Dr Soujanya Mantravadi

Qualifications: B.Tech. (mechanical engineering), M.S. (Eng.), PhD (Eng.), AFHEA

Soujanya has a PhD in Operations management and information systems with her thesis titled, Enabling the Smart Factory with Industrial Internet of Things-connected MES/MOM. She has worked closely with industry leaders such as LEGO, Arla, and Danfoss, applying Industry 4.0 principles to factory operations and supply chain challenges. Her research combines qualitative and quantitative methods, mainly within a design science framework. 

She has masters from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm and has about five years of international work experience in industry and consulting, before PhD. 

Soujanya is an elected committee member of Postdocs of Cambridge Society, which represents over 4000 early-career researchers at the University. She is affiliated to Lucy Cavendish College. She is also involved in teaching activities at Cambridge Judge Business School and IfM’s exec-ed/industry training programs.

Research interests:

Soujanya is passionate about leveraging data and implementing enterprise information systems that draw on stakeholder input to apply IoT and AI solutions. She is interested in evidence synthesis, engineering design experiments, participatory research and developing and evaluating interventions for complex problems, by collaborating with interdisciplinary teams to drive improvements at both operational and policy levels.

Over the years, her research has received funding from the Swiss Innovation Agency, Innovation Fund Denmark, UKRI, and the European Research Council. She also received individual grants from philanthropic sources such as the Otto Mønsted Foundation and from the University of Cambridge Carers Scheme, West Hub for her research and public engagement initiatives.

Her postdoctoral projects focus on socially responsible innovation (EU Horizon) and food security (UKRI), where she uses reviews, field studies, focus groups, and quantitative methods such as surveys to study technology management for sustainability and public health outcomes via systems thinking approach. She is a visiting researcher at Aalborg University, Denmark.

Work experience:

• 2018–21: Research assistant, Manufacturing Academy of Denmark (Aalborg University)
• 2015–18: Research analyst, Mordor Intelligence - Startup (Hyderabad, India)  
• 2014–15: Trainee, Paul Scherrer Institut - ETH Domain (Zurich region, Switzerland)        
• 2014: Master thesis intern, Alstom corporate headquarters (Paris, France)
• 2011–12: Technical center engineer, Amada Co (Bangalore, India)

Outside of work, she is passionate about climate change and had a volunteering streak since high school with think tanks and environmental groups.

Full and up to date publication list: https://scholar.google.dk/citations?user=RXhhd_4AAAAJ&hl=en