Rising Star: TI Engineer Makes His Mark in Solar Industry

Every year for the past three, Design News, in partnership with Mouser Electronics, has chosen, from an impressive pool of peer nominations, mind you, one person who is making a difference in his or her field of engineering - a Rising Engineering Star.

This year's winner, Manish Bhardwaj, is a 30-year-old systems application engineer who has worked with Texas Instruments throughout his short, but nonetheless impressive, career.

During a recent conversation with Bhardwaj, I discovered that not only is he currently working full-time on a number of projects, he is also pursuing his PhD at the University of Texas at Dallas. He received a Master's degree in electrical and computer engineering from Georgia Tech.

He's a man of few words, unless he is talking about his projects. During his time at TI, Bhardwaj has helped develop a software-based frequency response analyzer for power conversion systems and a reference design for motor control systems. He has also made his mark in the solar industry, contributing to the design of a board, implementing the software algorithms, and creating the test procedures for a micro inverter development kit. Finally, he designed a Solar Explorer Development Kit that helps TI customers better understand photovoltaic-based power systems.

Past Winners

Bhardwaj has also made contributions to industry at large, reviewing papers and serving as a Chair for Wireless Power at APEC 2014, and reviewing papers for IEEE's Transaction of Industrial Power Electronics in 2014.

In his free time, which is scarce these days, Bhardwaj said he likes going to movies, but mostly spends his time helping to educate more people in the field of engineering.

"I try to give back to the engineering community as much as I can," he said, adding that he was excited just to be nominated for the Rising Star award.

Zhen Yu, systems team manager at Texas Instruments, told Design News he nominated Bhardwaj, mainly because he's a self-motivator who "has really demonstrated to be kind of a super star or rising star in developing ... solutions and facing challenges."

"Bhardwaj is one to watch at TI, not only for his engineering success, but (also) for the dynamism he brings to the company," Yu wrote in his nomination.

Join us in congratulating Manish Bhardwaj, Design News' 2015 Rising Engineering Star, as well as our runners-up - Adrian Fernandez of Texas Instruments, Chris Lake of RedViking, and Jeff Hammock of MechOptix.