2025-11-08 04:00:03
For anyone working in today’s rapidly evolving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, visibility, authenticity, and connection are no longer optional; they are essential. But there is a lack of resources for STEM professionals, especially women, looking to express themselves fully, build meaningful networks, and lead with confidence.
To help, IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) recently launched a podcast series in which experts from around the world inspire and inform to ignite change.
The series aims to amplify the diverse experiences of women from STEM fields. Through candid conversations and expert insights, the podcast goes beyond technical talks to explore the human side of innovation, navigating burnout, balancing career ambition with well-being, and building successful, sustainable careers.
The series is a volunteer and staff-run initiative.
“In the early days of planning, our vision was just a spark shared among passionate volunteers eager to shape each episode and guest experience,” says Geetika Tandon, cochair of the IEEE WIE podcast subcommittee. “Seeing our podcast grow from those first conversations into a vibrant reality has been truly rewarding. We can’t wait for it to expand further.”
“I’m excited that we’ve brought the drawings on our whiteboard and day planners to life,” says Kelly Onu, who is also cochair.
New episodes are released on the third Wednesday of each month.
The podcast’s premier episode, “Moms Who Innovate,” which debuted in May, features candid conversations with two executive coaches, authors, and TEDx speakers. Adaeze Iloeje-Udeogalanya, is the founder of African Women in STEM, which provides education, mentoring, and networking opportunities. Cassie Leonard is a seasoned aerospace professional who founded ELMM Coaching. Leonard offers one-on-one advice for professionals looking to grow their career and achieve a better work-life balance. She authored STEM Moms: Design, Build, and Test to Create the Work-Life of Your Dreams, a book that guides women by drawing from her experiences as a working mother.
Onu, who moderated the episode, spoke with Iloeje-Udeogalanya and Leonard about the ebb and flow of being a mother while building a career. Both guests described how their background as engineers shaped the way they approach motherhood and community. They emphasized the importance of creating a support system that makes the busier times of life more manageable.
Leonard said she “engineered her neighborhood” and shares the responsibilities of dropping off children at school, babysitting after school, and other day-to-day tasks.
“As the podcast series grows, our mission is to shine a spotlight on the real-life adventures (and occasional misadventures) of women in STEM. We want to share late-night brainstorms, coffee-fueled breakthroughs, and the moment when someone finally figures out how to unmute themselves on virtual meeting platforms.” —Geetika Tandon
Innovation for moms isn’t only about professional success, the duo said, but also about designing the kind of community that helps them thrive.
The June episode, “Global Perspectives on Women in STEM,” led by Tandon, offered practical strategies for navigating work-life-balance challenges. Together with guest Sanyogita Shamsunder, CTO of telecommunications company GeoLinks in San Francisco, Tandon explored different perspectives of women around the world.
Rawan Alghamdi, a wireless communication researcher at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, in Saudi Arabia, and an IEEE graduate student member hosted August’s episode, “PIE Framework: Presence, Image, and Exposure for Professionals in STEM.” Alghamdi spoke with Jahnavi Brenner, an executive coach and former engineer, who explained the PIE model, which challenges the long-held belief that technical skills alone are enough to advance one’s career.
Brenner said professionals must strategically build an authentic personal brand to dictate how they are perceived by colleagues and how visible they are within their networks and industry. She said it is especially vital for women and underrepresented groups, who often face systemic barriers to recognition and promotion.
October’s episode, “Balancing Work and Life in STEM Careers,” tackled struggles parents face raising a family while working full time. It was moderated by Abinaya Inbamani, a mentor who has contributed to the successful deployment of IoT systems used for smart health care, renewable energy, and cybersecurity.
She covered the intense logistics and emotional toll of balancing a demanding career with the responsibilities of parenthood.
Listeners also learned time-management strategies and boundary-setting techniques, such as reframing guilt as a reminder of care and responsibility rather than failure; accepting that it’s all right to procrastinate occasionally rather than push through unhealthy stress; and organizing the day with clear boundaries between work and home.
