My Story
My name is Shaan Narayan, and I am a senior at Duke University in the Pratt School of Engineering. Despite growing up on the wrong side of Tobacco Road, Chapel Hill, I was an avid Duke Basketball fan. This put Duke on my radar, but as I took on the daunting task of selecting where I wanted to pursue higher education, I realized it was much more than a basketball school. When I took my first Duke tour, I saw how passionate everyone was about whatever they were doing. I saw myself succeeding in this environment, surrounded by intelligent, driven, and caring peers and facility. Additionally, Duke’s emphasis on interdisciplinary team-based opportunities, its collaborative reputation, and the immense networking, research, and growth resources they provide, made it my dream school.
Currently, I am pursuing a major in mechanical engineering, a minor in computer science, and a certificate in innovation and entrepreneurship. These will help shape me into a well-rounded problem solver, team member, and individual. The multifaceted subject of innovation and entrepreneurship, combined with my technical coursework, allows me to develop soft and hard skills that will become invaluable to whatever industry I pursue. While my innovation and entrepreneurship classes will surely help me if I try to start my own company, I believe an entrepreneurial mindset and the communication and critical thinking skills I have learned, will also help me in any setting.
Outside of classes, Duke also provides the means for me to innovate through clubs, internship experiences, and as a hobby. At Duke, I have participated in HackDuke, a 24-hour hackathon where my team had to develop, present, and defend a product. Our team created the SmartCoaster: an electronic water bottle coaster that could send hydration reminders by text to a user. The SmartCoaster was incredibly successful, winning three awards and raising $400 for charity. In addition to the SmartCoaster, I have been designing a one-pound combat robot to compete in local competitions. This project allowed me to spend hours innovating in the Foundry, one of Duke’s maker spaces. In our end-of-semester competition at Duke, our robot took first place.
These projects have also paved the way for me to pursue larger opportunities, such as spending the past two summers at Sierra Space, an upcoming disruptive company in the aerospace industry. I have been working to develop creative solutions for commercial space flight while working in an incredibly dynamic work environment. Through these experiences, I have learned how to work on a team to develop a product going through a design process, the importance of viewing situations as problems in an open-ended manner to yield the most creative solution, and the importance of communication, flexibility, and interdisciplinary work.
Outside of my professional and academic pursuits, you can find me playing ultimate frisbee, traveling, playing board and card games, or spending time with my family, friends, and dog. All these activities allow me to do what I love most: building connections with the people I care about. I am very proud of my multicultural background. My family comes from Guyana, Trinidad, and India, and I was born and raised in America. This variety of cultural experiences and the stories I hear from my family have allowed me the opportunities I have today and made me who I am. I hope to have a similar impact on future generations.
Right now, my career objectives entail developing solutions for human spaceflight. I am interested in designing products that people use in unique and challenging environments. However, within this endeavor, my past experiences have taught me how much I value working on collaborative teams in an innovative and fast-paced environment.