MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
DHEEPA SRINIVASAN
The first Indian woman to be named an ASME Fellow weighs in on how the engineering landscape in India is changing and the future of innovation.
Written by Hena Jafri
FOR MORE THAN 24 YEARS, Dheepa Srinivasan has led work in gas turbine materials, additive manufacturing, thermal spray coatings, and advanced materials characterization.
Today, she serves as dean of the Office of Research & Innovation at Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences. She previously spent five years at Pratt and Whitney in Bangalore, India, where she led research activities at both academic and industrial research sites as chief engineer.
Srinivasan holds a master’s degree and doctorate from IISc Bangalore and is the first woman from India to be named an ASME Fellow.
She holds more than 35 patents and has developed more than 50 technologies and processes that are used in both gas and steam turbines.
At IMECE India 2025 from Sept. 10-13, Srinivasan will serve as co-chair of Track 2, focusing on “Advanced Materials & Manufacturing Technologies.”
Below is an excerpt from a conversation with ASME’s India office ahead of IMECE India.
ME: Can you tell us about your work at Ramaiah University? What are you currently researching? What’s happening in the department that you’re heading here?
Dheepa Srinivasan: I’m actually the dean of research and innovation for the whole university. This university comprises about 11,000 students, undergrad, post-grad, and doctorate. I run the Research and Innovation department here for the university.
Much as I would love to, I’m not doing actual research in this tenure. That’s for the first time in I would say 35 years. I’m running the doctoral program here, running the grants office, intellectual property office, looking at MOUs and collaborations both with industry and with universities. I’ve been in this role for about a year now.
I’m actually learning a lot and trying to look at the biomedical sector of research and how engineering can bridge that. It’s a far cry from hot gas part components, jet engines, and aerospace, but more sustainable research and more in terms of human patient population research. That’s what I’m facilitating.
ME: Can you tell us about your experience working in India’s heavy industry, particularly as a woman, and how that transformed you as a professional? Are you seeing more acceptance and possibly a transformation in the way women are regarded in the sector?
Srinivasan: An interesting anecdote I give is when I applied for my first internship way back in 1991 after earning a master’s degree in physics, some industries—I don’t want to name them because they’re very famous in India—they said, ‘we don't take women.’ So, your application cannot even be taken.
But that really didn’t deter me because I wanted to do practical engineering. I can’t think of anywhere else to be other than the shop floor. I think, until my very last breath, I’d like to use screwdrivers and spanners.
To be honest, it’s a passion, which is why in being a manager, you have evolve because you have to enable others to do so. So, that is a responsibility as you grow in the profession.
You asked how it has evolved in India. I would say that the Government of India is one of the best equal opportunity employers. Our government in any sector—defense, aerospace, in CSIR labs—they’re 50-50, so there’s good opportunity.
But I have three women in my group now and I keep telling them, you have to work twice as hard. There’s no question. We know we have to work twice as hard.
ME: How can academia and industry come together in India to nurturing the engineering ecosystem?
Srinivasan: When I was in the industry, I always ensured that I was in touch with the universities. That’s probably what got me this job here. It’s a little tough because the metrics for the two are different.
Industry typically doesn’t take blue sky research. We take things that the universities have already done and we launch off that to make products and profit. And that circles back.
Universities are also trying to bridge industry readiness. Now that the ecosystem is of innovation rather than pedantic learning at the university level, they’re trying to get student skills to be more fit for different industries.
ME: We spoke about academia and industry, but what about the startup ecosystem in India—what role do you see startups playing in this landscape?
Srinivasan: Just a couple of days ago, a senior dean told me it shouldn’t be the Indian Institute of Technologies anymore, it should be called Indian Institute of Startups because, literally, the whole country is on that bandwagon.
In that sense, it’s good to see a lot of enthusiasm from the youngsters.
But I don’t know if it’s my age or being in the long cycle business of engines, which is a really long cycle, and now I'm in the medical field, which also has a long cycle because it has to do with human life—but we’re a little bit more patient in that sense of startup development. It’s nice to start anything, but to sustain—the word unicorn comes to mind.
The need of the hour is you need more manufacturing, more people. Patience is also important. In three years, if they don’t see the return on investment, then people think it’s do or die.
That’s not the case. If you take the giants, even a GE or a Pratt & Whitney, it has taken 50, 60, 70 years for them to set up a business. But today we are thinking of very short business cycles, so I would put a word of caution there.
ME: What’s the most effective way to turn academic research into deployable industrial technology?
Srinivasan: I really like this question because it’s close to my heart, and it’s also because it comes from an industry side to start with. I always wanted to share the fantastic opportunities that I personally had and give back to the university system because that’s where a lot of the novel ideas emanate because you don’t have to really develop a product. You’re not looking at profit and loss in that sense.
I’ve always had bachelor’s and master’s students who came back and did internships in whichever organization that I’ve been.
The industry problem, to answer your first part of your question, is we want to take translational research in a very rapid way, but nothing is free of challenges in life. In fact, challenges are a wonderful stepping stone for new areas, new products, and new opportunities.
But who will address these technical challenges? The best synergy is to have the wherewithal to go in this cyclic manner.
When I was with GE Power that was very successfully deployed because you need a little bit of loose cash to employ the students, to pay the faculty members to do that, to try their extra test, because the industry doesn’t have the time or the bandwidth to do that after a certain while.
In my opinion, that has to go like two lines in a railway.
Hena Jafri is senior manager of marketing and communications for ASME India.
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