Congratulations to Priya Raghuraman for receiving a scholarship from the Association of Energy Engineers named in honor of former AEE President Konstantin Lobodovski. Like many students, Priya was inspired by a teacher to pursue engineering. “I took a power systems class in undergraduate at VJTI, Mumbai,” said Priya. “And Dr. Pragati Gupta and Dr. H. B. Chaudhary gave such great lectures and encouraged many of us to enter the electric power industry.” Today, Priya is pursuing her Doctorate in Electrical Engineering under Professor Mesut Baran at NC State while working full time as a project engineer for the Medium Voltage (MV) Switchgear Team at Siemens in Wendell, NC. She also received her Masters at NC State in 2017 through the Electric Power Systems Engineering (EPSE) program at the FREEDM Center.

“I got into engineering because I was good at math and science, but I had an affinity for the electrical stuff,” said Priya. When asked how she found NC State while in India, she noted that several students ahead of her in school had attended graduate school at NC State and highly recommended it. “Our friends specifically told us about the good job opportunities after graduation.”

That is exactly what Siemens wants to hear! “We heavily recruit from the EPSE program at NC State,” says Arun Shivakkumaran, Manager of MV Engineering at Siemens. “New hires from that program are well prepared for the types of products and projects that we develop.”

“AEE is very pleased with our new relationship with NC State,” said Abdelhadi Hussein, Senior Energy Engineer for ICF and Student Chapter Committee Chair at NCAEE. “We’re glad that Priya won this scholarship and we’re happy to announce the new student chapter at the University. With goals to electrify much of our economy over the next 30 years, we definitely need more students like her to pursue careers in energy.”

Priya’s interest in technology extends beyond her career. She’s an astronomy enthusiast and enjoys watching meteor showers with friends.