“We don’t have to do it all,” Inbamani said. “Sometimes balance is simply choosing what matters most in that moment.”
Upcoming episodes will focus on being present parents, setting boundaries in high-pressure environments, and redefining success on one’s own terms, Tandon and Onu say.
In the works is an episode spotlighting tech trailblazer Nimisha Morkonda Gnanasekaran, who was recognized by the IEEE Computer Society as one of its Top 30 Early Career Professionals this year. She is the director of data science and advanced analytics at Western Digital, based in San Jose, Calif.
Another episode, Tandon and Onu say, will feature a conversation with Cynthia Kane, author of The Pause Principle: How to Keep Your Cool in Tough Situations, on navigating difficult workplace conversations without shutting down or losing one’s temper. The episode will tackle critical issues and career struggles women face, Tandon and Onu say. A study that found as many as 50 percent of women leave their STEM career within five years.
IEEE WIE is seeing the impact the podcast is having on listeners. Several say they tune in not just for advice but also to connect with others. Others say the podcast makes them feel they are not alone in their challenges or career aspirations.
The majority of listeners are in Canada, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and the United States. Onu says she hopes the audience expands to include more countries.
“I hope this podcast hops across continents, sneaks into earbuds everywhere, and becomes a trusty sidekick in women’s STEM journeys—cheering them on as they conquer equations, break barriers, and maybe even invent a robot that makes perfect coffee,” Tandon says. “As the podcast series grows, our mission is to shine a spotlight on the real-life adventures (and occasional misadventures) of women in STEM. We want to share late-night brainstorms, coffee-fueled breakthroughs, and the moment when someone finally figures out how to unmute themselves on virtual meeting platforms.”
Through personal tales, inspiring journeys, and a parade of trailblazing leaders who have tackled obstacles, IEEE WIE is celebrating the grit, wit, and brilliance of women in STEM.
Whether you’re a student just beginning your STEM journey, a mid-career professional seeking clarity, or a leader looking to give back to your profession, the podcast offers a space to learn, reflect, and rise together.
2025-11-08 02:30:03
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 for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Enjoy today’s videos!
Unlike existing hybrid designs, Duawlfin eliminates the need for additional actuators or propeller-driven ground propulsion by leveraging only its standard quadrotor motors and introducing a differential drivetrain with one-way bearings. The seamless transitions between aerial and ground modes further underscore the practicality and effectiveness of our approach for applications like urban logistics and indoor navigation.
[ HiPeR Lab ]
I appreciate the softness of NEO’s design, but those fingers look awfully fragile.
[ 1X ]
Imagine reaching into your backpack to find your keys. Your eyes guide your hand to the opening, but once inside, you rely almost entirely on touch to distinguish your keys from your wallet, phone, and other items. This seamless transition between sensory modalities (knowing when to rely on vision versus touch) is something humans do effortlessly but robots struggle with. The challenge isn’t just about having multiple sensors. Modern robots are equipped with cameras, tactile sensors, depth sensors, and more. The real problem is **how to integrate these different sensory streams**, especially when some sensors provide sparse but critical information at key moments. Our solution comes from rethinking how we combine modalities. Instead of forcing all sensors through a single network, we train separate expert policies for each modality and learn how to combine their action predictions at the policy level.
Multi-university Collaboration presented via [ GitHub ]
Thanks, Haonan!
Happy (somewhat late) Halloween from Pollen Robotics!
[ Pollen Robotics ]
In collaboration with our colleagues from Iowa State and University of Georgia, we have put our pipe-crawling worm robot to test in the field. See it crawls through corrugated drainage pipes in a stream, and a smooth section of a subsurface drainage system.
