The world has become much more accessible to us, thanks to technologies that are making international travel safe and seamless!

Nipun Sharma (PhD), our next pathbreaker, works as Engineering Manager at HID (France), a company that secures the world with different products whether they are passports, identity documents, biometrics or door locks.

Nipun talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about the role of photonics and optical technologies in powering the “state of the art” security features in travel documents.

For students, lasers and their applications have positively impacted our society in a myriad of ways, through innovations in the fields of healthcare, manufacturing and digital security to name a few.

Nipun, Can you share your background with our young readers? 

Sure !

Iam an Engineering Manager at one of the multinational firms in the  security industry, and work around the globe producing identity documents for governments. I identify the next-generation security features inside identity documents securing the world for seamless  travel. I hold a PhD degree in Optics and Photonics from Université de Lyon, France and a PMP certification from PMI, with around 8+ years of international experience (Asia, and Europe) in an industrial environment with around 10 patents.  

 I was born in Delhi, India where I spent my first initial years in the capital itself. I  was not brilliant in my studies, but used to get average grades until 10th standard.  My journey started when I chose to opt for Science in my XIth standards thinking  that as I had scored well in my Xth, I would do well in future also. But that was not the case as I didn’t understand how physics and chemistry worked. I even flunked my physics final examination for the XIth standard for which I had to take a re-examination to move to XIIth grade. Despite this setback, I chose not to opt for any extra lessons/courses to upskill my two subjects where I was weaker but got through my XIIth grade somehow. The quest for learning something new made me choose to do a graduation and then a PhD in Physics.

What did you do for graduation/ post-graduation? 

I did my Bachelor’s from Delhi University (Physics), India, after which I went on to do a Masters in Physics at Symbiosis University in Pune. The admissions, at that time, were based on the last examination result, and so I was a bit lucky there.  In my Master’s, I asked my mentor to guide me in some ways so I could go abroad to strengthen my core subject for further research. She proposed  European universities where the individual universities don’t charge for PhD application fees. So I started filling out applications with my resume, cover letter,  and education transcripts and got through 3 programs, after which I selected a  PhD at the University of Lyon and Laboratoire Hubert Curien. 

Tell us, what were some of the influences that led you on the fascinating journey in Optics/Photonics?

The first influencers in my life are my parents. They never stopped me from pursuing my dreams even if it meant some extra burden financially for them.  Secondly, my thesis supervisor in my Master’s pushed me to apply for the Universities in Europe. I started shortlisting Universities via different online portals (FindaPhD, Researchgate etc..) and through direct websites followed by sending my respective documents. In my view, before my real professional journey into the corporate world, this was the beginning of my journey/career in the academic world.  

I would say, another important factor which persuaded me to opt for an  international career was my failure in XIth standard when I flunked the  Physics examination. This made me realise that if you opt not to back down after  your failures, you will make it big in your career. 

How did you plan the steps to get into the career you wanted? Or how did you  make a transition to a new career? Tell us about your career path 

After I finished my bachelor’s, I took a gap year to prepare for the Master’s entrance examination where I discussed with my professor for doing an R&D internship in the same period at Delhi University to get a glimpse of research, to which she agreed. The idea was to see if research interested me or not, if I wanted to pursue Physics at a higher level. After this, when I joined Symbiosis University for my Masters, we had to do a R&D project as a part of our thesis. Here I worked on Titanium dioxide nanomaterials for gas sensing applications which enhanced my research interests and made me curious to question things. This motivated me to apply for a PhD. So when I was searching for a PhD topic, it was on this similar nanomaterials topic. The topic of my PhD was to use lasers on these nanomaterials to make coloured images for identity documents in order to enhance their security. Here a combination of photonics and material science was used to develop an industrial application at Laboratoire Hubert Curien (affiliated with Univeristé de Lyon). In between, I was also lucky to pursue research opportunities at Université de Sherbrooke, Canada for a few months for using the same nanomaterials for photocatalytic applications. This opportunity also arose due to networking in one of the conferences I attended in the same period. The time I was about to finish my PhD thesis, I was lucky enough to transition into a new career. As my background was more in experimental Physics, one would have thought that I  would have moved to academia, but life had other plans. I got an opportunity internally, via my colleague, to consider an open position where she was working on identity documents and needed a person with a background in Optics and  Photonics. Usually transitioning from academia to industry is tricky, but with the right approach and strategy, one can chip in and showcase that academicians tend to learn faster, as they see failures quite often. So, my career path in short included taking Physics in my Bachelors and Masters in Indian Universities after which, as discussed above, I started looking abroad for PhD opportunities in Physics through different websites. I started a PhD in Optics and Photonics for securing identity documents using lasers.  

How did you get your first break? 

