2025-12-20 05:14:17
Achieve accurate RCS predictions for electrically large aerospace structures in minutes instead ofhours using advanced approximation techniques on standard desktop hardware.
What Attendees will Learn
2025-12-20 03:00:02
Demand for electricity is up in the United States, and so is its price. One way to increase supply and lower costs is to build new power plants, but that can take years and cost a fortune. Talgat Kopzhanov is working on a faster, more affordable solution: the generator replacement interconnection process.
The technique links renewable energy sources to the grid connections of shuttered or underutilized power facilities and coal plants. The process uses the existing interconnection rights and infrastructure when generating electricity, eliminating the years-long approval process for constructing new U.S. power facilities.
Employer
Middle River Power, in Chicago
Job title
Asset manager
Member grade
Senior member
Alma maters
Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and Indiana University in Bloomington
Kopzhanov, an IEEE senior member, is an asset manager for Middle River Power, based in Chicago. The private equity–sponsored investment and asset management organization specializes in U.S. power generation assets.
“Every power plant has its own interconnection rights,” he says, “but, amazingly, most are not fully utilizing them.” Interconnection rights give a new power source—such as solar energy—permission to connect to a high-voltage transmission system.
“We build the new renewable energy resources on top of them,” Kopzhanov says. “It’s like colocating a new power plant.”
He recently oversaw the installation of two generator-replacement interconnection projects, one for a solar system in Minnesota and the other for a battery storage facility in California.
Artificial intelligence data centers are driving up demand and raising electricity bills globally. Although tech companies and investors are willing to spend trillions of U.S. dollars constructing new power facilities, it can take up to seven years just to secure the grid interconnection rights needed to start building a plant, Kopzhanov says. The lengthy process involves system planning, permit requests, and regulatory approvals. Only about 5 percent of new projects are approved each year, he says, in part because of grid reliability issues.
The interconnection technique takes about half the time, he says, bringing cleaner energy online faster. By overcoming interconnection bottlenecks, such as major transmission upgrades that delay renewable projects, the process speeds up project timelines and lowers expenses.
If you want to work in a secure, recession-proof industry, consider a career in power engineering, Kopzhanov says—especially in an unstable job market, when even Amazon, Microsoft, and other large companies are laying off thousands of engineers.
The power industry desperately needs engineers. The global power sector will require between 450,000 and 1.5 million more engineers by 2030 to build, implement, and operate energy infrastructure, according to an IEEE Spectrum article based on a study conducted this year of the power engineering workforce by the IEEE Power & Energy Society.
One of the reasons for the shortage, Kopzhanov says, is that the power sector doesn’t seem exciting to young engineers.
“It has not been popular because the technologies we’re implementing nowadays were invented quite a long time ago,” he says. “So there were not too many recent innovations.”
But with new technologies being introduced, such as the generator replacement interconnection process, now is a great time to get into the industry, he says.
“We are facing lots of different kinds of interesting and big challenges, and we definitely need power engineers who can solve them, such as the supply and demand situation facing us,” he says. “We need right-minded people who can deal with that.
“Until this point, the marvelous engineering systems that have been designed and built with close to 100-percent reliability are not going to be the case moving forward, so we have to come up with innovative approaches.”
Just because you have a power engineering degree, however, doesn’t mean you have to work as a power engineer, he says.
“Most students might assume they will have to dedicate themselves to only being a power engineer for the rest of their life—which is not the case,” he says. “You can be on the business side or be an asset manager like me.
“The power sector is an extremely dynamic and vast area. You’ll have many paths to pursue along your career journey.”
Kopzhanov explains the technique in an on-demand educational webinar, Unlocking Surplus Interconnection Service. Colocating Renewable and Thermal Power Plants, hosted by the IEEE Power & Energy Society. The webinar is available to the public for a fee.
Kopzhanov has been involved with several recent generator replacement interconnection installations. In May the Sherco Solar project in Sherburne County, Minn., replaced a retiring coal plant with approximately 720 megawatts of solar-powered generators, making it the largest solar-generating facility in the region. The first 460 MW of capacity is expected to be operational soon.