[ Paper ] from [ Smart Microsystems Laboratory, Michigan State University ]
Heterogeneous robot teams operating in realistic settings often must accomplish complex missions requiring collaboration and adaptation to information acquired online. Because robot teams frequently operate in unstructured environments — uncertain, open-world settings without prior maps — subtasks must be grounded in robot capabilities and the physical world. We present SPINE-HT, a framework that addresses these limitations by grounding the reasoning abilities of LLMs in the context of a heterogeneous robot team through a three-stage process. In real-world experiments with a Clearpath Jackal, a Clearpath Husky, a Boston Dynamics Spot, and a high-altitude UAV, our method achieves an 87% success rate in missions requiring reasoning about robot capabilities and refining subtasks with online feedback.
[ SPINE-HT ] from [ GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania ]
Astribot keeping itself busy at IROS 2025.
[ Astribot ]
In two papers published in Matter and Advanced Science, a team of scientists from the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany, developed control strategies for influencing the motion of self-propelling oil droplets. These oil droplets mimic single-celled microorganisms and can autonomously solve a complex maze by following chemical gradients. However, it is very challenging to integrate external perturbation and use these droplets in robotics. To address these challenges, the team developed magnetic droplets that still possess life-like properties and can be controlled by external magnetic fields. In their work, the researchers showed that they are able to guide the droplet’s motion and use them in microrobotic applications such as cargo transportation.
Everyone has fantasized about having an embodied avatar! Full-body teleoperation and full-body data acquisition platform is waiting for you to try it out!
[ Unitree ]
It’s not a humanoid, but it right now safely does useful things and probably doesn’t cost all that much to buy or run.
[ Naver Labs ]
This paper presents a curriculum-based reinforcement learning framework for training precise and high-performance jumping policies for the robot `Olympus’. Separate policies are developed for vertical and horizontal jumps, leveraging a simple yet effective strategy. Experimental validation demonstrates horizontal jumps up to 1.25 m with centimeter accuracy and vertical jumps up to 1.0 m. Additionally, we show that with only minor modifications, the proposed method can be used to learn omnidirectional jumping.
[ Paper ] from [ Autonomous Robots Lab, Norwegian University of Science and Technology ]
Heavy payloads are no problem for it: The new KR TITAN ultra moves payloads of up to 1500 kg, making the heavy lifting extreme in the KUKA portfolio.
[ Kuka ]
Good luck getting all of the sand out of that robot. Perhaps a nice oil bath is in order?
[ DEEP Robotics ]
This CMU RI Seminar is from Yuke Zhu at University of Texas at Austin, on “Toward Generalist Humanoid Robots: Recent Advances, Opportunities, and Challenges.”
In an era of rapid AI progress, leveraging accelerated computing and big data has unlocked new possibilities to develop generalist AI models. As AI systems like ChatGPT showcase remarkable performance in the digital realm, we are compelled to ask: Can we achieve similar breakthroughs in the physical world — to create generalist humanoid robots capable of performing everyday tasks? In this talk, I will outline our data-centric research principles and approaches for building general-purpose robot autonomy in the open world. I will present our recent work leveraging real-world, synthetic, and web data to train foundation models for humanoid robots. Furthermore, I will discuss the opportunities and challenges of building the next generation of intelligent robots.
2025-11-07 07:19:54
A new onboard system allows ocean-going vessels to share real-time sea condition data, giving crews early warnings and helping them navigate more safely. The system will analyze data related to navigation, vessel behavior, and the environment to give ship crews guidance at sea.
While casualties from ship collisions and groundings have declined, the overall number of maritime incidents are on the rise, up 22 percent in recent years, driven by aging vessels and equipment failures.
Orca AI, a London-based autonomous maritime navigation company, has introduced a software feature called Co-Captain, aiming to reduce those incidents. Co-Captain is an addition to the company’s existing SeaPod real-time decision support system, which bridge officers can use while at sea to navigate better.
Co-Captain provides information about severe weather, including recommendations to specific ships based on their size and shape.Orca AI
“Co-Captain is a network of vessels using Orca to capture events worldwide and share insights. Think of it like the navigation app you use in your car: it tells you about traffic or roadblocks in advance so you can adjust your route,” says Yarden Gross, the CEO and co-founder of Orca AI.
