The IEEE Basis this 12 months established the EPICS in IEEE Dr. Swarn S. Kalsi Group of Tasks fund to assist tasks “designed to encourage multidisciplinary groups of engineering college students to collaborate and engineer options to deal with local people wants.”
The EPICS (Engineering Tasks in Group Service) in IEEE initiative gives alternatives for college students to have interaction in service studying and collaborate proactively with engineering professionals and group organizations to develop options that deal with native challenges.
The brand new fund was created by the household of IEEE Life Fellow Swarn S. Kalsi to honor his legacy as a pioneer of temperature-superconducting magnet know-how. Kalsi died on 2 March on the age of 85.
He was a loyal IEEE volunteer, passionate concerning the significance of hands-on schooling and supporting up-and-coming engineers.
“Dad believed that schooling, particularly an engineering diploma, had the ability to vary lives,” Kalsi’s son, Sonny, says. “He was a lifelong instructor who cared deeply about throughout him and wished to share his data.”
To additional lengthen his legacy, Kalsi’s household labored with the IEEE Basis to ascertain the brand new memorial fund.
“Dad’s need was for every particular person to achieve their full potential, and he typically stated that ‘engineers construct the long run,’” says Kalsi’s daughter, Kiran. “In that manner, the EPICS in IEEE program appeared like a pure option to honor him whereas supporting the following era of engineers.”
An skilled on superconducting magnet know-how
Kalsi grew up in Kanpur, India, and earned his bachelor’s diploma in electrical engineering in 1962 from the Indian Institute of Know-how in Kharagpur. He continued his schooling by incomes a grasp’s diploma in EE in 1963 from Benaras Hindu College, in Varanasi, India. He then moved to the United Kingdom to pursue a doctoral diploma in EE at Imperial School London. After incomes his Ph.D. in 1970, he moved to the United States along with his spouse, Kuldeep.
All through his 50-year profession, Kalsi labored at industry-leading firms together with AMSC (American Superconductor), Basic Electrical, and Northrop Grumman. His work targeted on designing and constructing superconducting magnets for motors and turbines, energy cables, and fault present limiters.
At AMSC, he labored to boost the corporate’s improvement course of for energy tools utilizing high-temperature superconducting (HTS) know-how.
“One among his main contributions was HTS rotating machines together with motors, turbines, and synchronous condensers,” says IEEE Life Fellow Alex J. Malozemoff, who labored with Kalsi at AMSC. “He contributed to the design of the industry-leading 36.5-megawatt ship propulsion motor for the U.S. Navy and the event and profitable check of an HTS dynamic synchronous condenser.
“The creation of the brand new EPICS in IEEE Dr. Swarn S. Kalsi Group of Tasks fund is a phenomenal instance of how an IEEE member’s impression can lengthen nicely past their lifetime.” — Karen Galuchie
“I take into account him some of the insightful and broadly skilled engineers within the HTS energy engineering discipline.”
Kalsi was granted greater than 30 U.S. patents.
After retiring in 2007, he based Kalsi Inexperienced Energy Techniques, a consulting firm in Princeton, N.J. As a marketing consultant, he helped authorities and personal purchasers design massive superconducting turbines and motors for wind generators, ship propulsion, transformers, fault present limiters, and magnet techniques.
Kalsi authored the e-book Purposes of Excessive Temperature Superconductors to Electrical Energy Gear, launched in 2011.
He was energetic with the IEEE Princeton Central Jersey Part for a few years and was elevated to IEEE Fellow in 2013 for “the event and software of high-temperature superconductor electrical energy tools.”
Retaining the legacy alive
Since IEEE Academic Actions launched EPICS in IEEE in 2009, greater than 12,000 college students from 39 international locations have participated in service-learning tasks. EPICS gives pupil groups with as much as US $10,000 in funding, together with sources and mentorship, for tasks targeted on 4 key areas of group enchancment: schooling and outreach; the surroundings; entry and talents; and human providers.
The Kalsi household made the one largest pledge within the EPICS program’s historical past, in accordance with Karen Galuchie, the IEEE Basis’s government director.
The IEEE Basis “couldn’t be prouder or extra excited to ascertain the brand new EPICS in IEEE Dr. Swarn S. Kalsi Group of Tasks fund,” says Marko Delimar, 2025 president of the Basis. “It should acknowledge each Kalsi’s excellent and indelible contributions to our {industry} all through his famend profession, in addition to encourage and assist ongoing innovation by future generations.”
Jamie Moesch, managing director of IEEE Academic Actions, is grateful as nicely, saying, “Because of the Kalsi household’s unbelievable generosity, we will present long-term assist for service-learning tasks for years to return, additional empowering the following era of engineers to advance know-how for humanity.”
Former Kalsi colleagues and mentees have contributed to the fund. James Storey, a senior scientist on the Robinson Analysis Institute in Decrease Hutt, New Zealand, helps the fund, for instance. He labored with Kalsi on a superconducting venture.
“Swarn was the crew’s most beneficial collaborator, informing our superconducting motor analysis applications for greater than a decade,” Storey says. “I knew him as—in addition to being extremely educated—a really variety, beneficiant, and hospitable individual. It was a real privilege to have the ability to study from him.”
Set up a memorial fund
The IEEE Basis companions with IEEE teams and the households of IEEE members to create memorial funds, which pay tribute to relations, buddies, colleagues, lecturers, professors, college students, and others. Any such tribute honors somebody whereas supporting future generations of engineers and celebrating innovation.
“The creation of the brand new EPICS in IEEE Dr. Swarn S. Kalsi Group of Tasks fund is a phenomenal instance of how an IEEE member’s impression can lengthen nicely past their lifetime,” Galuchie says. “On this case, Kalsi’s household memorialized and supported his deep connection to IEEE and to the worth of schooling by persevering with his legacy by means of his skilled house.
“Via the worldwide, hands-on, instructional alternatives this program affords to assist advance know-how for the good thing about humanity, EPICS in IEEE was an ideal match for Kalsi’s ardour, and we’re so grateful to the Kalsi household for his or her beneficiant and enduring reward.”
For extra info on the fund or to donate to the initiative, go to its web page on the IEEE Basis web site. To study extra about memorial and tribute funds, go to this web page.
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