Shiva Subramaniam

Guest Faculty @Indian Institute of Technology, Madras

At IIT Madras, I teach courses on design thinking, systems thinking, cross-culture, life skills, entrepreneurship and biomimicry. The courses are designed to help aspiring engineers recognise the impact that they can create in this world and act on how they can create this impact. My course ‘Strategies for Professional Growth’ focusses on helping students prepare for life after graduation. The world inside the campus is secure, disciplined and structured. The world outside is not. I help bridge the divide between the campus and the outside world. In the course, I teach cross-culture, emotional intelligence, leadership, and tools for professional and personal growth. As part of ‘Discovering Creativity’, students put on their empathy hat and go around campus looking for problems to solve. Once they identify a problem, they use the design thinking process to create a solution and implement their solution.In ‘Creativity Saving Lives’, engineering students think about ideas that could save human lives and they develop these ideas. The belief is that engineers can save lives as much as medical professionals can. For ‘Engineers - Purpose of Life’, students pick up an engineering challenge to work on (These challenges are brilliantly articulated at Working on the challenges not only helps engineering students with creativity but also helps them seek a meaning to their lives. To make them feel that they are important, crucial parts of a system.