Gross says that Co-Captain frequently collects data from sensors on board vessels and sends it to the cloud to improve ship performance and safety for vessels globally.
OrcaAI, founded in 2018 by Gross and Dor Raviv, the CTO, began with SeaPod and Fleet View. While SeaPod collects and analyzes data on individual ships, Fleet View gathers that data in the cloud to give fleet managers on shore better visibility into larger operations.
Co-Captain integrates with the existing system to provide proactive insights to improve fleet performance and safety. Today, ship officers rely on tools like radar, the automatic identification system (AIS), and the Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) monitor the positions of other vessels and avoid collisions, but much of the work remains manual.
Co-Captain identifies various navigational hazards to a ship’s crew. The crew can also manually tag obstacles or other concerns.Orca AI
Gross described Co-Captain as the next generation of AIS, the network that transmits basic information like a ship’s position, name, and heading over very high frequency (VHF) signals ranging from 30 to 300 megahertz. Unlike AIS, which tracks only a ship’s position, Co-Captain also monitors onboard conditions. For example, if a ship reports a pitch of 3 degrees and a roll of 5 degrees in rough seas, Co-Captain uses that data to anticipate how current conditions will impact nearby ships, adjusted for their size and design. Co-Captain then sends tailored recommendations to those vessels’ crews.
“Every ship acts as a node in a larger network, and each node—the vessel itself—has an onboard AI platform. This platform collects data from multiple sensors in real time,” Gross says. Using cameras and computer vision, the AI model can detect bad weather, low visibility, tall waves, or strong winds, then the platform analyzes the data to provide tailored guidance.
All data is anonymized. Gross says that a ship’s movements, timing, or route can reveal valuable information. “By anonymizing the data, Co-Captain can share critical safety alerts such as GPS interference, severe weather, or high traffic without ever exposing which vessel reported it or where it came from.”
Gross says that Orca AI is working on integrating Co-Captain with more bridge systems, such as Navigational Telex (NAVTEX) and ECDIS, so that relevant alerts and updates are centralized.
The company’s long-term goal is to provide real-time notifications focused on the most important events along a ship’s route, giving captains information they can act on quickly to support safer and more efficient operations. The platform is already in use on over 1,200 vessels.
2025-11-07 05:00:03
In Menifee, Calif., six newly built homes are testing a first for North America: electric vehicles that can power houses through the Combined Charging System (CCS) high-power DC charging standard. Each home uses a host Kia EV9 electric vehicle connected to a Wallbox Quasar 2 bidirectional charger, allowing the car’s 100-kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery to run essential circuits during blackouts or periods when electricity prices are high. The setup is the first residential vehicle-to-home (V2H) system in the United States that uses the Combined Charging System (CCS) standard. The CCS is the charging system commonly used in European and North American residential and public charging facilities.
Since July, the homes’ smart electrical panels have automatically managed two-way power flow—charging vehicles from the grid or rooftop solar, then reversing the flow of energy when needed. The system isolates each home from the grid during an outage, preventing any current from flowing into external power lines and endangering utility crews and nearby equipment.
“This project is demonstrating that bidirectional charging with CCS can work in occupied homes,” says Scott Samuelsen, founding director of the Advanced Power and Energy Program (APEP) at the University of California, Irvine, which is monitoring the two-year trial. “It’s a step toward vehicles that not only move people but also strengthen the energy system.”
For more than a decade, two-way charging has been available—but mostly restricted to Japan. Back in 2012 the Nissan’s LEAF-to-Home program proved the idea viable after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, but that Nissan system relied on the CHAdeMO standard, little used outside of Japan. Most North American and European manufacturers chose CCS instead—a standard that, until recently, supported only one-way fast DC charging.
That distinction makes Menifee’s V2H-enabled neighborhood notable: it’s the first CCS-based V2H deployment in occupied homes, giving researchers real-world field data on a technology that’s been long trapped in pilot programs. The pairing of the Kia EV9 SUV with Wallbox’s commercially available Quasar 2 can deliver up to 12 kilowatts of power from the vehicle to the home.
