing a lot of projects by involving our students through our faculty guidance. There are a large number of on-going projects under the Seed Funding scheme monitored by Centre for Research and Innovation like IoT based Raspberry Pi Laboratory Security System and Hostel Inmate detection using Advanced Machine learning. Design and Implementation of High Step-Up Non-Isolated Boost Converter for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Based EV Application and performance evaluation of fuel cell fed electric vehicle system with reconfigured quadratic boost converter are some advanced projects where students work under our guidance. Also, we have been developing and implementing OFDM based transmitter and receiver in FPGA, and Crop model for yield estimation by integrating Remote sensing and in situ data. In addition, consultancy projects include Automatic number plate recognition system using Raspberry Pi Camera, Smart Glass to read text using Google Pytesseract-OCR, AR based Indoor navigation system and ML based synthetic traffic-sign board creation. 

What would you like people to know about your college they may not know?

“Highly dedicated and potential educational commitments”

Our Management started this institute for service motto only and they are running it as a non profit organization. Our management is always ready to invest a seed funding for their new ideas and new projects, so that they focus only on developing the products, and not profit-loss statements. Most of the government employees and the people in the top notch position in our region are all our alumni. We are 1st to sign a MoU with IBM for AI & ML in this Rayalaseema region. Moreover, we have a dedicated CRI (Centre for Research & Innovation) team with 12 dedicated faculties who always focus on Research and Development activities. This is the separate department that helps to bring new projects to our institutions. And the aim of this CRI is to create more Incubation and Innovation activities which are the need of the hour today.

Any suggestions you would like to give to the current youth?

“Mindset and emotional stability are important”

I always recommend Youth to be proactive in learning and acquiring knowledge. Youth must think before acting or reacting, and find an adult mentor for themselves. They must not be followers. Be humble, establish a set of values and maintain emotional stability are my suggestions for them. 

What do you think should be the KSRMCE’s top priority over the next 10 years?

“Enriching students with best technology education”

We all are witnessing the technology disruption and evaluation of new technologies across the world. So equipping our students with these advanced technologies and practices is our priority now and always. In the next 10 years, we want to be one among the top institutions in India in terms of academics, placements and training of students. Strong industrial collaboration, exchange programs in foreign universities and bringing top notch industries inside the campus itself are our prime concerns in the path. Also, we are advancing towards a more industry oriented curriculum, and preparing the Tech Savvys for this nation with all the necessary social and moral values. 

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What is KSRM College of Engineering’s greatest strength?

“Supportive management and leading faculties”

We have a very dynamic and enthusiastic management working solely for the benefit of students. Even though the correspondents are stepping into a new venture of doing business with MNCS, they feel this institute is one of the vital services towards humanity and people of the region. They have maintained the legacy for generations. Apart from this, at institute level we are constantly taking efforts to ensure that our students showcase their academic talent with high moral values. We have 180+ faculties who are highly specialized and hold a Ph.D. in their domain areas. Also, we are working for the government funded projects and three R&D projects, and have signed 98 MoUs with leading technical companies across the globe.