Hi. I'm Vinushika Panchalogaranjan, and I'm basically from Sri Lanka, northern part of Sri Lanka. And I'm doing my Ph.D. in electrical power engineering at University of Oklahoma. And I did my bachelor's. And after that I joined my campus as an instructor, and I worked there for two years before joining OU. So this is my first year.

I came here this January during the pandemic so I'm looking forward to doing my research. We are family of four. So I have one younger sister and my parents, of course, me. So family of four. And my both my parents are working well working parents. And so my dad was working in administration and my mom is a teacher, so they know they go to work.

Luckily, my whole families a joined family. My dad's younger sister was living with us, so she was the one you know taking care of us during the our childhood. So she was like another mother for us. But luckily someone was there, so we never felt alone during our childhood, even if your parents were working. But other thing is other we had a type, a civil war for 30 years actually.

So we ended this 2008 or ninth So actually all of my childhood was actually, you know, part of the Civil War was a part of our childhood. And I don't even know whenever I turned one or two in middle of, you know, one and half years, I had to experience a displacement and we had to go from we had to leave, stay with our relations for three months.

Far away from your home. And that was hard for parents and relations. But for me, I was a child. I was a small child. So I was having fun. So I was having you know I was exploring the place over there and for me, it was fun. But yeah, it was a dark time in the northern part of Sri Lanka.

I used to have some crazy experience during my childhood. So even during the displacement period, we have well every house has well. So you can get your own world water and it's an underground, underground water. So you have like 15 to 20 feet deep and for the protection they will have some two to three feet wall around that.

And for so this was when you are one or two, you cannot, you know, see what's inside. So you had to jump over there and you had to look inside. So for my safety, they built a fence fence over there so it would be around five to six feet, I guess so, so that I won't, you know, climb up inside but I was I was not set.

I was I did not like what they did. And I was like, oh, I guess no one was there to, you know, take care of me. So I just ran over there and I just climbed on the fence because I wanted to see what's inside. So I would just half my body was like facing the well. And it's just a few seconds.

If no one had seen me, I would have been inside of it. But I don't think I don't I would have died because someone would have come and saved me. I don't know how it is here, over here. But getting into a good school is highly competitive over there. So even for a five years old, you go to face an interview you and it's like, you know, seperating the colors and something like that.

But it was so you, my parents, they would have aplied for several schools. And but of course, you would expect to get into the best school of your hometown. So you you will you will always expect to get no get into the best school. So whenever you turn ten years old that, whenever you finish school in primary schooling, you have a national level exam that is for scholarship because the parents are poor parents.

So they cannot afford to teach their students. So government would provide money. So the main purpose was to, you know, the scholarship, uh, giving, providing scholarships for that underprivileged students. But, as the time goes on it was like a competitive exam. And if whenever if you pass that exam or you will get into, you know, a best school I got in there and then the middle school will be like, yeah, you just, you just go.

And then when you to finish your middle schooling, then again you have one national level exam and that exam will decide you whether you are going to do high schooling or not. You have to get a basic results in order to you. You do you a high schooling. So if you couldn't get in then you have you done takes several attempts and to do you higher study high schooling.

So that is another competitive exam and if you pass that then you'll choose your field or whatever your field and then go on and do your high schooling. And again, in high schooling you canot depend only on this school education. You have to go to tuition centers as well because it is highly competitive and to teach math, physics and chemistry not everyone can you know, even not everyone can teach in a way that you understand.

So you have so few competitive teachers around your hometown and you go to them in addition to the schooling. So you will go there and study and you have to work hard. And then do you find that high schooling for high school exam and then you have to be in a certain ranking in national? National. wide you have to be in a certain ranking in order to get into engineering or whatever the field you want to be?

So engineering is the first first choice, so you should be in actually national, wide You should be 1500 or something in order to get into engineering. So that's another and you know competitive exam and I don't know what it is a bit rough education system, I guess, which I don't like too much. At the same time, I like it because it is easy over here to do my courses.