It’s a step toward vehicles that not only move people, but also strengthen the energy system.”
–Scott Samuelsen, UC Irvine
Elsewhere, momentum towards commercial V2H has slowed. Ford’s F-150 Lightning supports home backup through Sunrun, but Sunrun equipment is not CCS-compatible. What’s more, Ford has announced a production pause for the pickup truck, which has delayed expansion. GM’s Ultium Home—a V2H system that works with the automaker’s Cadillac Lyriq, Cadillac Escalade IQ, Chevrolet Blazer, Chevrolet Equinox, Chevrolet Silverado, and GMC Sierra EVs— faces similar setbacks. Tesla’s PowerShare V2H feature is still stuck in a limited, early commercial rollout, with bidirectional compatibility restricted to the company’s Cybertruck. Menifee, by contrast, is producing operational data in real households.
When electric vehicles first hit the market, CCS was designed for one job: move power quickly from the grid to the car. The main goal was reliable, standardized, fast charging. That fact helps explain the difference between CCS public chargers, (many of which are rated for 350-kilowatts or more) and their CHAdeMO-based counterparts, which typically max out at 100 kW (but are capable of providing home backup or grid services).
Bidirectional operation wasn’t included in the original CCS standard for several reasons. Early automakers and utilities worried about safety risks, grid interference, and added hardware cost. So CCS’s original communication protocol linking EVs and charging stations—ISO 15118—didn’t even include an electronic handshake for power export. The 2022 update, ISO 15118-20, added secure two-way communication, enabling CCS vehicles to supply energy to buildings and the grid.
Wallbox’s Quasar 2 residential charger implements the update through an active-bridge converter circuit built with silicon-carbide transistors, achieving efficient bidirectional flow. Its 12-kW power rating can support typical critical loads in a house, such as heating and cooling, refrigeration, and networking, says Aleix Maixé Sas, a system electronics architect at Wallbox.
As the company’s name humbly suggests, Wallbox’s chargers look like plain old boxes—although they contain high-tech components.Wallbox
Each of the Menifee homes outfitted with a V2H system combines a rooftop solar array with a 13-kWh SunVault stationary battery from SunPower. During normal operation, solar energy powers daily household loads and charges the stationary battery. On abundantly sunny days, the solar panels can also top up the Kia EV9’s battery. When the grid fails—or when energy prices spike—the home isolates itself: Solar power and energy stored in the SunVault keep essential systems and appliances going, while the EV battery extends power if the outage persists.
This past summer, the UC Irvine researchers tracked how solar output, stationary storage, and vehicle power interacted under summer demand and wildfire-related grid stress. They found that “the vehicle adds a major resilience feature,” according to Samuelsen, who is the Menifee project manager. “It can relieve grid strain, increase renewable utilization, and lower costs by supplying power during peak-rate hours.”
Home builders and the makers of electric vehicle service equipment such as Wallbox are not the only entities reconsidering how to meet the engineering demands V2H introduces. Utilities, too, must make changes to accommodate bidirectional power flow. Interconnection procedures and energy pricing structures are among the factors that must be redesigned or reconsidered.
Analysts expect double-digit annual growth in bidirectional-charging system sales through the late 2020s as costs fall and standards mature. In regions facing wildfire- or storm-related outages and steep time-of-use pricing curves, projects like Menifee’s are showing a clear path towards the use of cars as huge and flexible energy reserves.
When EV batteries can supply energy for homes as easily as they do for propulsion, the boundary between transportation and energy will begin to disappear—and with it, old concepts regarding who’s an energy supplier and who’s a customer.
2025-11-07 01:56:49
This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Taro and delivered to your inbox for free!
At its core, engineering is an act of creation. This is why many of us chose to become engineers: We love to build things.
