Siddhant “Sid” Joshi: Applying systems thinking to study how engineers address real-world complex problems

Growing up in Pune, India—a city known for its educational excellence—Sid was inspired by both his parents, who are engineers, to explore how technology can improve lives. Fascinated from a young age by machines and motivated to understand how they can make the lives of people easier, Sid studied mechanical engineering that blended hands-on problem-solving with social impact. Later, he moved to the US where he completed his master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Purdue University. During his masters in 2019, he joined Purdue ENE as a research assistant where he explored how engineering education connects to student attrition and how engineering education research can be made more accessible to faculty and educators on the Purdue campus.

Drawn by ENE's inclusive and collaborative culture, after completing his master’s in 2020, he began his PhD in Engineering Education. “The culture here is really unique—supportive, inclusive, and community-driven. It’s a place where I feel my voice is valued, even as an international student far from home,” Sid said.

Over the course of his PhD, working closely with his advisor Dr. Kirsten Davis, Sid collaborated across various at departments—including ECE, School of Languages & Culture, and College of Education—to conduct impactful interdisciplinary research on systems thinking. This interdisciplinary research also opened opportunities for him to acquire teaching experiences at K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels in STEM fields. Driven by insights from his research and teaching experiences, in his dissertation, Sid studied how practicing engineers from various engineering disciplines apply systems thinking while addressing complex problems. Specifically, he explored how emotions of engineers can facilitate better systems thinking and prompt integration of technical and social dimensions during problem solving. His work led him to develop scenarios that will help assess key workplace readiness skills of systems thinking, emotional competence, and decision-making in engineering students and early career engineers.

After graduation, Sid took a position with Boston College as a Core Fellow-Visiting Assistant Professor of Engineering. In that role, he continues to research and teach complex problem solving to the budding generation of students.