So I don't have hard time following courses here because of that I guess. Yeah. Look at our campus is located in the northern part of Sri Lanka intended abundance of renewable energies like solar and wind. So that period actually they were starting to integrate, you know, renewable energy sources to our existing grid. So as a campus academy there was a professor, he's actually one of the best professors in Sri Lanka in power systems.

So so because of him, we got the several projects to integrate or build a power plant consisting of solar and wind. So we were part of that too. So we got we got the opportunity to know work on those kind of researches. And he used to tell us stories like when he talked, you will be like you think like, okay, I want to do that.

He'll convinced you that you will do that. So that's so he's a good politician. I can say that. So that's how it started. So I started it as a group. We had a group, research group, so we started thinking about that and we started working on this. solar we started getting to know about these solar and wind energy and we had that how to say, and it's a clean energy, right?

So the main, main, uh, goal is to, you know, did a get the whole system as a clean energy and affordable energy source, right? So this is one of the sustainable development, uh, sustainable development goals of United Nations. So we had that to improve the renewable energy integration to the grid. So we had that foresight to I don't know, maybe, I don't know how it came into, you know, our system, but we had the foresight say to, you know, that we should contribute something good to the society.

So this is one of the best ways to do that, right? Yeah. If you do some research on that, you are going to, you know, give something a clean and affordable to the society. And for your next generation, it will be like you can provide a good environment to the next generation and like not like, you know, this polluter, just not like this polluted Earth.

So we had that in your mind then as we told you, one the professors from US used to come down and have some classes for us too. So they encouraged us and they showed this. path that you can you can do that. They're opportunities over there. You can come down and do your research because in Sri Lanka, this Higher educathion is not that we do not have opportunities to do your high education in Sri Lanka.

So you have to go abroad and you do that. So and I know that doing a PHD in US is different from any other countries doing PHD from any of the universities because we had to spend nearly four to five years we had finished MSE and then your PHD so that means you are going to spend three to four concrete years and you have so much of funding needs of so much of exposure over here.

So I was like, okay, let me do that I just everything started here. My research group is like an it's a National Science Foundation funded project like sustainable infrastructure development in Oklahoma State during the extra to withstand the extreme weather conditions. So it's like for us, it's like developing a resilient power system, grid to the extreme weather conditions.

I was not there during this ice storm, so I was, uh, I, I came here in just January, so I know they started this project. It was, it was not the plan to have a study on the ice storm, but it happened, So it is a good study to do so they just thought of doing some study case study on this ice storm and see what the results we get.

And that will help, you know, the Wenever the next time it happens. Those results and those solutions will help improving the situation. So I was an Oklahoma electric cooperative, I guess OEC they were helping us providing their data during the ice storm and the, you know, simulation model of the uh, their territory power grids. So we were working on that and we just we, we got to get some good, uh, as results out of it.

And we were planning to publish that. So I have a disk at Devon Energy Hall forth floor, so we have a graduate space now. I've been studying as I told. Yeah, I've been studying to know what is that ice storm. So we had that windmill that means windmills, the software that I've been using to analyze that. So that one window, so I have three monitors.

So one monitor is have that actually that model and one monitor you have my research papers and then at the end the final one will have the course work. So i just parallel do everything Whenever I feel like doing coursework, I would just turn there and I would do that. I feel like doing the research. I would do that.

That's what I do. Not much. And during the spring semester in summer, um, we didn't get to come here. My, just my, and my professor was like flexible with us because it's this pandemic. So they were like, he was like, you can stay home and work. So most of the time I just work home but not I have classes only I come here.

But this monster, I've been working all day here, so I just attend the classes whenever they have to go to the classes, then I just pretty much work in the desk. That's it. I do. But the thing is, I have not specified my specialization that means I have not specified my Ph.D. research. So now it's like I feel like it's a little relaxed.

