Medical Devices R&D Engineer Interview - The Interview Portal : Job Details

Medical Devices have made tremendous strides in delivering innovative technologies that have diagnosed and cured life threatening conditions !

Govind Govindarajan (PhD), our next pathbreaker, Principal Mechanical Engineer at Varex Imaging Corporation (Salt Lake City, United States), serves as Analyst and Subject Matter Expert in X-Ray Tube Engineering technologies.

Govind talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about his more than 15 years experience at GE Healthcare (GEHC) where he was involved in the development of different types of medical systems (CT, X-ray systems etc.).

For students, we don't know what the future holds ! Do not be disappointed when your plans don't succeed. Listen to those around you, but take personal decisions by yourself.

Govind, can you share your background with our young readers?

I am from a middle-class family and grew up in Nanganallur, at that time a distant suburb of Chennai. I attended the Modern Senior Secondary School – a local community supported school, which became a CBSE recognized institution during my schooling.

My father worked in a Central Govt. affiliated institution that oversaw mining across India, and was posted in different cities during my schooling. My mother was a home-maker, who moved with my father. I grew up in Chennai and thus, did not spend a lot of time with my parents and was not directly influenced by them. But, like most middle-class families in India, there was an environment of scholarship in our house. Doing well in school and in general, aspiring for higher learning was always important.

Early on, I liked reading in general but not any particular subjects. I became interested in mathematics in my middle school (around 6 th or 7 th standard). I was not a very good student till maybe my 9 th or 10 th standard, but improved after that. One trait that may have hindered me in the beginning, but helped me later on is that I never studied with grades/marks in mind. I was always more interested in learning a concept and how/where it was relevant. I also tried to present anything I learnt in my own words as I understood it. In that sense, I was a slow learner, but I feel these traits have helped me both to learn better and apply my learnings.

Like most students at that time, I did not have a lot of activities outside of schooling. My parents were very religious and I often took part in activities in the local temple. For a short time, I learnt to play the mridangam (S. Indian percussion instrument), something I have managed to continue till now.

I was interested in nature and birding as a youngster, but did not pursue them seriously (they were not considered serious hobbies at that time). But I was able to keep the interest alive, and am able to pursue more now with better guidance and resources. I now feel that these “outside” interests are critical to grow the mind and develop a good perspective in life overall. As with many middle-class families, sports was seen as a distraction to studies. I did not participate in any sports until my graduate studies, something which I now think is very important for development, if it is done carefully.

What did you do for graduation/post graduation?

I had a year's gap after my high school during which I prepared for the IIT-JEE. I joined IIT-Madras in Mechanical Engineering (ME). At IIT, I was attracted to mechanical design and analysis. I discovered I also enjoyed programming and software development, and saw it as a way to solve analytical problems. For my undergraduate thesis, I developed a software package that helps to parse, store and organize expert knowledge, and use it to design mechanical components.

After I got my BTech degree, I joined Rutgers University's graduate school in the US as a research assistant in the Mechanical and Aerospace Department. This was a little unusual in that most new international graduate students at that time usually received teaching assistantships. It allowed me to focus on full-time research. I was chosen to work on a project on polymer composite materials. It required me to make material samples in my lab, test and evaluate them for their properties for an industrial partner who was sponsoring the research.

What were some of the key influences that led you to such an offbeat, unconventional career as an R&D Engineer?

During my undergrad, I was exposed to, and appreciated, the breadth of areas I could work in as a mechanical engineer. Having an opportunity to work in diverse areas appealed to me, and continues to do so even today. It provides me with variety in work, makes it challenging and interesting.

I don't think there was any one person who strongly influenced me in my career. Rather, it was different people in small ways at different times. I did not have any engineers in my family, so did not have anyone to guide me in my choices. I experimented with working in different areas and roles in my career which allowed me to understand their different requirements and expectations, and to identify roles and areas which appealed to me. I have also tried to learn from historical personalities and events.

My graduate study area was somewhat accidental. I had initially planned to enroll in a different school in an interdisciplinary field between computer-science and mechanical engineering (my interests at that time) on a partial scholarship. But just before I was to join that program, I received an offer from Rutgers, of a full tuition scholarship and graduate assistantship. I saw this as an opportunity to learn (in depth) areas other than what I had focused on in my undergrad, and also get some experience in hands-on research. I see this as a significant turning point in my career.

In my graduate research, I learnt – among other things – of the challenges one faces when applying theories into practice. Specific to engineering, I realized the importance of secondary and practical skills – instrumentation, test fixture design and fabrication, machining, measurement, data acquisition etc. – required to properly apply or evaluate a theory or an idea. I found these enjoyable and challenging, particularly aspects such designing and developing (from scratch) mechanical manufacturing and testing systems, and the necessary control and measurement systems. I feel this is very important, something that engineering schools do not emphasize in their curriculum.