Another new project, developed with Middle River, is a battery system installed in April at California’s Hanford Hybrid Energy Center, a natural gas reliability facility. It used existing and incremental interconnection capacity to add the storage system. The surplus renewable energy from the batteries will be used during peak times to reduce the plant’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to a Silicon Valley Clean Energy article about the installation.
“These projects are uniquely positioned to be colocated with existing power plants,” Kopzhanov says. “But, at the same time, they are renewable and sustainable sources of power—which is also helping to decarbonize the environment and meet the emission-reduction goals of the state.”
Born and raised in Taraz, Kazakhstan, Kopzhanov was surrounded by relatives who worked in the power industry. It’s not surprising that he has pursued a career in the field.
Until 1991, when the country was still a Soviet republic, most Kazakhs were required to help build the country’s power and transmission systems, he says. His mother and father are chemical engineers, and his grandfather was involved in the power industry. They told him about how they designed the transformers and overhead power lines. From a young age, he knew he wanted to be an engineer too, he says.
Today the Central Asian country is a major producer of oil, gas, and coal.
Kopzhanov left Kazakhstan in 2008 to pursue a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Ind.
After graduating in 2012, he was hired as an electrical design engineer by Fluor Corp. in Farnborough, England. He oversaw the development of a master plan for a power project there. He also engineered and designed high-voltage switchgears, substations, and transformers.
“Every power plant has its own interconnection rights but, amazingly, most are not fully utilizing them.”
In 2015 he joined ExxonMobil in Houston, working as a project manager. During his six years there, he held managerial positions. Eventually, he was promoted to asset advisor and was responsible for evaluating the feasibility of investing in decarbonization and electrification projects by identifying their risks and opportunities.
He decided he wanted to learn more about the business aspects of running a company, so he left in 2021 to pursue an MBA at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, in Bloomington. During his MBA program, he briefly worked as a consultant for a lithium-ion manufacturing firm, offering advice on the viability of their proposed projects and investments.
“Engineers aren’t typically connected to the business world,” he says, “but having an understanding of what the needs are and tailoring your future goals toward that is extremely important. In my view, that’s how you’ll become a great technical expert. I definitely recommend that engineers have some kind of understanding of the business side.”
He joined Middle River shortly after graduating from Indiana with his MBA in 2023.
Kopzhanov was introduced to IEEE by a colleague at ExxonMobil after he asked the member about an IEEE plaque displayed on his desk. The coworker explained the activities he was involved in, as well as the process for joining. Kopzhanov became a member in 2019, left, and then rejoined in 2023.
“That was one of the best decisions I have made,” he says.
A member of the IEEE Power & Energy Society, he says its publications, webinars, conferences, and networking events keep him current on new developments.
“Being able to follow what’s happening in the industry, especially in the space where you’re working, is something that has benefited me a lot,” he says.
An active IEEE volunteer, he is the founding chair of the Power & Energy Society’s Chicago chapter, which has about 400 members. He is on the chapter’s executive committee, and he helps organize conferences, update the website, and review research papers.
“It’s those little things that have a significant impact,” he says. “Volunteering is a key piece of belonging to IEEE.”
2025-12-20 00:30:02
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Enjoy today’s videos!
Happy Holidays from FZI Living Lab!
[ FZI ]
Thanks, Georg!
Happy Holidays from Norlab!
I should get a poutine...
[ Norlab ]
Happy Holidays from Fraunhofer IOSB!
[ Fraunhofer ]
Thanks, Janko!
Happy Holidays from HEBI Robotics!
[ HEBI Robotics ]
Thanks, Trevor!
Happy Holidays from the Learning Systems and Robotics Lab!
[ Learning Systems and Robotics Lab ]
Happy Holidays from Toyota Research Institute!
Happy Holidays from Clearpath Robotics!
Happy AI Holidays from Robotnik!
[ Robotnik ]
Happy AI Holidays from ABB Robotics!
[ ABB Robotics ]
With its unique modular configuration, TRON 2 lets you freely configure dual-arm, bipedal, or wheeled setups to fit your mission.
