When Divya Pratap was growing up, he lived in a small, rural village where books were so scarce that they were shared. “I had no idea that I would be where I am today,” he thinks, smiling a little. “If you had told me that I would become an entrepreneur and a philanthropist, I’m not sure that I would have believed you. Yet, here I am today, working as a research and development supply chain technologist. It’s a very different world from what I grew up in.”

His background has given Pratap special insight into the importance of technological advancement and active education. Striving to provide both an example to follow as well as lessons and encouragement to those in school, his driving ambition is to inspire people to grow in their passion and pursuit of the STEM fields. Pratap says, “ Being a part of multiple technology consortiums, being an active K-12 volunteer, helping to motivate people about STEM, and creating events to socialize technology are all lifelong passions of mine.”

Currently, Pratap is following his passion for technology through his job. He enjoys developing a new ecosystem per requirements of next-generation products and bench-marking emerging technology in the industry. As one of the sharpest minds in the tech industry, he is at the forefront, leading the direction the rest of the industry will follow. His future plans are to create unique optical products, completely changing the hardware landscape of technology used on a daily basis.

His expertise has not gone unnoticed. Divya Pratap was nominated as a senior member of IEEE due to his recognized contributions to the welfare of the scientific or engineering profession. His research has a direct impact on the tech industry. His contributions in the engineering field have enabled self-driving cars to observe the world with a continuous 360 degrees of visibility, through novel optical products. Data centers are exponentially expanding & to support this growth infrastructure and manufacturing capability needs to be developed.  Optics and optical manufacturing is a very advanced and complex field—GEO’s like China are generations ahead in building products compared to US-based peer competitors. With changing tariffs and business policies, it is now necessary to bring manufacturing capability within the US. This would not only help the US rebuild the leadership in optical communication technologies but also help in creating new jobs. High-speed optical interconnects design and manufacturing is the next big thing in the data center industry.

As a senior leader in the tech industry, Divya is exposed to trends in his industry. With semiconductor trade organizations making predictions that the chip sales will grow exponentially to over 5% in the near term, reaching almost $500 billion in revenue, he knows that there is ample opportunity for the industry to grow and bright new minds to enter and innovate. 

Divya cares about those minds. He would like to use both his position as a senior leader in the tech world to guide the younger generation to the industry. Helping them to learn from his mistakes, rather than just making their own, is just as important for Pratap as his own vision for creating unique optical products. He wants them to learn from his life of overcoming obstacles, beating the odds, and landing himself where he dreamed, including his numerous setbacks, failed ideas, and critics. The only thing that kept him going sometimes was his vision for his life (to be a leading tech innovator and creator) and the world around him (to embrace and pursue the STEM fields and reach intellectual potential).

Pratap wants to show the new generation that these failures and setbacks weren’t without their benefits. Like all innovators, Pratap chose to learn from every experience he had, using it to make him better equipped for the future. His advice is to “choose to appreciate failure and learn from your success. Failures and successes happen for a reason.” In fact, he says that failures and mistakes are crucial to success. Comparing them to paint, he says, “Failure is the primer to success. Without primer paint doesn’t hold up. Without failure, success won’t last or stick, because you won’t have the lessons and experiences to keep you there. If you can keep that in mind, your work and endeavors will feel much less stressful, and you’ll be able to put them and your life in the proper perspective.”