For a short time in the beginning, I also had guidance from my predecessor in the graduate school lab. It was useful in being able to understand and plan my research in the initial stages.

How did you plan the steps to get into the career you wanted? Tell us about your career path

My guides/advisors in graduate school encouraged me to go for my PhD rather than stop with a Master's degree.

I had to get a Master's degree first, which I did on the way to the PhD. My research was mostly supported by my department and by university-based research centers.

I think this had both advantages and disadvantages: being able to focus on research without any breaks or distractions from work enabled me to complete my doctoral degree relatively quickly (it took me 5 years to get both my masters and doctoral degrees). On the other hand, since our original industrial partner had stopped supporting the work early in my research, I was not sure where it would be applied. I could see the importance and relevance of my work, but had to think of various scenarios where it would be used. In hindsight, I think it is important, particularly for engineering doctoral candidates, to partner with an industry or a research agency in their research.

I had offers from other universities to join their PhD programs, but my advisors convinced me to stay at Rutgers. With their support, I was able to identify areas of research that were of interest to me. I was interested in both the theoretical and practical side of engineering. This, I was able to do for my doctoral thesis.

I researched the time-dependent behavior of polymer composite materials for my PhD thesis. A composite is a mixed material made of two or more different types of constituent materials in which the constituents retain their individual properties. My thesis was to develop mathematical models to predict how these materials will behave when subjected to high loads and temperatures over long periods of time, and to demonstrate their accuracy through measurements on actual composite specimens. Composite materials have several advantages, but are somewhat complex. Without being able to understand and model their behavior, they cannot be used in most applications, hence the relevance of my research.

As with any doctoral work, there were significant challenges in finding solutions to practical hurdles in the research, encountering failures and recovering from them, obtaining the necessary funding and working with experts in the field. I realized that a large part of a successful doctoral degree is overcoming these challenges while maintaining the focus on the research topic. Despite the challenges, I would say I truly enjoyed working on my research and in a university environment.

After my doctorate degree, I debated between staying in academia, and moving to applied research and working in industry as an engineer. I got an opportunity to work as a postdoctoral researcher, but I felt the scope was somewhat narrow and did not appeal to me. I also felt that many researchers and academicians were too specialized and unable to properly visualize where their expertise could be properly utilized – something I see even today. I thought that getting experience in product development would be useful for me to gain this perspective.

Can you tell us about your research work at GE?

I applied for and received an offer to work as a software engineer at GE Healthcare (or GE Medical Systems or GEMS as it was known then) to work on a software that acquires and shares patient information, including images, between doctors and hospitals. While this had very little to do with my doctoral research or even mechanical engineering, I thought this would be a good opportunity to gain both exposure to product development and experience in industrial software development, which I saw as a useful secondary skill. It also allowed me to evaluate my software skillset.

I worked in that role for a year during which I gained experience in software development in different environments. Over the course of this year, I realized that while I enjoyed designing, developing and testing software modules, it was not something I wanted to do full-time. I missed the variety of mechanical engineering and decided to move back to it. Also in a more idealistic sense, I felt that society had invested time and effort to train me as a mechanical engineer and I wanted to utilize it to do something beneficial to all society. I felt that the medical device industry was a good platform for me to accomplish this.

I joined a group of mechanical engineers at GEMS posted across different sub-businesses to help them with expertise in critical areas. I was initially posted to a facility that manufactures x-ray tubes, which are radiation sources for medical imaging applications. This was not an area I was familiar with. In fact, I didn't even know such a product existed. Even today, this is not a product many engineers – mechanical or otherwise – are familiar with (automotive, aerospace, energy generation, construction, space etc. seem to be more well-known).

My primary role was to understand and provide expertise in the structural and dynamic behavior of the tubes, particularly for new products that were being designed. It gave me an opportunity to see the actual application of different specialties in ME (mechanical engineering) and other areas in a product. After some years I moved to other sub-businesses within GEMS, or GE Healthcare (GEHC) as it later became known, that developed different types of medical systems (CT, X-ray systems etc.) and where knowledge and expertise in other areas of ME were required. It exposed me to more environments where mechanical engineering is used to develop products. I moved out of GE in 2014, but have continued in a similar role in my current job (x-ray tubes design and manufacturing). My work is more towards application of existing knowledge to build products and make them better.

How did you get your first break?

My admission to Rutgers on a full scholarship, the opportunity to work as a software engineer, and later on as a mechanical engineer are all what I consider to be breaks in my career. In all cases, the first and most important step was a decision to step out of my comfort zone for gaining experience in what I thought to be important for my career development. I was rewarded in each case with an opportunity. I realized it was in my hands (and interests) to utilize these opportunities as much as possible and see if the experience and learnings were useful in my career development and also, at a personal level.