[ LimX Dynamics ]
Thanks, Jinyan!
I love this robot, but can someone please explain why what happens at 2:00 makes me physically uncomfortable?
[ Paper ]
Thanks, Ayato!
This robot, REWW-ARM, is a remote wire-driven mobile robot that separates and excludes electronics from the mobile part, so that the mobile robot can operate in harsh environments. A novel transmission mechanism enables efficient and long-distance electronics-free power transmission, closed-loop control that estimates the distal state from wire. It demonstrated locomotion and manipulation on land and underwater.
[ JSK Lab ]
Thanks, Takahiro!
DEEP Robotics has deployed China’s first robot dog patrol team for forest fire protection in the West Lake area. Powered by embodied AI, these quadruped robots support early detection, patrol, and risk monitoring—using technology to protect nature and strengthen emergency response.
[ DEEP Robotics ]
In this video we show how we trained our robot to fold a towel from start to finish. Folding a towel might seem simple, but for a robot it means solving perception, planning, and dexterous manipulation all at once, especially when dealing with soft, deformable fabric. We walk through how the system sees the towel, identifies key features, and executes each fold autonomously.
[ Kinisi Robotics ]
This may be the first humanoid app store, but it’s far from the first app store for robots. Problem is, for an app store to gain traction, there needs to be a platform out there that people will buy for its core functionality first.
[ Unitree ]
You can tell that this isn’t U.S. government–funded research because it involves a robot fetching drinks.
[ Flexiv ]
This video shows the Perseverance Mars Rover’s point of view during a record-breaking drive that occurred June 19, 2025, the 1,540th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The Perseverance rover was traveling northbound and covered 1,350.7 feet (411.7 meters) on that sol, over the course of about 4 hours and 24 minutes. This distance eclipsed its previous record of distance traveled in a single sol: 1,140.7 feet (347.7 meters), which was achieved on April 3, 2023 (Sol 753).
[ NASA ]
Automation is what’s helped keep lock maker Wilson Bohannan based in America for more than 150 years while all of its competitors relocated overseas. Using two high-speed and high-precision FANUC M-10 series robots, Acme developed a simple but highly sophisticated system that uses innovative end-of-arm tooling to accommodate 18 different styles of padlocks. As a result of Acme’s new system using FANUC robots, Wilson Bohannan production rocketed from 1,500-1,800 locks finished per eight-hour shift to more than 5,000.
[ Fanuc ]
In this conversation, Zack Jackowski, general manager and vice president, Atlas, and Alberto Rodriguez, director of robot behavior, sit down to discuss the path to generalist humanoid robots working at scale and how we approach research & development to both push the boundaries of the industry and deliver valuable applications.
[ Boston Dynamics ]
2025-12-18 21:00:02
The head of a U.S. CHIPS and Science Act-funded center devoted to digital twins for chip manufacturing has informed its 121 members that the U.S. Department of Commerce will terminate its US $285-million five-year contract.
According to its website, the SMART USA Institute has the goal of uniting academic and industrial labs to create “virtual manufacturing replicas” that reduce development and manufacturing costs by more than 35 percent, cut manufacturing development time by 30 percent, and improve manufacturing yields by 40 percent. It also aimed to train 110,000 workers over five years. This is the second CHIPS Act related institution to be defunded by the federal government since the second Trump administration began in January 2025.
SMART stands for “semiconductor manufacturing and advanced research with twins”, and the organization began life when it won a government contract in January 2025. It has a complicated structure. The organization is headquartered in Raleigh, N.C., and it is part of a network of federally-sponsored manufacturing innovation institutes called Manufacturing USA, which predates the CHIPS Act. SMART is a public-private partnership operated by SRC Manufacturing Consortium Corporation, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC). Established in 1982, and backed by the semiconductor industry, SRC funds R&D at universities and has sponsored more than 15,000 students.
