The teenager from a little-known industrial town in eastern India had never seen or felt anything like it. A squadron of fighter jets – five Su-30 MKIs in tight dagger formation – thundered overhead. The sight of their afterburners burned deep into the boy’s memory.
“I fell in love,” remembers Abhigyan Nath (26), describing his first ever glimpse of a military jet. “I felt power. I wanted to build something that could deliver that kind of power. To be a person who works with those engines.”
A decade later, Abhigyan – or Abhi – works for Rolls-Royce. He’s a Lifecycle Engineer, supporting critical components used across the company’s fleet of large turbofan engines (used in civil aviation).
Abhi’s engineering story, as big as it is, begins in a small town named Rourkela, in India’s Odisha region.
Far from home
Rourkela is sometimes called “Steel City” – it’s a place known for steel manufacturing, and little else. Abhi says when he was growing up there, few people left the region – community came before a career. While the area has always been rich in culture, and has been modernising, when Abhi was young, opportunities were few.
Abhi’s grandparents were farmers. His father was the family’s first engineer. He got a job at the Rourkela Steel Plant but wanted more for his children (Abhi’s older sister is a medical doctor).
While Abhi was at school, his dad left the steel plant. His new job involved designing and building power stations. Which meant the family moved a lot, and Abhi found himself at a new school every few years. The family went west, then south, from Mumbai to Bangalore. Abhi encountered new languages and new cultures. What never changed, though, was his curiosity about all things mechanical. He carried tools around and grew fascinated by aeroplanes.
Abhi was finishing school when he saw the Indian Air Force jets (the Su-30 MKIs) scream past. He didn’t have a ticket to get into the airshow, and was standing outside, his eyes fixed on the sky. But from that moment on, he knew he wanted to study mechanical engineering.
Relentless pursuit
And that’s exactly what he did, disappearing deep into his studies.
“I forgot everything else in the world,” he explains. “I wanted to build a path to those gas turbine engines.”
Abhi tackled projects, volunteered and signed up for internships at research centres around the country. He worked through evenings and weekends. And helped launch a peer-to-peer tutoring platform at his university that’s still running today. He “didn’t leave a single opportunity lying around”.
Once, after building a prototype, Abhi decided to test it using a wind tunnel. His university didn’t have one. So, he travelled to the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, without an appointment, to see if he could find one. A professor there expressed interest in speaking to him, but wasn’t immediately available. So Abhi sat and waited outside his office the entire day.
“Finally, he came out and asked me why I was still there,” Abhi recalls. “Next thing, he offered me a summer internship where I got to work on a micro gas turbine. It was a hell of a summer!”
Refusing to settle
With an engineering degree, Abhi landed a heavy engineering job. Many graduates, he says, would have been happy to settle. But he wanted to work with aeroplane engines.
He began writing emails, hoping to continue his research. Many of his letters were ignored or rejected. When he got a bite from the UK’s Cranfield University, he quit his job and took up a three-month, unpaid study programme there.
His success at Cranfield – designing a power gearbox for a turbine engine – led to a funded master’s degree programme, his introduction to IMechE and, eventually, a job at Rolls-Royce.
Having already worked as a performance engineer, Abhi’s now got his sights on exploring other engineering divisions at Rolls-Royce. The ultimate goal, he says, is to become a subject matter expert, to know everything there is to know about jet engines. He’s also working towards becoming a chartered IMechE member.
Mission accomplished (for now)
One of Abhi’s passions is encouraging younger engineers to keep pushing, to keep building their careers and chasing their goals. As a member of IMechE’s Derby and Nottingham Young Members Panel, he’s involved in all kinds of outreach, from speaking to university students to organising competitions.
“Follow your passion relentlessly,” he tells those he meets. “It’s your duty on this planet to follow your dreams. And to dream big.”
Abhi encourages young engineers to not give up too early. To not settle before they know what they’re “made for”. To live without limits.
He also tries to share his excitement about the future of his industry. With companies racing towards sustainability goals, and the promise of artificial intelligence (especially in the realm of processing, interpreting and managing big data), Abhi sees exciting times ahead.
“I have a satisfaction, somewhere in the centre of my heart, that I am exactly where I belong,” he says. “If I think about the young boy who had a dream to work with big engines, I’m there. I’ve reached that power. But there’s more to go.”
To nominate an IMechE member making a difference, email profeng@thinkpublishing.co.uk.
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.