Harjit Birdi has been captivated by energy systems since he was a child in India. His father was an official at the State Electricity Board. When the power went down, his dad’s job was to race through town with a crew to find the source of the fault. Despite his mother’s worries, Birdi demanded that his father take him along on his emergency expeditions. A few years later, when it was time to choose his college major, the choice was obvious. “Electrical engineering fascinated me, because energy is something you can’t see,” he says. “You can’t see those electrons.