According to an email dated 12 December, sent to SMART USA participants, and obtained by IEEE Spectrum, Commerce notified the organization of the termination on 10 December. The funds were withdrawn “for convenience,” an option that allows the government to unilaterally withdraw from an agreement that is written into many federal contracts, the email states. Requests for comment from the Commerce Department were not returned by press time.
“Although DOC acknowledged that we built an effective organization and met all performance targets, the administration has chosen not to support R&D and workforce development in this direction,” Todd Younkin, SMART USA’s executive director and the CEO of SRC, wrote in the email.
Details of what happens next are still coming, but Younkin wrote that the organization would hold a Q&A webinar on Wednesday 17 December to answer member questions.
“While this is a setback, it doesn’t diminish the importance of the work or the strength of our shared commitment to advancing leadership in microelectronics and advanced packaging,” he wrote in the email. He added that SRC will continue to fund research through its other programs.
In response to IEEE Spectrum’s questions, Younkin’s office confirmed that the email was genuine.
Younkin reiterated that SMART USA had met its performance targets, and that the organization’s performance was not the reason for the move. The organization added that it is “coordinating a responsible transition with [the Commerce Department] and members.”
Regarding SRC, Younkin stated: “While this transition is challenging, it does not define our future. We have united the semiconductor community for decades, and will continue to do so. SRC will continue to drive industry-led innovation, fostering strong ecosystems and collaborations. That includes empowerment of the next generation of semiconductor professionals, who must deliver the next era of compute and communications. Together, we will turn this moment into momentum.”
In a statement, David N. Henshall, chief operations officer for SMART USA, and senior vice-president for SRC, said: “Federal contracting decisions evolve over time, and ‘termination for convenience’ is an established mechanism in those agreements and is not a reflection of the significant work we were doing. What’s clear is the industry’s continued need: the challenges in microelectronics and advanced packaging remain, and SRC’s programs provide a durable path forward for collaborative R&D and talent.”
“NIST has a reputation as a neutral and steadfast partner that can work with any industry and academic organization. This reputation is very much at risk”—Zoe Lofgren and Haley Stevens, House of Representatives Committee on Science Space, and Technology
The addition of SMART USA to SRC’s portfolio led to some disruption, according to an academic participant who did not wish to be named. This scientist’s three-year, $450,000 proposal had been accepted for funding in 2025, 2026, and 2027 under SRC’s Global Research Collaboration program. But, early in 2025, years two and three of the grant were canceled and the scientist was invited to apply to SMART USA instead.
The new program required expanding the scope of the project, boosting the number of academic participants, and seeking participation and funding from SMART USA members. He joined up with researchers from eight other universities and a chipmaking equipment firm, then spent the summer writing a new proposal and trying to get SMART USA industry members on board. By August, “we were not able to secure enough funding commitments from SMART USA members to even submit,” he said, adding that many of the SRC member companies that the group had been working with had not joined SMART USA by the time of submission, and those that had seemed to be putting in very little cash into the effort.
The withdrawal of funding from SMART USA echoes an earlier move that withdrew $7.4 billion from Natcast, the public-private partnership set up to run the National Semiconductor Technology Center, the CHIPS Act’s main R&D effort.
However, the two events are starkly different in tone and publicity. Commerce has so far made no public statement about SMART USA. But in a public letter announcing the withdrawal of funds from Natcast, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick implied impropriety on the part of organization, its CEO—IEEE Frederik Philips Award winner Dierdre Hanford—and other experts involved in its creation. Within weeks, Natcast was forced to lay off the majority of its staff and has now folded.
In a letter to Craig Burkhardt, Acting Undersecretary of Commerce for standards and technology, date 17 December, two members of the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology questioned the move to defund SMART USA.
California Democrat Zoe Lofgren and Michigan Democrat Haley Stevens “question the Department’s recent decisions to halt or delay semiconductor research and development (R&D) programs and awards authorized by Congress, and break existing obligations to industry and academia.”
The lawmakers worry that these moves cause long term harm to the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), the agency within Commerce that implements the CHIPS Act. “NIST has a reputation as a neutral and steadfast partner that can work with any industry and academic organization,” they write. “This reputation is very much at risk. Few companies would willingly seek partnership with an organization that cancels its obligation on a whim.”
