Welcome to episode 32 of the Banal Podcast. In this special installment, we’re thrilled to dive into the innovative realm of FabLab Nepal with our esteemed guests, Pallab Shrestha(Technical Lead) and Shashank Dewan(Technical Officers). From the intricacies of mechanical design to the community-driven initiatives of FabLab, we cover it all. This conversation sheds light on the intersection of creativity, technology, and education in Nepal’s vibrant maker community.
In this episode, we take a journey through the corridors of innovation and machinery with Pallab Shrestha and Shashank Dewan. Our discussion orbits around FabLab Nepal's foundations, its powerful influence on local makers, and the synergies with Impact Hub Kathmandu. We navigate the challenges of operating a makerspace, celebrate the successes, and unearth the potent combo of design software and mechanical creativity.
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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Banal Podcast in 2024. In this episode, Pikam and Umesh have a chitchat about Umesh's recent trip to Nepal and rejuvenating the sluggish nature of the podcast release. This is a short episode to mark the comeback of The Banal Podcast.
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Welcome to this episode of the banal podcast. This week we are excited to bring a conversation with Urja Singh Thapa, a student in the Graduate Program in Economics Development at Vanderbilt University. We talk about economics as a discipline and what Urja’s experience has been so far in pursuing this degree. Overall this was a good conversation, we hope you will enjoy it.
All in all, this was a good conversation with a lot of interesting informative nuggets, and by our character a conversation about living as ex-pats on foreign soil. Thanks
#thebanalpodcast #nepalipodcast #theeconomist
Hello and Namaste,
Wishing a happy Tihar to all of you.
This week, we present a conversation with Swastik Bhandari, a Project Consultant at Civil and Environmental Consultants. Swastik got his master's degree in civil engineering with a focus on water resources from southern Illinois university Carbondale and is a professional engineer working as a consultant. In this episode, we discuss ins and outs of Civil engineering career in the US from Swastik's point of view, we hope you will enjoy it.
We start the conversation with chitchat about football and begin by introducing Swastik's job description. We talk about many aspects of civil engineering and career in the US. Probably the most informative nugget in this episode is about the fundamentals of engineering and the professional engineering certification that almost every civil engineering graduate in the US takes. While it is not mandatory, Swastik explains how having these certifications helped him with his career.
All in all, this was a good conversation with a lot of interesting informative nuggets, and by our character a conversation about living as ex-pats on foreign soil. Hope you will enjoy it. Thanks
#theengineer #thebanalpodcast #nepalipodcast #civilengineering #waterresourcesengineering #feexam #peexam #audiopodcast #videopodcast
We have been off for a month or two but now we are back with a new episode. We are pleased to bring you a conversation with Dr. Bal Krishna Bal, Associate Professor & Head of Department, Computer Science & Engineering, Kathmandu University (KU). Dr. Bal’s research focuses on natural language processing with local languages at the front and center, and over the years he has been leading the efforts on various projects related to that. This podcast is a summary and high-level overview of Dr. Bal’s Journey, his research as well as teaching and research at Kathmandu University. Hope you will enjoy it thanks.
This week, we are excited to bring you a conversation with Nabina Budathoki Magar. Nabina is a technical official at the Nepal Taekwondo Association as well as a former taekwondo player herself, 4th dan to be precise. Additionally, she is also a second-class national referee for Taekwondo. You should have guessed it by now, and yes this podcast is all about Taekwondo. We venture into many avenues of the sport as it relates to Nepal. Since Nepal is a powerhouse for Taekwondo in South Asia, it was valuable for us to delve into the world of Taekwondo in Nepal. We hope you will enjoy it.
We also bring you the personal story of Nabina and how the sport helped shape her. From being an official, getting ranked 4th dan, involving in NGOs like ECDC, being a technician for SAF games as well as organizing and referring for various local and national games, Nabina has done it all. To our pleasant surprise, she is also pursuing two Masters degrees. Holy moly, she is quite impressive, isn’t she?
We discuss various aspects of Taekwondo and its popularity in Nepal. There are various roadblocks to its development but the future is optimistic. We are really thankful to Nabina for her time and insights as well as hope that this episode will be helpful for you, the viewer.
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This week, we have brought you a conversation with Sudip Lama, Senior Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft. This podcast revolves around multiple aspects of software development like scaling, competitive programming, and managing software engineers to name a few. Sudip’s perspectives were really helpful to understand an insider's view of the industry. We hope you will enjoy it. Thanks.
We venture into many different aspects of software engineering like cloud computing and scaling among others. While software engineers are smart people, they are not the easiest of people to manage. So what does software engineering management at scale looks like? The answer is in the episode.
All in all, this is a fun and contentious episode, we also get into a debate on the ethics of benching and the big tech companies and whose role and responsibility it is to regulate the wild goose chase in software engineering? Follow the episode to find out.
