Sharing views from India

Think of a place where everything revolves around renewable energy and power electronics. Where design building and patenting is second nature, a place where innovation, creativity and the implementation of new technologies is encouraged on a daily basis. A place where your ideas are brought to life.

Hendrick Langa, Director of French South African Schneider Electric Education Centre (FSASEEC), gained first-hand experience of this.

Langa travelled to India on 16-18 March for the International Conference on Power and Embedded Drive Control (ICPEDC 2017) which was held at the SSN College of Engineering in Chennai, India. Presenting a paper titled: The Implementation of the Unity Displacement Factor Frequency Converter, Langa explains that it is an electrical innovation that he's developed and thought best to share with colleagues in the field of electronics, on a global platform, allowing him to gain further insight from his peers.

A first timer in India, Langa used the opportunity to forge strong working relationship between Vaal University of Technology (VUT) and its counterparts.

His trip consisted of sight visits to the SSN College of Engineering as well as VIT University which is voted the number one private engineering institute in India. The relationship he's made with colleagues in India are important for VUT. His aim is to see VUT students and lecturers being part of an exchange programme with both these institutions. "There's a lot we can learn from each other, especially their eagerness and energy for patenting and creating innovative products and new advancements in technology. We can bring their research expertise to VUT too," he said.

Langa summed his overall experience as highly informative. He's looking forward to sharing his experiences and feedback with the VUT academic community.