The letter then went on to criticize NIST’s solicitation of R&D proposals made in September in the wake of the destruction of Natcast. “NIST seems to have pivoted its model to that of an investment accelerator or venture capital fund, funding riskier research in exchange for intellectual property and equity,” they write. “While there is a time and place for the venture capital model, especially in the private sector, dedicating the entire CHIPS R&D program to it would unquestionably fail to meet the clear text and intent of the CHIPS Act.”
2025-12-18 03:15:24
Fast, direct-current charging can charge an EV’s battery from about 20 percent to 80 percent in 20 minutes. That’s not bad, but it’s still about six times as long as it takes to fill the tank of an ordinary petrol-powered vehicle.
One of the major bottlenecks to even faster charging is cooling, specifically uneven cooling inside big EV battery packs as the pack is charged. Hydrohertz, a British startup launched by former motorsport and power-electronics engineers, says it has a solution: fire liquid coolant exactly where it’s needed during charging. Its solution, announced in November, is a rotary coolant router that fires coolant exactly where temperatures spike, and within milliseconds—far faster than any single-loop system can react. In laboratory tests, this cooling tech allowed an EV battery to safely charge in less than half the time than was possible with conventional cooling architecture.
Hydrohertz calls its solution Dectravalve. It looks like a simple manifold, but it contains two concentric cylinders and a stepper motor to direct coolant to as many as four zones within the battery pack. It’s installed in between the pack’s cold plates, which are designed to efficiently remove heat from the battery cells through physical contact, and the main coolant supply loop, replacing a tangle of valves, brackets, sensors, and hoses.
To keep costs low, Hydrohertz designed Dectravalve to be produced with off-the-shelf materials, and seals, as well as dimensional tolerances that can be met with the fabrication tools used by many major parts suppliers. Keeping things simple and comparatively cheap could improve Dectravalve’s chances of catching on with automakers and suppliers notorious for frugality. “Thermal management is trending toward simplicity and ultralow cost,” says Chao-Yang Wang, a mechanical and chemical engineering professor at Pennsylvania State University whose research areas include dealing with issues related to internal fluids in batteries and fuel cells. Automakers would prefer passive cooling, he notes—but not if it slows fast charging. So, at least for now, Intelligent control is essential.
“If Dectravalve works as advertised, I’d expect to see a roughly 20 percent improvement in battery longevity, which is a lot.”–Anna Stefanopoulou, University of Michigan
Hydrohertz built Dectravalve to work with ordinary water-glycol, otherwise known as antifreeze, keeping integration simple. Using generic antifreeze avoids a step in the validation process where a supplier or EV manufacturer would otherwise have to establish whether some special formulation is compatible with the rest of the cooling system and doesn’t cause unforeseen complications. And because one Dectravalve can replace the multiple valves and plumbing assemblies of a conventional cooling system, it lowers the parts count, reduces leak points, and cuts warranty risk, Hydrohertz founder and CTO Martyn Talbot claims. The tighter thermal control also lets automakers shrink oversize pumps, hoses, and heat exchangers, improving both cost and vehicle packaging.
The valve reads battery-pack temperatures several times per second and shifts coolant flow instantly. If a high-load event—like a fast charge—is coming, it prepositions itself so more coolant is apportioned to known hot spots before the temperature rises in them.
Multizone control can also speed warm-up to prevent the battery degradation that comes from charging at frigid temperatures. “You can send warming fluid to heat half the pack fast so it can safely start taking load,” says Anna Stefanopoulou, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan who specializes in control systems, energy, and transportation technologies. That half can begin accepting load, while the system begins warming the rest of the pack more gradually, she explains. But Dectravalve’s main function remains cooling fast-heating troublesome cells so they don’t slow charging.
Quick response to temperature changes inside the battery doesn’t increase the cooling capacity, but it leverages existing hardware far more efficiently. “Control the coolant with more precision and you get more performance for free,” says Talbot.