As discussed in the question above, my first break in an industry was provided by mere networking. One of my colleagues who was my senior started working in the industry which I am a part of now. She was working as a project manager in the same company in Paris and wanted to move to a different domain. Before leaving, she discussed if I was interested in project management at her company. Although the fields were different, I gave it a thought and discussed the opportunity with the hiring manager to understand the position and responsibilities. Once the first round of discussions was held, I was called on-site for a 2nd round of interviews, where I  discussed my professional experience along with future perspectives. After the  2nd round of interviews, I was called for a grandfather interview where the N+3  manager interviewed me, which was a bit on the informal side and a relaxing one.  After this interview, I had positive hopes for the selection and my transition from the academic world to the industry began. 

What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you address them? 

Challenges are more about individual perspective and I think each individual can assess different challenges according to his/her situation. So in my case, these were  the following challenges:

Foreign world: I flew to a foreign world for a professional life directly, and for the first few months, it was difficult to adapt to the culture, language and food. I decided to immerse myself in the same environment where I was working, which was the key to survival, rather than holding myself back. I think it is important to be an early adapter.  

Transitioning from an Academic to an Industrial environment: I had a strong academic background, where things work completely in contrast to an industrial world. Transitioning to an industrial world was a challenge, but I took it positively.  There was more pressure related to time constraints, and you had to work with certain goals which were not individualistic. In an academic environment, you work at  your own pace, but in an industry, things can be different. I tried to adapt myself according to industrial standards as soon as I started my first project. 

Changing environment: When you work in a big multinational company, you have  to be ready for changes and adapt to those changes. I enjoyed this challenge  personally as when changes occur in a company, either you adapt to those changes, or you crib and leave. I chose the first option and enjoyed it.  

Where do you work now?  

I work at HID which is a sister company of Assa Abloy. It is a company that secures the world with different products whether they are passports, identity documents,  biometrics, Airport Gates, or door locks to name a few. I work in the Citizen  Identity business where we are responsible for producing identity documents for governments.

What problems do you solve?

My role as an Engineering Manager is to build and plan new security features inside the documents along with Product Management to make them stronger and more difficult/impossible to forge. In lame words, when you go to  Airports, the immigration officer observes your passport in less than 10 seconds to see if it is a true document or not. My role is to make the life of an immigration officer easier by including strong security features inside these documents (passports) which are not observed by normal people but by trained officers. As I have a background in optics and photonics, it helps as documents are engraved using lasers and a lot of security features consist of optical phenomena. Here I work more on including and improving the physical aspects of the documents using optics and innovative materials which can be included inside the document. Then there is a software part of how we can authenticate the document using specific readers and gates. My job profile concerns more on the physical aspect of the document where I have the expertise in, while the other aspect is taken care by my colleagues from another business area in the same company.  

To give readers a global overview of how the process of a new document works, a government releases a tender. Companies like HID can apply to participate with their specifications that include how the document will look like, what security features will be embedded inside them and how a complete package will be delivered. Once a company wins the tender, they discuss together with the government how to build their documents. Here the work that I do is not country-specific, but open to any global organization (government) which wants a new document.

How does your work benefit society?  

Our work is vital for society to make travel easier and secure for people and government authorities. For you, it is just a passport for travelling, but for governments, this document should be strong enough to make the entry of any citizen in their country legitimate. The work that we do at HID makes sure that travelling becomes easy not just for the users (in this case people who are travelling), but also for the examiners who check these documents. 

Tell us an example of a specific memorable work you did that is very close to you!

One of the memorable works that I did was developing a security feature from scratch from an innovative idea that turned into a product after 3 years of development. This feature is now being used in one of the passports for the country of Bahrain where we are delivering secure credentials for the next few years to securely authenticate it and make it impossible to forge by fraudsters. This security feature was considered one of the best features of this document because it was easy to authenticate in less than 5 seconds. 

Your advice to students based on your experience? 

One of the important pieces of advice that I can share with students is that you can’t lose hope once you are out in the open world of competition. It’s hard to survive, but  this is life. The more you move forward in your life (personal or professional), the more stones will be thrown at you, but you have to make sure that you dodge them from time to time. In some cases, these stones will eventually hit you, and that is  completely normal, but you have to stand up again and move forward. Trust me, you will succeed eventually with patience and hard work.  

A second thought of advice is to eventually learn from mistakes. You will make  many mistakes in life, and it is normal. But when you make mistakes, try to  learn from them and improve. This will give you a push to do new things in life.  But try not to repeat the same mistakes and you will excel in what you do.  

Future Plans? 

It is a difficult question as I have many plans in life for now. But to give you a glimpse into my near future, I am looking to enhance my skills which can improve my professional capabilities. I started by taking a PMP examination which improved my project/program management skills, and now I  am looking to improve my skills in Artificial Intelligence in the management  domain. In the future, I will be looking to do an executive MBA, to enhance my  career.