Meet our faculty: Siddharth Rajan
Meet Siddharth Rajan, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, in this new video and find out what he thinks are the biggest strengths of the electrical and computer engineering department and the benefits of an engineering education.
Rajan also shared some advice on how students can be successful in electrical and computer engineering.
“The first thing is to remain positive and try to take an interest, because many times in many courses there is a lot of mathematics, or there is a lot of work that you can really see the end of. You can’t see why you’re being made to do it, but you find out later on that this stuff can be really useful. So to some extent I would say just stay positive and when you’re given something to do, just take it like a mental exercise, just for fun,” says Rajan.
Rajan also advises students to keep abreast of where the field of electrical engineering is going and use that information to help define their own courses and electives.
“If you read in the newspaper or some magazine about some new technology, you should try to go and find connections about what they’re talking about there and what you’re doing in your courses,” advises Rajan. “That connection, if you can make it, can really help you not only in finding what you’re interested in but also in motivating you as you are doing your coursework.”
Siddharth Rajan joined the ECE faculty in 2008. He received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in physics from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, in 2001 and a master’s and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2006. He has worked at General Electric Global Research (2007) and UCSB (2007-2008). Rajan has coauthored more than 60 journal and conference publications and is the holder of one patent. His research interests include nanoscale semiconductor devices and physics, molecular beam epitaxy, and new applications of III- nitride semiconductors.
Visit the ECE website to learn more about electrical and computer engineering and meet ECE faculty and students.
