{"id":50045,"date":"2018-02-06T08:52:40","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T13:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=50045"},"modified":"2018-02-14T16:20:40","modified_gmt":"2018-02-14T21:20:40","slug":"perfect-timing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2018\/02\/06\/perfect-timing\/","title":{"rendered":"Perfect timing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Anil Gopinathan earned a master\u2019s degree in mechanical engineering from Wright State in 1999.<\/p><\/div>\n

It was the perfect storm of self-discovery and opportunity.<\/p>\n

During his high school years, Anil Gopinathan realized he had a passion for mathematics and the sciences. At the same time, the economy in his native India had just started opening up for foreign investments, making engineering a profession that offered huge opportunities for career growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy interest just happened to get aligned with the transformation the country was going through at that point of time,\u201d Gopinathan recalled.<\/p>\n

So he followed an engineering path that took him through Wright State University. Today, the Wright State alumnus oversees multiple Engineering & Technology Centers in India employing more than 600 engineers for Ingersoll Rand, a $13.5 billion corporation that designs, manufactures, sells and services industrial and commercial products worldwide.<\/p>\n

Gopinathan was one of the first master\u2019s degree students of Joseph Slater, chair of the\u00a0Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering<\/a>\u00a0in the College of Engineering and Computer Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly the student has exceeded the teacher in this case,\u201d Slater said with more than a little pride at Gopinathan\u2019s accomplishments.<\/p>\n

Engineering is in Gopinathan\u2019s DNA. His father was an engineer who worked for the Indian Federal Department of Telecommunications. Gopinathan earned his Bachelor of Technology degree in mechanical engineering from the Government College of Engineering at Trivandrum, Kerala, in the southernmost tip of India.<\/p>\n

After working as a mechanical design engineer for automaker Ashok Leyland in Chennai, India, from 1991 to 1995, he took a job in Bangalore as senior design engineer and rose to a managerial role at BPL-Sanyo Technologies, a fast-moving consumer-goods company.<\/p>\n

In 1997, Gopinathan enrolled at Wright State, drawn by the opportunities in aerospace research and by his undergraduate classmates\u2019 endorsement of the university, the faculty, the research, job opportunities and the presence of an Indian community in the area.<\/p>\n

While at Wright State, he landed a teaching assistantship and a co-op job with a jet engine manufacturer, where he worked on structural and thermal analysis of jet engine components.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt helped me put my design skillset to work on actual highly engineered products and understand the expectations and work culture of a U.S. organization,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Gopinathan also received a co-op opportunity at Tecumseh Products Company in Tecumseh, Michigan, and after earning a master\u2019s degree in mechanical engineering in 1999 was offered a full-time job at the $2 billion global HVAC compressor manufacturer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a good break in my career,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For the next nine years, Gopinathan would work as a design engineer and progress to the role of director of engineering. In 2008 he was named vice president of engineering and put in charge of leading the engineering teams and global technology center at the company\u2019s locations in India. During this tenure he was also awarded six U.S. patents for innovative designs.<\/p>\n

Then, in 2011, Gopinathan was hired as senior director of engineering at the Ingersoll Rand Engineering and Technology Centers in India. The company\u2019s family of brands includes Club Car, Ingersoll Rand, Thermo King and Trane. The India technology centers cater to the product design needs of various strategic business units under the Ingersoll Rand umbrella.<\/p>\n

Since 2014, Gopinathan has served as vice president and general manager at the centers, overseeing a team of more than 600 employees in the mechanical and software engineering design and development domain.<\/p>\n

Since Gopinathan took the post, the centers have grown by 50 percent. He has managed project resources, progress, completion timeframes and budget while consistently exceeding operational performance targets.<\/p>\n

\u201cDriving this team to perform beyond their potential is most gratifying to me,\u201d he said. \u201cI feel proud of their achievement when their ideas become product features that provide valuable solutions to our customer\u2019s problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gopinathan says the culture at Wright State was highly supportive and credits it with helping him adapt to the U.S. corporate ecosystem. The courses covered a wide range of topics, and the balanced theory and lab curriculum gave him a better understanding of the material, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cBe it the international office or the faculty in the engineering school, all the staff at the university made me feel very comfortable and were always available for any support,\u201d Gopinathan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wright State grad Anil Gopinathan turned his passion for mathematics and the sciences into a successful engineering career. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":50047,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,733,4299,743,2060,725,4269,715],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-alumni","category-alumni-profile","category-engineering-computer-science","category-graduate","category-home-news-sidebar","category-mechanical-and-materials-engineering","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50045"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50244,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50045\/revisions\/50244"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}