But especially if you have a private sector job, it’s easy to forget that passion to build as you climb up the corporate ladder. Somewhere between quarterly planning meetings and incident retrospectives, we often lose the joy of creation in our corporate jobs. Large companies require a level of bureaucracy and specialization that is often at odds with building something new.
That’s why I frequently recommend burned-out engineers to do something very simple: Start a side project. During 15 years working across various tech stacks and companies, this has been the most straightforward, underrated, and powerful way to regain my excitement at work.
Beyond rekindling a passion for creation, side projects have many other benefits. Side projects let us explore new technologies or problem spaces. We can leverage newer ideas that our companies may be hesitant to adopt. And you don’t need to get buy-in from a manager or explain the business justification. Start using a technology simply because you want to learn about it.
When you build something through a side project, your depth of understanding is far greater than just following a tutorial or reading about it. I can attribute many of my career opportunities to the projects I’ve built and published outside of my day job. Some of these projects, like my career growth platform Taro, even turn into companies!
We’ve entered the golden age for side projects because they’re so much more accessible. Compared to a decade ago, it’s significantly easier to research, build, and deploy your creation. Even compared to two years ago, you’re much less likely now to waste hours wrestling with some configuration rabbit hole. Just ask ChatGPT or Gemini for help!
The benefits of a personal project are real: passion, learning, career growth, and fun. And they’re easier than ever to create. Now’s the time to create your side project portfolio.
—Rahul
The quantum computing industry is growing, opening up new opportunities for engineers—and you don’t necessarily need a background in quantum physics to take these positions. So what skills do you need? See five key tips for breaking into the field from recruiters and researchers now working in quantum computing jobs.
Mini Thomas has built a highly successful career as an expert in power systems and smart grids—thanks in part, she says, to support from her family. Now a professor of electrical engineering in New Delhi, Thomas mentors women in the power industry, helping to expand the female leadership pipeline in India.
2025-11-06 03:00:03
Have you received a notification from your bank or credit card company alerting you to suspicious activity on your account and requesting you confirm a purchase? You probably wondered how the bank suspected the charge wasn’t legitimate.
Credit card companies use a variety of methods to detect fraud, which is the most common type of identity theft and is on the rise, according to Experian, one of the major consumer credit information services.
Employer
Discover, in Raleigh, N.C.
Title
Data engineering manager
Member grade
Senior member
Alma mater
Christian College of Engineering and Technology, in Bhilai, India
To help prevent unauthorized transactions, IEEE Senior Member Pankaj Gupta is developing tools using data integration, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and real-time account monitoring. Gupta is a manager of data and analytics engineering for Discover, and he works from Raleigh, N.C.
“The innovations my fraud department has developed have helped my organization respond to threats faster and adapt more easily to future needs,” he says.
This year, he received Discover’s President’s Award, the company’s highest employee recognition. It is given to those who have achieved outstanding business results while demonstrating the company’s values.
Gupta also became an invited member of the Forbes Technology Council, a community of experienced leaders across industries, selected based on their professional achievements and leadership experience.
He says he enjoys his job but says he never meant to work in financial services, a field where he has built a nearly two-decade-long career.
As a youngster, he was curious about how things worked and would take apart gadgets his father brought home.
“My father worked at BSNL, a government telecom organization, and often took me to his office,” Gupta says. “There I would watch phones in operation and telecom operators connecting trunk calls. At home, we even had a few old, nonfunctional phones lying around.”
While at school, he enjoyed participating in science and math olympiads and exhibitions, he says.
Taking note of his curiosity and his problem-solving skills, his teachers encouraged him to study engineering. He was most interested in learning electrical engineering because of his interest in the power substations that he and his father checked out.
“Growing up in a small town [Dongargarh, which is famous for the Bamleshwari Temple, a popular Hindu pilgrimage site], I saw how technology could help solve problems and make life better for people,” he says.
He also became fascinated by the nearby steel factory’s massive machines, its chimneys, and the constant activity around them, he says.
