Design Process

Sangarappillai Sivaloganathan was a curriculum-based engineer, like most of the contemporary engineering graduates. He graduated as a mechanical engineer from the University of Sri Lanka in 1976. The young man who until his mid-teens spent his life with bulls, bullock carts and a rackety bicycle went for training in the casting, forging, machining and millwright shops of the Sri Lankan Railways. Following this, after working in the Sri Lankan Cement Industry, Siva joined the University of Aston in Birmingham and obtained his Master's in Production Technology in 1982. Birmingham, which housed a third of the British Industry at that time, had a major impact in Siva's life. Siva returned to Sri Lanka and became the commissioning engineer and later the operations manager for Lanka Cement Ltd. He Joined City University, London in 1985 and obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering 1991. During this time, he joined the activities of the EPSRC Engineering Design Centre and later became the centre's Senior Research Assistant. He joined Brunel University in 1995 as a faculty member and continued to work there until he moved to the United Arab Emirates University in 2011. During his stay at Brunel University, he has supervised 9 PhDs, published more than 60 papers in reputed journals and conferences, and convened and functioned as chair for two international conferences in Design. He was the founding course director for the Successful MSc program in Advanced Engineering Design. Dr Siva moved to United Arab Emirates University in 2011. As the program coordinator he restructured the struggling Master of Engineering Management program. He teaches Product Development in the program from the time he joined UAEU. He presented his teaching philosophy to the ASEE annual conference in 2014 and got the best paper award in the Engineering Management division.