Then I'm going to be in the future. So I'm really excited that how I'm going to do and what I'm going to do because I don't even know what I'm going to do it. So it's exciting for me, as said and it's I know it will be more crazier than it is in the future. Now I am cooking.

I never cooked at home. I never even fried an egg in Sri Lanka. So but I can say I'm doing a very good job cooking. So I started cooking just from this January actually. So it's been nine months of cooking for me. No, nine, not ten months of cooking for me. You know, I don't know any kind of recipes.

I call my mom and ask for the Sri Lankan recipes. And in other words, just I'll go through the YouTube and just find the recipes and cook. But it never went wrong for me. I guess. So I'm doing good job, but so it's fun. It is. You know, I don't even know how it's going to come out because I never cooked so I do cooking and I listen to music a lot now.

So that's what I do. And I have a good roommate with me. So we used to hang out a lot and eat food. I'm a very big foodie, so I like trying every kind of food. So we used to go out and eat good food and just roam around and come home. That's what I've been doing nowadays. Yeah.

Yeah, I know you talked about reminiscing my stories. I just missed drawing, because it's been more than 7 to 8 years since I, you know, made an art piece, but I did during the pandemic. But it is not that much. Maybe I don't know, like turn three or four. I started drawing because my mom was good at drawing so. She used to sometimes teach the students.

She's a middle school teacher and she taught social science, but some whenever she has free time. She, you know, she teaches art aswell so I used to look after her and I started drawing on my own and I just look into the, you know, the art pieces and just copy that and try to paint it. And I do that a lot.

That's how it started. And I don't know, I come from school. I would just if I looked at something, I look some beautiful things. I would just think in my mind and I want to draw and see what comes out from my mind. I have plans that I always have plans that I have to help my campus in any way, whether I am my six year.

I stay at that place, that campus area, for six years, and that was like a second home for me. So it taught me a lot. So as a person, I grew up from there because till you finish your high school, you're in the shelter of your parents, right? So you that's how it was there. So you, your dad will be the one who guides you and wherever you go he'll come with you so that campus life was the one, which taught me a lot as a person, as an academic, whatever it is.

So I want to do something for that so earlier I had plans to go back and join as an academic, but I have some doubts that whether I can be a good academic for my personality you should be. I don't know whether it is much for my personality, but oh, for now, I don't I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm sure that I want to do something for my campus

But I don't know whether I'm going back or staying here. I don't know. I'm just curious to know what I'm going to do. Yeah. I'm also curious to know that for this activity, you guys are going to assemble a horizontal axis wind turbine. So wind turbine is something which is used to convert winds kinetic energy into electrical energy.

To convert it into electrical energy. That machine acts as a generators because it generates power. It generates electrical power. So that's when we call it a generator. So there are two main types of wind turbines. One is horizontal, like this wind turbine, and another one is vertical axis wind turbine. So vertical axis wind turbine means the axis is vertical.

In it rotates around the vertical axis. And this is actually a horizontal axis wind turbine. And this horizontal axis wind turbine is considered to be more efficient in a big scale. So you can see when you observe the wind turbines, you can see mostly every wind turbine is horizontal like axis because it is more efficient. Of course, the efficiency of the wind turbine, that means how much power it absorbs depends on several factors.

So one is like the shape of the wind turbine blades, a number of blades and the pitch angle that means which angle that turbine is placed or turbine blades are placed. So here in this activity, you are going to change the shape of the blade and you are going to make different shapes and replace it and check, uh, check the voltage and see which shape of the blade is more efficient.

The material of the turbine blade also affects the efficiency of efficiency of the wind turbine. So here you will be given with different materials so you can make the blade, you can, uh, design the blades with different materials. So next thing is you will be changing the number of blades and check the voltage to see which a what number is more efficient in order to get the maximum power out of it.

So you can also measure this, uh, voltage comes out from this two ends using multimeter. That's it with this session. And thank you so much for listening to me and I just wish you very good luck and hope you have a wonderful future ahead and Nanri Vannakkan