This Senior Member Solves Complex Product Lifecycle Challenges

What do an instinct to fix things and the 1999 global panic over whether computers would survive the date change to 2000, known as the Y2K bug, have in common? Both helped shape IEEE Senior Member Ajay Prasad’s career.Prasad is an industry process director at Dassault Systèmes in Detroit. His focus is global oversight of industry process experts specializing in Enovia, a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution and one of the company’s flagship products.Ajay Prasad Employer Dassault Systèmes in DetroitTitle Industry process directorMember grade Senior memberAlma maters Bangalore University, in Bengaluru, India; and the University of Birmingham, EnglandAs a child growing up in Bangalore, India, his curiosity to build real-world solutions was ignited by his father, a mechanical engineer. Prasad’s father often fixed things around the house, including cars and bicycles. His ability to take something broken and return it to working order laid the groundwork for his son’s career in engineering.Prasad was in his final year of undergraduate studies when the Y2K panic hit its peak.“Nobody knew what would happen when the year turned to 2000,” he says, “and it was almost projected like the end of the world was coming.”The phenomenon left him with the desire to fix computer problems, but he wasn’t sure how he would go about it, as he had no background in computer science.As it turned out, computer systems didn’t crash when the 1900s ended. The world did not end on Jan. 1, 2000, and neither did his interest in how computers worked.The consulting pivot that changed his careerPrasad graduated in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and management from the RV College of Engineering, in Bengaluru. It was at a time when tech companies were heavily recruiting engineers, regardless of their specialization.“They were mainly looking for problem-solving skills,” Prasad says.His parents expected him to immediately enroll in a master’s degree program, he says, but a jo