Industrial Engineering and Operations Research

Please describe any relevant past experience

Member of Student Union in Tsinghua University

What are your goals/vision for your committees of choice? How do you think you can contribute to them?

Alumni & Career Affairs, Social, Academic Affairs. I want to contribute to new students networking with their alumni and among themselves.

Any other relevant information you would like to share

Yes

Please describe any relevant past experience

I have confounded and run a student club called Kannada literary association and also worked as in student startup called Infinull technology as CMO.

What are your goals/vision for your committees of choice? How do you think you can contribute to them?

Administrative, Alumni & Career Affairs, Academic Affairs.I don’t know the problem or issues faced by students as of now. But I will know them and try to solve them

Any other relevant information you would like to share

No.

Please describe any relevant past experience

1- I was sponsorship committee head for my undergraduate college national level techno- management fest 2 - I have also organized a special event for the same fest

What are your goals/vision for your committees of choice? How do you think you can contribute to them?

I learned a lot while working as the manager and as committee head and I would like to implement those learning here. Few of them are: 1 - Being transparent with the fellow committee members and non committee members. It was utmost necessary because I was dealing with huge sum of money. A large portion of my job also included allocation and managing of funds. Being detailed in description and reasoning and transparent with the faculty incharge, the vendors and the sponsors is must. 2- Be creative with the meetings and easily approachable. It's very important to maintain a good working relationship with the sponsors so that they are more than happy to come in the next event. Since it's a big University and not everyone knows everyone, organising a creative and fun Meetup helps people to approach you with their issues and certainly takes the edge off. 3- Open to feedback. I take healthy criticism/ negative feedback very positivily because one needs to adapt to the ever changing scenario to survive.

Any other relevant information you would like to share

I was also assistant manager - HOD of the dept at TATA Chemicals

Please describe any relevant past experience

Have taken responsibility as the Undergraduate Leader for University of California Los Angeles Education Abroad Program at Japan, and co-directed multiple school cultural-exchange programs and activities involving over 1,000 student participants.

What are your goals/vision for your committees of choice? How do you think you can contribute to them?

My vision for the committees is to strengthen our students' connections with students from other schools of Columbia University, with Columbia alumni, and with faculty members, through a positive and active student network featuring all kinds of social and cultural events, to which I could use my past experience in student organizations and programs to add value.

Any other relevant information you would like to share

I enjoy in my spare time doing a lot of things including skydiving, archery, shogi, and foooooood(all kinds of food, and I'm fond of making kaiseki cuisine), so you could get in touch with me if you share similar interests with me :)

Please describe any relevant past experience

Previous experience in student union and relevant internship in Fiance industry.

What are your goals/vision for your committees of choice? How do you think you can contribute to them?

From my perspective, the main goals of the budget team is auditing and reporting. Under the certain budget limit, we should make sure the funding match with our propose and the report is accurate, reasonable and verifiable. I got my bachelor degree in accounting and also took some advance accounting courses from CBS now. Hence, my solid accounting background would be helpful for this position and committee.

Any other relevant information you would like to share

NONE

Please describe any relevant past experience

Served as representatives of College of Science in National Taiwan University for 2 terms 2015-2017 and leading team of 5 auditing final accounts of $30,000

What are your goals/vision for your committees of choice? How do you think you can contribute to them?

It is a great pleasure and honor to have one of the most expansive alumni network in the world. I see a future with a more splendid future with alumnus and students brainstorming critical problems for human society while we, the committee, served as a platform bridging two amazing groups together.

Any other relevant information you would like to share

A fun fact of myself, I love bartending. Come join a drink with me someday.

Please describe any relevant past experience

Student representative at Shiv Nadar University Hostel Commitee

What are your goals/vision for your committees of choice? How do you think you can contribute to them?

One of my goals is to get together the various ethnic and cultural groups present in the department and get them more involved and aware by conducting and facilitating activities such as festivals ,sports events etc.

Please describe any relevant past experience

During my time at UC San Diego, I aimed to fill my daily schedule with a wide-range of activities to improve my communication, social, and leadership skills. In addition to the fact that each activity uniquely contributed to my personality, these activities also led me to come across many individuals who left an indelible impact on me and helped me maximize my knowledge in different fields and cultures. Upon coming to UCSD, I noticed a lack of a Saudi community, so with the help of a fellow Saudi student, we founded the Saudi Student Association (SSA) to reflect the cultural and historical aspects of Saudi Arabia and to cultivate a sense of Saudi community within the university. Two years after being an integral part of the leadership team, UCSD has witnessed a drastic increase in the number of Saudis attending UCSD, from 9 students to a total of 56 students. Additionally, I joined the Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) organization. One year after being an active member in the organization, I became part of the Public Relations committee. This gave me the chance to help in career opportunities for students by contacting different companies and hosting information sessions for ESW. Those experiences allowed me to join the Emerging Leaders Program at UCSD, a program that aims to guide and inspire the development of leadership skills through experiential activities. To further hone my professional and leadership skills, I, along with other fellows, founded the SABIC Student Council to serve SABIC (a major global petrochemicals company) scholarship recipients. We came up with multiple initiatives that contributed to uniting the student body, such as a monthly newsletter and multiple professional development programs. The work our team has done led the council to be an integral part of the scholarship program.

