TUM Community

Even as a student, he took on responsibilities for the TUM Community. He conducted interviews for the website of TUM and organized events. After graduating, he remained involved, first as a member of the Alumni Committee, then as its president. When the first official TUM Alumni Chapter was founded in Singapore, he gladly took on the role of director to further strengthen the alumni network. Because TUM Asia has been in Singapore for more than 20 years, it is firmly rooted there. The newly founded chapter helps to further institutionalize and support the exchange between alumni.

HOW THE ALUMNI CHAPTER MAKES ARRIVING EASIER

With the alumni meetings, Rakesh Kumar wants to create spaces where former students of TUM and TUM Asia can get to know each other and exchange ideas in a relaxed atmosphere. “The network here is quite strong and diverse, consisting of graduates who studied in Munich and Singapore,” he says. In addition to professional networking, the network makes it particularly easy to establish contacts, especially when you are new to Singapore.

That’s why Rakesh Kumar organizes several fun meetings each quarter. For example, the alumni have gone bowling together and had a barbecue on the beach. In the future, he would also like to plan meetings that focus on sustainability. “I think it would be nice, for example, if we cleaned up a section of the beach together or planted trees together,” he says.

The connection between alumni and current TUM students is also important to him. That is why the TUM Community in Singapore organizes exchange sessions, among other things, where students can ask industry experts questions about their respective technical areas of expertise.

A MASTER’S DEGREE WITH LOCAL ADVANTAGES

Rakesh Kumar himself says that the Master’s degree in Green Electronics, with its focus on sustainable technology and nanotechnology, prepared him perfectly for his job in industry – not least because of the wealth of practical experience it offered. He particularly appreciated the close links to teaching at TUM in Munich, as professors from Munich regularly travel to Singapore to teach.

For him, the campus in Singapore, in the midst of the booming semiconductor industry, offers a major location advantage if you want to pursue a career in industry later on: “It’s easy to find suitable internships during your studies or to write your thesis at a company. Then you already have one foot in the door.” He is also certain that TUM Asia’s good reputation helped him land his coveted job as a senior silicon design engineer at chip company AMD. “TUM stands for quality that you can be relied upon in the industry.”

A FAST-GROWING ENVIRONMENT

In his job, he works at the interface between business and research. “I have to think about what expectations the respective customers have of the product—and then code,” he explains. Finally, he tests the product and checks whether it meets the customer’s needs. It helps that he himself worked with AMD semiconductors as a customer in a previous job in industry—so he knows the other side.

Arriving in Singapore was easy for Rakesh Kumar. “Singapore is a very hospitable city,” he says. With its fast pace and love of technology, the metropolis reminds him of his Indian hometown of Bangalore. To balance out his job, he has found many small routines that do him good. In the mornings, he meditates and does yoga, and in the evenings, he enjoys cooking and taking walks at night. “That’s when I can best think about the next steps I want to take – in my work and in my life.”