In early 2025, the Dectravalve underwent bench testing conducted by the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), a multidisciplinary research center at the University of Warwick, in Coventry, England, that works with transport companies to improve the manufacturability of battery systems and other technologies. WMG compared Dectravalve’s cooling performance with that of a conventional single-loop cooling system using the same 100-kilowatt-hour battery pack. During fast-charge trials from 10 percent to 80 percent, Dectravalve held peak cell temperature below 44.5 °C and kept cell-to-cell temperature variation to just below 3 °C without intervention from the battery management system. Similar thermal performance for the single-loop system was made possible only by dialing back the amount of power the battery would accept—the very tapering that keeps fast charging from being on par with gasoline fill-ups.
Keeping the cell temperatures below 50 °C was key, because above that temperature lithium plating begins. The battery suffers irreversible damage when lithium starts coating the surface of the anode—the part of the battery where electrical charge is stored during charging—instead of filling its internal network of pores the way water does when it’s absorbed by a sponge. Plating greatly diminishes the battery’s charge-storage capacity. Letting the battery get too hot can also cause the electrolyte to break down. The result is inhibited flow of ions between the electrodes. And reduced flow within the battery means reduced flow in the external circuit, which powers the vehicle’s motors.
Because the Dectravalve kept temperatures low and uniform—and the battery management system didn’t need to play energy traffic cop and slow charging to a crawl to avoid overheating—charging time was cut by roughly 60 percent. With Dectravalve, the battery reached 80 percent state of charge in between 10 and 13 minutes, versus 30 minutes with the single-cooling-loop setup, according to Hydrohertz.
Using Warwick’s temperature data, Hydrohertz applied standard degradation models and found that cooler, more uniform packs last longer. Stefanopoulou estimates that if Dectravalve works as claimed, it could boost battery life by roughly 20 percent. “That’s a lot,” she says.
Still, it could be years before the system shows up on new EVs, if ever. Automakers will need years of cycle testing, crash trials, and cost studies before signing off on a new coolant architecture. Hydrohertz says several EV makers and battery suppliers have begun validation programs, and CTO Talbot expects licensing deals to ramp up as results come in. But even in a best-case scenario, Dectravalve won’t be keeping production-model EV batteries cool for at least three model years.
2025-12-18 03:00:02
In the modern era of rapid digital transformation, engineering leaders are expected to be more than project managers and technical experts. They need to be vision-setters, innovation enablers, and mentors shaping the next generation of talent.
Leadership and mentorship, when paired with intention, do more than advance business goals. They create an ecosystem where innovation flourishes and careers accelerate.
I want to share how my professional journey, spanning leadership roles at retail giant Walmart and cloud communications company Twilio, has underscored the profound synergy between the two dimensions.
Innovation rarely happens by accident. It is cultivated in environments where leaders articulate a compelling vision, empower their teams to experiment, and then remove obstacles that stifle creativity.
As a senior engineering manager at Walmart Global Tech in Sunnyvale, Calif., I have led efforts to address one of the retail industry’s most persistent challenges: shrinkage. This loss of inventory, commonly due to shoplifting, theft, and return fraud, results in a difference between the amount of stock a retailer is supposed to have and the amount it actually has.
Globally, retailers lose more than US $100 billion annually due to shrinkage. Walmart alone faces multibillion-dollar losses each year.
The scale of the problem demands more than incremental improvements. By aligning the challenge with cutting-edge technologies such as computer vision and artificial intelligence, I framed a plan that transformed a business imperative into a technological frontier. We focused on deploying computer vision models at the store front-end, supported by an edge and cloud pipeline that allowed rapid experimentation. The system combined real-time detection of high-risk events with predictive analytics that highlighted emerging patterns of loss, and it integrated directly with store operations so actions could be taken quickly.
The impact was twofold. Engineers were energized by the opportunity to solve a problem of global relevance, and the company gained a system that significantly reduced losses while protecting customer trust. The role of leadership in this context was not to dictate solutions but to create clarity of purpose and provide the latitude for teams to innovate boldly.
As a senior engineering manager at Twilio, I led the billing platform team during a period of exponential growth, and innovation manifested itself differently.