What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you address them?

There were several challenges, both personal and technical, and in many cases, a combination of the two. Learning to work in a new society, and later on, in highly competitive environments, often without support, solving problems beyond my areas of training, learning to balance life, work and outside interests, were all challenging.

Challenge 1: One of the first challenges I faced was being able to work with the manufacturing and testing systems on my own at the start of my graduate studies. For the first time I was asked to work with a mechanical system that had no significant support. My advisors were not very familiar with these systems themselves and expected me to run and maintain them. I realized that my research was dependent on these systems and my ability to understand how they worked. While this role was not what I had envisaged for myself as a grad student, I did not hesitate to take on the responsibilities head-on, at the very least to understand what I was capable of. Initially I had a fear of failure, especially of damaging the systems through misuse. I soon realized that failures were inevitable in these situations, and the ability to not be discouraged and recover from them is needed to be a good researcher and engineer. I found that my experience in developing software was useful in being able to understand and run these systems, first, since the systems were software controlled and second, being able to decompose the functioning of these complex systems into smaller modules – similar to a complex software package – provided insights into how the systems functioned. Another challenge was to design and develop additional systems needed for the research. I had to both learn practical design and fabrication, and interact with individuals and companies in an unfamiliar environment (US). I found the people I worked with were very helpful and open (which I have found is true of the people in the US in general), which made the second part much easier. Overcoming the initial fear of failure, through reasoning and perseverance, gave me confidence to deal with unfamiliar and uncertain situations in general, which I think is necessary in engineering.

Challenge 2: There was an instance when some of our premier products were failing very early in the field. This was a serious concern for both the customers – who were not certain if they could depend on these products for critical health diagnosis procedures – and to my company, hurting it both financially, as well as its reputation. I was asked to investigate this issue and determine how we could avoid these failures. I analyzed the data and observed that the issue was not due to any design flaws. Rather, it had to do with logistics and communication gaps in the company. I worked with the management, sales and field service teams, and visited sites where these issues had been observed. The problem was well outside the scope of my role, but I was able to identify the main issues and eliminate them through changes in our field service operation.

Challenge 3: A technical challenge came up when, as an engineer working with CT (Computed Tomography Scanner) hardware, I was asked to analyze the airflow inside of a CT system (called a gantry). This was for a new generation of products where the performance demand on the gantry and the hardware inside was much higher than earlier. Controlling the airflow inside the gantry was critical to achieving the required performance. To accomplish this, I had to learn an entirely different area of mechanical engineering – fluid dynamics – something I had very little exposure to (and interest) in my undergraduate and graduate schooling. It took me a while to get a grounding in this area and to develop a solution method. Many senior engineers were skeptical of my approach, and told me that this was a complex problem and my proposed methods were not very successful in these domains. Nevertheless, I decided to try this approach and see if I could make it work. It took me more than a year to understand the problem and devise a solution method. I had several discussions with engineers from the program teams and external entities. I learnt that the scale of this problem made this an altogether new domain, and I was among the first to work in it. I was able to decompose the overall problem into smaller steps, and solve it per my original plan. It showed that my approach was both feasible, and provided several advantages over existing ones. It also showed possible ways for the design teams to get the required performance. This effort was being scrutinized by several people, and that any failure would have had significant implications for myself and the program. For me the biggest learning from this experience was not to unquestioningly accept boundaries set by others, even those with experience. One cannot say with certainty what is possible with perseverance and effort.

Where do you work now?

I currently work at Varex Imaging, a company that designs and manufactures x-ray tubes for multiple medical device and inspection companies around the world.

What problems do you solve?

I serve as a subject matter expert in some of the core engineering areas of x-ray tube technology. I solve problems a little similar to what I saw in my role as an x-ray tube engineer at GEMS. However, the volume and scope of work are significantly larger. I try to gain new insights into the performances of different subcomponents of the product, try to find causes of why they may malfunction, and show ways on how we can make them function better. I tie this with the company's business goals. The demands from an x-ray tube are also changing and increasing. Newer systems demand the tube function better in more severe environments. I see my role as finding ways to make this possible.

What skills are required for your role? How did you acquire the skills?

This role requires expertise or a high level of competency in almost all areas of mechanical engineering. Like most product development, it also involves several other disciplines such as other areas of engineering (chemical, materials, electronics etc.). It also requires knowledge of mathematics, modeling, analytical methods, statistical science associated with quality control, of different manufacturing methods, sufficient financial knowledge to understand the business implications of the engineering work, and in my line of work, radiation physics, medical imaging and diagnosis procedures. In addition, I need hands-on skills needed to test products, problem solving skills, and communication skills to present ideas and concepts to audiences from different backgrounds such as technicians, engineers and business leaders.