“I noticed how everything seemed to work together in a coordinated way. Seeing such complex engineering in action at such a young age planted the seed of my interest in technology,” he says. “This exposure inspired me to pursue electrical engineering as a career.”
In 2002 he enrolled in the EE program at the Christian College of Engineering and Technology, in Bhilai, India, a 180-minute commute each way by train. He left at 5 a.m. and returned at 6:30 p.m. During his senior year, his family began struggling financially, he says, so his priority was to find a job immediately after graduating to support them.
In India, universities hold placement events on campus to recruit graduating students. Gupta says he was lucky enough to receive a job offer from the Indian IT company Satyam Computer Services, which is now defunct. He started there in 2006 after earning his bachelor’s degree in engineering and electrical engineering. Satyam assigned him to work on a software program for a financial services company.
That’s when he pivoted to software engineering.
Gupta says that although software development wasn’t his preferred career path, it enabled him to support himself and his parents.
He still has a soft spot for electrical engineering, he says, but he hasn’t changed fields or industries for the past 18 years.
His time at a variety of financial institutions has allowed him to travel the world to work in other countries including Germany and the United Kingdom, he says. The United States is the fourth country where he has worked.
“It’s been an exciting journey, learning about different work cultures and technologies,” he says.
Gupta left Satyam in 2011 to join Mphasis, an IT solutions company in Bangalore, India, as a senior software developer focused on extracting, transforming, and loading (ETL) data. After a year, he left for Wipro Technologies in Bengaluru. As a technical lead, he was assigned as a consultant for Capital One in Bangalore in an offshore development center. He led a team of 10 employees working on data integration projects including generic frameworks.
He moved to the United States in 2017 to work as an associate vice president at JPMorgan Chase in Jersey City, N.J. He helped create a world-class analytics platform and modernize the bank’s reporting systems. He also worked on systems that use a zero-trust security approach, which he describes as one whereby banks do not automatically trust any user or system. Instead, they verify every transaction.
“This greatly reduces the risk of fraud or unauthorized access,” he says.
He also developed scalable data partitioning techniques that organize and split large volumes of information into more manageable pieces.
“I believe that as AI advances, other innovations will evolve.”
“This allows the system to process data more quickly, handle growth without slowing down, and support real-time decision-making,” he says. “These innovations have helped my organization respond to threats faster.”
He joined Discover in 2019 and has worked his way up from principal data engineer for the data and analytics group to manager of data engineering. He developed AI-enhanced data pipelines to train models in making real-time, automated decisions.
AI and machine learning systems can prevent fraudulent transactions by collecting information about a customer’s typical financial habits over time, such as whether banking is done online or through an app, the time of day transactions occur, and the typical amount paid to creditors. The system is then trained to look for anomalies.
In simple terms, the system assigns a risk score to each transaction, usually on a scale based on patterns it has learned, Gupta says. If the score crosses a certain threshold, the bank might take preventive action. If, for instance, there is an unusual purchase in a location far from where the customer lives, the bank will send the customer a message, looking to verify whether the transaction is legitimate. If the customer does not recognize the purchase, the bank blocks the transaction.
Gupta joined IEEE in 2023 “to connect with a global network of technology professionals, and to stay updated in the latest advancements in engineering and computing,” he says. He was elevated to senior member later that year.
“Membership has helped me access world-class research through the IEEE Xplore Digital Library,” he says. “It also provided me an opportunity to attend conferences and share my expertise with the wider engineering community.”
His advice for young engineers is to stay curious and keep learning.
“Technology is changing very rapidly,” he says. “What is working right now might change in six months, so adaptability is your biggest strength.”
He predicts that AI agents will eventually take over repetitive tasks such as those related to automation, coding, and programming. Where engineers will be most needed, he says, is building AI models and training them.
“Engineers will find significant opportunities for growth in these areas,” he says. “I believe that as AI advances, other innovations will evolve.
“Focus on solving real problems, not just building solutions for their own sake.
“Build your professional network and seek mentors who can guide you through both technical and career challenges.”