Working on a billing system is not typically met with excitement, yet it is mission-critical because billions of dollars are processed annually. By giving engineers ownership of architectural decisions and encouraging experimentation in scalability and fault tolerance, we achieved breakthroughs that enabled the company to scale reliably. There, leadership meant empowering teams with autonomy and fostering a culture where innovation could emerge from the ground up.
If leadership provides the framework for innovation, mentorship provides the scaffolding for individual growth. In my experience, mentorship is not a one-time act but a continuous relationship built on guidance, challenge, and advocacy.
One effective approach I have employed is the use of stretch projects, which are tasks beyond an employee’s current skill set, experience, or job responsibilities.
At Twilio, I formed the Tiger Team, bringing together individuals from across the organization who expressed interest in learning new skills and solving complex billing challenges. They were encouraged to generate new ideas, conduct experiments, and develop improvements to the billing platform. The initiative not only advanced the platform’s capabilities but also gave employees a rare opportunity to develop and grow outside of their day-to-day responsibilities.
At Walmart, I also used stretch assignments to accelerate an employee’s professional growth. For example, when an engineer expressed a strong interest in applying AI to improve our on-call operations, I encouraged him to lead the design and development of a solution leveraging the model context protocol (MCP) standard to reduce on-call workload. MCP standardizes AI models that connect with and use external tools and data sources to automate tasks and simplify integrations.
The effort was successful, attracting contributions from the broader team and reducing the staff’s labor for dealing with incidents by more than 1,500 hours annually.
That not only created measurable operational impact but also provided the engineer with a platform to develop his leadership skills and drive innovation at scale.
A feedback-rich environment is advisable. At Walmart, I instituted weekly one-on-one sessions with each of my staff members that extended beyond project updates to cover their career aspirations, strengths, and areas for growth. The conversations uncovered career blind spots, exposed leadership potential, and helped prepare people to step into broader roles.
Equally important is advocacy. Mentorship does not stop at giving advice; it involves opening doors to opportunities. I have nominated mentees for conference speaking roles, cross-team leadership positions, and recognition programs. The platforms advanced their careers and amplified our teams’ work.
Another powerful mechanism to accelerate innovation and growth is intentionally allocating time for self-directed exploration. At both Walmart and Twilio, we designated a dedicated week every six months during which engineers were encouraged to work on anything they found meaningful, even if it was outside their team or organizational responsibilities.
“Engineering leadership and mentorship are not optional complements to technical execution; they are fundamental drivers of sustainable success.”
Some chose to collaborate with colleagues across different departments, while others pursued new projects. The experience gave the employees the freedom to follow their curiosity, sharpen their skills, and explore areas aligned with their personal growth. Beyond skill development, it often led to surprising innovations, as cross-pollination of ideas from different parts of the organization produced creative solutions that likely would not have emerged doing traditional project work.
Leadership and mentorship are not parallel tracks. They are interdependent areas that reinforce each other. Innovative projects provide fertile ground for engineers to grow, while their professional growth feeds back into innovation by broadening their perspectives and capabilities.
The AI-powered shrink-prevention initiative at Walmart exemplifies the dynamic. Engineers who contributed to the project gained technical expertise in machine learning and computer vision, as well as career-defining opportunities. Some presented their work at internal company forums. Others became mentors to new engineers. And many transitioned into leadership roles. Innovation was not an isolated outcome but part of a virtuous cycle of growth.
Reflecting on my experiences, here are several lessons for those aspiring to lead with impact:
Engineering leadership and mentorship are not optional complements to technical execution; they are fundamental drivers of sustainable success. Leadership provides the vision and structure for innovation, while mentorship nurtures the individuals who bring that vision to life. Together, they create a multiplier effect that advances both technological innovation and career growth.
My experience demonstrates that when leaders intentionally combine the two practices, organizations not only deliver transformative technologies but also cultivate the next generation of innovators and leaders.
That dual impact is what makes engineering leadership such a powerful force in shaping both the future of technology and the careers of those who drive it.