What are your goals/vision for your committees of choice? How do you think you can contribute to them?

For the academics committee, one of the things I would like to contribute to is the pre-arrival orientation to help graduate students figure out their tentative plan prior to the start of their programs. With EGSC help, I am confident that we can come up with a clear system that covers all academia matters with the goal that every incoming student would have a clear understanding of the offered classes. This would include reflection videos from current cohorts on each course, and online conferences by current students and faculty for incoming students. The main goal of such an initiative would be to save current and incoming students time and money as well as to allow them to enjoy a hassle-free journey at Columbia University. For the social committee, although the IEOR department, along with EGSC, has done a great job in creating memorable social events/mixers, one of the things I will strive to improve upon, is having more faculty presence in those social events. In addition to the fact that this will give graduate students the opportunity to hear more about current IEOR research opportunities and different industries which they might get involved in, more student/faculty interaction in a less formal setting would drastically help students and faculty alike in various aspects. For the career affairs, I would like to assist in establishing a system that ensures that every student is getting the chance to sign up for different information sessions by inviting more companies and hosting those sessions in bigger auditoriums. On a general note, I aim to help in creating an accessible online tool for current students to raise any questions or concerns which would redefine the goals and vision of EGSC by having diverse and varied opinions and contributions count.

Any other relevant information you would like to share

I would like take this opportunity to thank you all for your time and consideration.

Please describe any relevant past experience

As an undergraduate student, pursuing my Bachelors in Computer Science in India, I’ve often believe in participating and contributing to as many diverse experiences as I possibly could, be it as the head of the Accounts Department for the first every Model United Nations conference in my college, or as a member of the Computer Society of India, responsible for organizing conferences focused on educating students on latest trends in technology, or as an Exchange Controller at AIESEC – VIT Chennai (the world’s largest non-profit youth run organization) responsible for marketing social internships all around the world, helping match university students with internships in global locations based on preference and requirement. Such experiences not only help build versatility, they allow one to respect challenges that various fields present (instead of undermining what one generally wouldn’t understand). During my time at S&P Global Market Intelligence, I was managing a team of 20 individuals from distributed geographies like India, United States, United Kingdom, Pakistan, and was responsible for building and supporting a product that covered data for about 88,000 public companies, 825,000 private companies and in-depth global data for 17 industries. In parallel, we were actively engaged in building out new analytics solutions that helped improve product offerings for more than 900 clients who had registered with us. This experience taught me the following – 1) Effective and regular communication is key for a business (or any group) to be sustainable and successful; 2) One should always be versatile and open to feedback, be it negative or positive; 3) One should always be respectful of different cultures and work ethic. These principles helped me brand myself as an ‘Agent of Change’, allowing me to successfully deliver unmanageable product priorities against tight deadlines. Thus, I feel these experiences have allowed to be develop myself as a multi-tasker, an impactful communicator and a deferential human being.

What are your goals/vision for your committees of choice? How do you think you can contribute to them?

The Alumni and Career Affairs Committee Columbia University, as one of the pioneers in education, has been a hotbed of talent. Students, current and past, and from diverse cultures have done seminal work in their respective fields which continues to make Columbia a brand associated with academic excellence. It would be my objective to improve the University’s outreach to such individuals (who are often very busy with their professional commitments). Additionally, given my experience in S&P Global (or the Financial Services Industry in general), where I got the opportunity to work with a few Columbia alumni, as well as accomplished professionals in the industry, I would like to increase the frequency of tech talks by individuals from companies like Kensho(an award winning machine intelligence company), S&P Global Market Intelligence, Barclays, JP Morgan etc. These are people I’ve worked with, and who understand how data in general is transforming the industries around us, thus making their experience very relevant to most of our programs at Columbia. Thus, as my vision for this committee, I would like to help improve our university’s connections with firms that have not been very actively associated with us, and improve our alumni outreach, holding regular networking sessions/talks that allows them to share their experience post Columbia. The Academic Affairs Committee In any institutional setting, be it academic or professional, feedback is one of the key metrics that helps assess an entity’s efficiency in execution of its daily duties. Universities, given their culturally and geographically diverse student populace, often find themselves at the forefront of unique and unexpected challenges. It thus becomes important to ensure that students have a platform that allows them to unequivocally voice their concerns, without any fear. To help facilitate such conversations, I feel it important to conduct feedback sessions with relevant authorities by organizing regular (twice a month) sessions with a relatively small group of randomly selected students that would share issues/suggestions on topics that are important to them. Such sessions (in my professional experience), often allow students, hitherto silent and passive in communicating concerns, to speak up. Thus, as my vision for this committee, I would like to focus on improving transparency and accessibility, thereby allowing relevant feedback being shared with proper authorities. The Interschool Committee Co-operation and collaboration – these are two words that are key in this era of globalization. The synergy of distributed and individual bodies is the ‘mantra’ for effective and organic growth. As an individual who’s managed i) a team distributed over multiple geographies like United States, United Kingdom, Pakistan, India; ii) clients that come from different industries, with different requirements and temperaments; I feel that’s it’s imperative to be a good listener and an effective communicator. Articulating one’s thought clearly is key to maintaining good relations with people around you, and I feel (even though it is a practice that never really ends) that my professional experience has helped me realize this. Additionally, it’s important to be open to feedback, since when you’re engaging with diverse student bodies, one is often faced with opinions that may be different from your own. Evaluating perspectives with an open mind (which may even mean admitting your folly) helps build positive and collaborative relationships with people.

