Mentor Monday is dedicated to the many EcoCAR sponsors that provide valuable time and insight to the teams through mentoring. This week, we are featuring a mentor from dSPACE, a platinum EcoCAR sponsor providing Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) support to 8 of the 17 EcoCAR teams – including The Ohio State University team which placed first in the HIL event at the Winter Workshop.
Shreyas Nagaraj is an applications engineer at dSPACE responsible for providing support and engineering services to engineers working on HIL simulation at General Motors. His interests include: test automation, plant modeling, vehicle dynamics, and developing new products that will assist engineers in testing and validating various electronic control units. Shreyas has been a mentor to The Ohio State University since the EcoCAR Challenge kick-off in 2008.
“EcoCAR has given me the opportunity to relive my college days. Working with students who are dealing with real world problems and coming up with new ideas to solve them is very exciting and rewarding. Great ideas are born through the EcoCAR program that could someday revolutionize the cars we drive. Serving as a mentor to such an innovative, creative and motivated team gives me great personal satisfaction and makes my job even more interesting.”
Shreyas Nagaraj working with students from the OSU EcoCAR team
You’re going to have to wait one more week to find out! We will be announcing the first, second and third place Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) and Web site winners on February 3rd. HIL is a rapid control system testing technology that will help bring the students’ vehicle designs from concept to the road. Check in at noon ET to see which teams took the top spots at the Winter Workshop. 
