Mangalore: Commemorating the Nineteenth Anniversary of laying the foundation stone of St Joseph Engineering College (SJEC), the Ninth Annual Foundation Day Lecture was held  at  Prerana Auditorium of the college. Deepak Gadhia, a Social Entrepreneur and Chairman of Sunrise CSP India Pvt Ltd, delivered the Foundation Day Lecture on the topic “Evolution of Solar Concentrator: Journey of Social Entrepreneur in Innovations in Solar Energy”.

In his lecture, Deepak Gadhia shared the challenges involved in the life journey of an entrepreneur. While saying an individual can achieve anything with limited opportunities, he remarked that an engineer's job is to solve problems rather than look for readymade solutions.

He recalled his days when he started to work on problems of deforestation in India and from his experiences, over the years he realized that any solution must always be need-based.

The guest speaker said opined that the people who really in need of a commodity are usually the ones who cannot afford it. He also shared the difficulties he went through with his inventions and the measures he had to take to overcome them.

Deepak Gadhia called upon all teachers to just showthe problem to the students and let students solve them applying their own skills. He compared our minds to a parachute that works only when it is open and requested the teachers to find a way to open the minds of their students. He wishedthat the gatheringcould work on solving the problems of the rural people and to empower them. He also mentioned that when an entrepreneur develops a product, the poor and the needy must be able to afford that product.

Rev. Fr Wilfred Prakash D’Souza, Director of SJEC, Rev. Fr Rohith D’Costa, Assistant Director, Dr Rio D’Souza, Principal,Mr Rakesh Lobo, HR Manager, were present during the occasion. Dr Rajesh Kumar PC, Associate Professor in the Department of Physics moderated the lecture. Ms Supreetha R, Assistant Professor in the Department of CSE, was the Convener of the event. Ms Eden Sequeira, compeered the program.

The day also witnessed SJEC felicitating Ms Mahima S Rao for securing the First Rank in Civil Engineering and a record tally of 13 gold medals for the academic year 2018-19 in the University Examinations conducted by VTU, Belagavi.

 Mahima was facilitated by the management of the college in the presence of her parents  Sathya Sai and Shreedevi S Rao.