Some of these I was able to acquire in my undergraduate and graduate studies. Others, I have had to acquire through experience. In some cases, I have attended formal classes/courses, either in-person or on-line. I also read articles, papers and books.

What's a typical day like?

Given the nature of my role, there is no one typical day. Some days, I will work on modeling the behavior of a product using hand calculations or commercial tools. Other days, I will plan experiments, run tests and analyze the results. I also spend a significant amount of time analyzing failed products to identify the cause and how to make them better. I work on tools – developing new or adapting existing ones – to help with analysis or productivity. There are days when I do many or all of these. I also interact with people across the company to identify different issues and requirements and see where my help may be needed. I also work on presenting my work for different audiences, both technical and non-technical.

What is it you love about this job?

I really enjoy the variety of work associated with my role. The variety means I never stagnate or get bored with my work, even if it can get overwhelming at times. I also enjoy working on technical challenges and technology, and the opportunity to learn new areas. I also like the opportunity to use both traditional knowledge and new tools and methods. Above all, I like the fact I am able to use my education. Being able to develop a product, I am able to see where my work and expertise directly reaches society.

How does your work benefit society?

I chose to be in the medical devices field primarily because of its positive contribution to all of society. The products I am working on help to cure diseases and illnesses, and make people's lives better. It saves lives and helps those in physical and mental discomfort. I cannot think of many other industries with such a positive contribution to society.

Tell us an example of a specific memorable work you did that is very close to you!

There are several, but one that I value highly and look back fondly is not associated with my job.

In my graduate school and later on, I developed several interests outside work. I became somewhat interested in music during my undergrad, and more so in my graduate school where I had access to more sources and information. I began to explore nature and the outdoors and later on, nature photography. One of my friends presented me a book on musicians in South Indian classical (Carnatic) music, which piqued my interest in musical and Indian history. This led to further reading and research, and gave me a better understanding of India, my culture and myself, which I think are important for personal development.

I also started volunteering in the Association for India's Development (AID) just as I started my working career, something I continue to do till today. AID is an organization started by a grad student to focus on social development projects in India. My joining this organization was accidental: I attended a Carnatic concert organized by the local AID chapter during which there was a short talk about the organization. I had been looking for ways to help India and thought this organization could provide me avenues for that. As an AID volunteer, I have had the opportunity to work in different focus areas such as children's education, rural health, environment, sustainable farming and many others, as well as in many geographical areas. For me, the most interesting (and important) facet of being a volunteer was being able to interact with some of the pioneers in Indian social work, and learn about India and some of the issues India faces. It gave me a very different perspective of India, and also broadened my vision of society and development.

Looking back, I'd say both receiving the book on Indian music history and attending the AID concert were events that have had significant effects on me, even though they seemed trivial at that time.

Coming back to my most memorable experience, it is from a visit I made to Southern Tamil Nadu a long time back. I visited this area to see for myself certain social programs that were helping rural women and child workers. I stayed in small towns and villages, visited several villages and had an opportunity to interact with the program organizers and participants. I enjoyed the experience of meeting and learning from them about some of the problems they faced as a group, and how they were able to overcome them through cooperation. I was welcomed everywhere I went, and people shared their experiences and learnings with me. It gave me a lot of joy to see these changes for myself, and find out about the strength and resourcefulness of even the poorest people of India.

Your advice to students based on your experience?

Be ready to work hard and stay focused. It takes time to figure out how to work hard and develop a focus. Learn to pace yourself and put your best effort where you think it is necessary.

Do not be discouraged by failures. What should bother you is if they were from lack of effort. Learn from the failures and use them to become better. Learn to respect yourself even through failures. Learn to motivate yourself and work through difficult periods. Confidence, humility and self-respect come when we aspire for something hard, and figure how to achieve it.

Do not be afraid of going outside your comfort zone and trying something new. Weigh their risks and decide if this is something worth learning or experiencing. Develop plans, but realize that you don't control all the variables. Do not be disappointed when the plans don't succeed. Listen to those around you, but take personal decisions by yourself. Others may have your best interests, but you know yourself and your situation the best.

Develop interests outside your schooling and career. Make sure they also help you develop as a person. Learn to spend time on them without affecting your career or studies. Realize that there is a lot more to education than what you learn in school. Help those who need it or are less fortunate than you. Use this experience to learn about both them and yourself.

Future Plans?

I am not sure what the future holds. I would like to continue to work in engineering, learn newer technologies and see how I can incorporate them in my work. I would also like to share my learnings with younger engineers in my field and motivate them to grow in the field. I am also exploring other avenues of helping society, outside of my career.

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