Think Like an Engineer: Use systematic thinking to solve everyday challenges & unlock the inherent values in them

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These three things are some of the things that make experienced engineers so desirable. We have all heard the saying, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The same logic applies to being an engineer. With that in mind, I wanted to share some of the important things I have learned in over 10 years that can help accelerate your growth as an engineer. Establish patterns Aggarwal’s path to electrical engineering included a few stops along the way, as she discovered new disciplines and ways of approaching problems. Another thing that Aggarwal learned from her SuperUROP is the importance of diverse interests. “I do theater, I do electrical engineering, I do design, I do sports. I really appreciated that Professor Ram always encouraged me to keep pursuing all of my interests, and never told me to limit myself to one thing.” What does “establish patterns” mean? It means don’t just fix today’s problem, fix tomorrow’s too. I briefly searched the internet and here is how Wikipedia describes it:

Fundamental, not rote skill. A fundamental skill is something every human being must know to function in modern society. Rote means a mechanical routine;

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During her junior year, Aggarwal worked on a research project through EECS’s SuperUROP program with Rajeev Ram, professor of electrical engineering, in his Physical Optics and Electronics Group. The project she worked on was aimed at building a wearable optical health monitor. Conceptualizing, not programming. Computer science is not only computer programming. Thinking like a computer scientist means more than being able to program a computer. It requires thinking at multiple levels of abstraction;

However, “algorithm” is a technical term with a more specific meaning than “recipe”, and calling something an algorithm means that the following properties are all true: Write about a process in your life (e.g. driving to the mall, walking to class, etc.) and estimate the number of steps necessary to complete the task. Would you consider this a complex or simple task? What happens if you scale that task (e.g. driving two states away to the mall)? Is your method the most efficient? Can you come up with a more efficient way? Aggarwal, now a senior at MIT, is still constantly up to something. She is the founder and leader of Voltage, an undergraduate electrical engineering club, part of the first group of students to graduate with a major in theater arts, and a member of sMITe, MIT’s Women’s Ultimate Frisbee team. This summer, she will start working on her MEng at MIT.Is it general for any input? Yes. Any positive integer greater than zero and any size ‘word’ will work. Aggarwal was happy with her decision to change majors, but missed some of the benefits of a small academic department she had experienced in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.