Sense and ability

Instrumentation and control engineering can be referred to as a ‘mixture’ of different subjects that can be the launch pad for many careers. That’s what spurred Ujjayan Sengupta —  with a CGPA (cumulative grade point average, an evaluation and ranking method) score of 8.81 in first year —  to move from manufacturing to instrumentation at the Indian Institute of Engineering (IIT), Kharagpur.

“At IIT Kharagpur, instrumentation engineering is a mix of electrical and electronics engineering. This allows you to diversify into a lot of fields. It gives you many options. It’s a stepping stone to many areas,” says Sengupta, who worked with Bharat Petroleum refinery, Mumbai, as instrument officer, maintenance, till June this year and is currently an MBA candidate at IIT Bombay’s SJM School of Management.

Sengupta says that instrumentation engineers’ wider knowledge base gives them an edge over their mechanical or electrical counterparts in a plant. “You work with pretty intellectual, stimulating stuff. You design systems and you have to know how the processes work,” he says.

Indeed, instrumentation engineering is an inter-disciplinary branch that includes ingredients from electrical, chemical, electronics as well as computer engineering.

Dr Smriti Srivastava, associate head, department of instrumentation and control engineering, Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, Delhi, says, “Till last year, our instrumentation engineers used to be the first to get placed (before their counterparts in other branches) because employers wanted them for their wide knowledge base. They have knowledge of hardware as well as software.” This year, the slowdown has affected the placement scene, she adds.

Instrumentation and control engineers design, manufacture and fix snags in devices or systems that are used to measure or control physical quantities such as temperature, pressure and flow. They step in wherever ‘sensing’ of physical quantities is required and work in power plants, chemical plants, manufacturing facilities, oil refineries, the steel industry as well as drug makers and software and hardware companies, to name a few avenues.

Prof. S Sen, co-ordinator for the instrumentation programme at IIT Kharagpur’s electrical engineering department, says this field has wide applications, including in the VLSI (very large scale integration) and chip design industry. “VLSI is an emerging area (to which instrumentation engineers can contribute). There are very small-sized sensors that can be planted into your body. These have an electrical portion and a mechanical portion. Instrumentation engineers get specialised training to work on these,” says Prof. Sen.

Instrumentation engineers have very focused, specific jobs, he says, though he concedes that electrical engineers have more opportunities.

Yet, if you still want to know why you should opt for instrumentation engineering, Prof. Sen reaffirms the wide-base point. “They (students) get wide exposure to different fields,” he says. “Most of the investment and improvements in the next 50 years will be in ‘sensorisation’ of all technologies ranging from bio-medical instruments to space vehicles. The past 50 years were of ‘informationisation’ (IT etc). The next 50 will be about ‘sensing’.”

Author: HT Horizons

Date: 30th Dec., 2009

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