Short Biography:
Dr. Christina Lampe-Onnerud is renowned for her pioneering work in developing and commercializing Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries for portable electronics, electric vehicles, and utilities.
She currently serves as CEO of Cadenza Innovation, Inc., a startup she founded in 2012 to bring higher energy density, lower cost, safer and environmentally sustainable batteries to the EV, grid storage and industrial markets. The firm’s patented ‘supercell’ platform is available for license to global manufacturers.
Earlier in her career, Dr. Lampe-Onnerud founded and served as CEO and International Chairman of Boston-Power, an innovative battery company providing products to the consumer electronics, transportation, and other end markets. In her time there, she took the firm from a startup to a global organization backed by more than $400 million in investment with technology centers in Beijing and Boston as well as multiple Asia-based Six-Sigma manufacturing locations. She transitioned from the company to assume an executive position at Bridgewater Associates. Prior to Boston-Power, Dr. Lampe-Onnerud was a partner with Arthur D. Little, where she led the world’s largest non-captive battery lab and related practice. In that role, she advised market leaders on technology and go-to-market strategies.
A member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Dr. Lampe-Onnerud’s work has earned her numerous awards. These include recognition as a two-time Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, an organization for which she serves as the co-chair of its Global Futures Council on Energy and advises on energy and innovation, renewable transport and finance. Honored as an Ernst & Young (EY) Entrepreneur of the Year for the New England region, she is active in EY’s Entrepreneurial Winning Women annual competition program and executive education program. An advocate for women entrepreneurs, she is featured among Inc.’s inaugural list of Top 100 Female Founders.
A sought-after keynote speaker, Dr. Lampe-Onnerud has shared her insights about batteries, energy storage, climate change and cleantech worldwide at events hosted by The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, The United Nations, TED, The International Battery Conference, the US Department of Energy, MIT and many others. She holds a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Uppsala University, Sweden, and conducted post-doctoral work at MIT.

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Short Biography:
Dr. Rajesh Kannan Megalingam is an electronics engineer, leading research on humanitarian technologies with special emphasis on Robotics at HuT (Humanitarian Technology) Labs and professor at ECE Department. He completed his undergraduate in Engineering from College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai in 1997 and masters and PhD at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University in 2010 and 2015 respectively. His research areas include Robotics, Embedded Systems, Semiconductors, and Healthcare. His research focuses on autonomous robots, vertical climbing robots, robots for rehabilitation, etc. He has seven and half years of industry experience and more than 15 years of research experience. He has worked as VLSI Design and Verification Engineer at various companies like STMicro Electronics, Insilicon Incorporation etc. in Bay Area, California, USA, for six years before joining Amrita University in 2004. Since then he has published more than 160 research papers in reputed journals, international conferences, and book chapters. He has four patents for his credits.
He is currently guiding five PhD students and several teams of bachelor students at HuT labs. He is also actively engaged in teaching and guiding several teams of undergraduate students in research and competitions. He has won several awards including the Award of Excellence, two times from Amrita University, the highest award by the university, Best Paper awards, Best Design awards etc. He is the IEEE student branch counsellor which has won several national and international recognitions, awards, project funding etc., which includes the Outstanding Branch Counselor and Advisor award from IEEE, USA and Outstanding Branch Counsellor Award from IEEE Kerala Section.

Abstract:
Undergraduate Mentoring and Research at HuT Labs, A Case Study
Dr. Rajesh Kannan Megalingam

Director, Humanitarian Technology (HuT) Labs), Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri Campus, Kollam, Kerala
Humanitarian Technology (HuT) Labs) strongly encourages undergraduate research and is into its eleventh year of its support and training the undergrad students. Due to the perception that teaching and research are two different things, several generations of students have graduated from universities without producing even a single original research in India. Employable rate is also not that good as these graduates lack the required skills. At HuT labs, we focus on mentoring the undergrad engineering even during the first year starting with activities like workshops, seminars, project camps etc. In due course of time, we train them in projects, technical writing, competition participation, presentations etc. By the end of third year, all them would have published at least one research paper in IEEE/Springer/ACM conferences. We also teach them how to write proposals for funding. We prepare them for their higher studies by tutoring them in competitive exams like GRE, TOEFL, IELTS. In this talk, the state of research in higher education in India will be discussed first. This will be followed by an overview of how undergrad students are mentored at HuT Labs to develop their skills in technical writing, communication, research, competition participation, publishing research papers, submitting proposals for funding etc., making them fit for their higher studies or career. We will also discuss about some of the significant humanitarian project works carried out the undergrad students in the past 10 years.

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