Please describe any relevant past experience

I was one of the Japan Intercultural Network (J-NET) broad member for 1.5 years, and co-hosted a university-wide annual event in Spring 2015. I also majored in Accountancy in my undergraduate college.

What are your goals/vision for your committees of choice? How do you think you can contribute to them?

For the Budget Committee, I want to make the best use of our money based on my previous knowledge and experience so that we can be efficient and resourceful when holding events. And for Academic Affairs Committees, I am more than willing to talk with faculties and students to keep the close connection, as well as hearing any advise to help us improve. Regarding the Alumni & Career Affairs Committee, I am glad to help my peers to connect to alumni in this essential career development period. And I also want to improve myself with the committee.

Any other relevant information you would like to share

I would like to see a calendar for the EGSC to see how many events are holding each year and get a sense of how many people are working together.

Please describe any relevant past experience

I used to be the vice president at China Agricultural University Student Council. During my term, I managed couple big campus wide talent shows, career social events as well as monthly council meetings bringing school faculties and students together.

What are your goals/vision for your committees of choice? How do you think you can contribute to them?

I believe strongly in equality within academic settings for people of different socioeconomic status, genders, races, and ethnicities. A university department should bring people from diverse backgrounds to lead and succeed together. Since being part of Career Affairs, Inter-school or Social Committee would allow me to speak for students in the IEOR department, I am excited about and, fully committed to, the prospect of becoming a department representative.

Any other relevant information you would like to share

Our society has changed tremendously over the past decades, but carving out a scientific career remains difficult for young women. From high school through college, I encountered strong institutional biases and personal stereotypes on a daily basis, and I saw male peers receive more favorable treatment than women with the same qualifications. This fact did not stop me from seeking progression; rather, it inspired me to prove that women can succeed at the highest level. With my quantitative ability and my determination to stand out, I ultimately earned the China National Scholarship, the country’s highest academic recognition, granted only to the top 0.02% of undergraduates.

Please describe any relevant past experience

I am an active participant in IIT MADRAS NY alumni meets. I help organizers spread the meeting schedule to recent graduates who are staying in New York.

What are your goals/vision for your committees of choice? How do you think you can contribute to them?

Alumni & Career Affairs: I believe that students can learn a lot and take advice from alumni's. Every students wants to get connected with alumni in the field/job they are interested. Hence organizing the alumni meets by various field experts will be helpful for students. Also, mentor-mentee hasn't proved better way of approach since either students or alumni are reluctant to ask specific questions thinking to be on safer side. If we can provide piazza kind of platform where there is possibility of anonymity, i see that more question are posted. So i will plan to provide similar platform for alumni and students so that each party will be able to ask questions or post answers with anonymity. I believe this approach will break the ice between students and alumni

Any other relevant information you would like to share

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rameshkottamasu

Please describe any relevant past experience

As an Associate Quality Engineer at Abbott Laboratories, I met bimonthly with department management to provide feedback from the cohort of associate engineers. Topics typically consisted of ensuring ample training resources were available to associates and promoting a healthy work life balance. As I was a liaison between the associate engineers and management, this experience is directly relevant to what I expect to do as an EGSC department representative.

What are your goals/vision for your committees of choice? How do you think you can contribute to them?

In addition to the Professional Development and Leadership program, I believe it would be immensely helpful to have a more involved mentorship program between current job-seeking students and students that have previously interned or are currently working in that subject area. These mentorship programs typically exist for high-demand, high-stress positions like investment banking or consulting, however, a broader platform that caters to students seeking any position would be ideal. This type of program would enable returning students (mentors) to become involved on campus while mentees would gain invaluable insight into their specific job function and recruiting process.