PS: This is the first video uploaded on Spotify. Hope this brings an enjoyable experience.
For this episode of the podcast, we bring you a conversation with Dr. Rohan Benjankar, an associate professor of civil engineering at the Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville (SIUE), Illinois. Dr. Benjankar got his PhD from the University of Idaho and has been with SIUE since 2017. Apart from being a researcher/academic, Dr. Benjankar is also a big soccer enthusiast and used to play for the Friends Club during the nineties.
This conversation has three major segments: 1. General trends of civil engineering research/academics and Dr. Benjankar’s experience with it 2. Nepalse football and Dr. Benjankar’s journey in Nepalse football 3. Overall cultural trends in Nepali politics. The individual segments are timestamped, feel free to jump into the specific section of your interest.
We venture into many aspects of the aforementioned topics, like what was the Football scene like in Nepal during the 90s, what is a professor’s view of Nepalese graduate students and why do we struggle with research coming from Nepal. This episode is a fun one, we hope you will enjoy it.
This episode is a fun and interesting conversation with Mr. Yadav Prasad Kandel, a PhD candidate at the university of Rochester. Yadav’s research is in Quantum Computing and we dive into some aspects of his research as well as quantum computing as a whole in this episode. Yadav can be considered a Subject Matter Expert (SME) when it comes to quantum computing and we have many of our questions answered in the episode.
We start the episode by discussing the University of Rochester and Nepalese population in the University of Rochester. Then we dive into quantum computing, the overall research domain and current state of the art in quantum quantum computing. With the recent declaration of quantum supremacy by Google as well as research from big companies and Universities, the domain has evolved a lot in the recent decades and according to Yadav, we are in the vacuum tube stages of quantum computers.
We also discuss various application domains in which the power of quantum computers can be harnessed like drug discovery, cryptography etc.. among others. So, what are the different application domains of quantum computing? Follow along the episode to find more.
We also discuss certain aspects of education in Nepal, by habit if you will. What was studying physics in Nepal like, in which Yadav was a gold medalist. There are many aspects to criticize the Nepalese education system, but Yadav was such a positive force and his insights were unique and productive. Follow along the episode to find out more.
All in all, we found this conversation to be really valuable and we hope it brings the same level of utility to you. Thanks.
#entangled #thebanalpodcast #nepalipdocast #quantumcomputing #research #education #quantumresearch #qbit #qbitcontrol #nepalipodcaster #audiopodcast #videopodcast #nepaliresearcher
One year ago we started a journey and never knew that this journey would lead us to such interesting and intellectual people from Nepal. These are truly a blessing to our society and we would like to thank all of them for appearing in the Banal Podcast. This episode is kind of a reflection of our year in the grind and how the podcast has helped in our growth. We would like to take a moment to thank our circle of friends and family as without them, any of this wouldn’t be possible. Hopefully, next year will be even more exciting. Enjoy the episode. Thank you.
For this episode, we bring you a conversation with Dr. Dalim Kafle, MD, resident doctor at Illam Hospital Nepal. Dalim got his MBBS from lumbini medical college in Palpa and went ahead to pursue an MD in general medicine at the Patan Hospital.
We venture into many avenues of the medical profession like expectation vs reality in MBBS education in Nepal. The general state of the medical community in Nepal as well as some of the anecdotal experiences from the front lines of COVID fight in Nepal, of which Dalim served from the Patan Hospital.
All in all, this was a fun and interesting conversation. We hope you will enjoy it.
For this episode of the Podcast, we bring you a conversation with Sadikshya Karki, a senior sales executive at Innovate Tech Nepal. Previously, Sadikshya was involved with AIESEC (in Kathmandu University Chapter as well as AIESEC Nepal), an organization focused on fostering leadership qualities in youth. This podcast focuses on Sadikshya’s experience with AIESEC where she has worn several hats including the country president, local chapter president, head of business development.
So, what does the AIESEC Mantra look like? How did Sadikshya got involved with AIESEC and what were some of the notable achievements that she had while running AIESEC. Follow along the episode to find out.
All in all, this was a fun engaging as well as informative conversation on the state of Nepalese youth and what it's like to run an organization like AIESEC. We sincerely hope you will enjoy it.
For this episode, we have a fun and interesting conversation with Khem Raj Giri, a postdoctoral researcher at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Khem got his undergraduate in Bio Chemistry from Pokhara University and went to Finland to pursue a masters in protein since and biotechnology at the University of Oulu. After Finland, khem went to ONIRIS, France for his PhD. This podcast primarily revolves around comparing and contrasting Khem’s experience in Europe vs. America and somewhere in between.
We talk about many aspects of education and life in Europe vs. America, some of the cultural differences and scholarship opportunities for international students in both continents. While there are many differences, there are similarities as well. Primarily, our goal is to demonstrate the differences between the two continents and what life is like for international students in the pair.
There are many chitchats / segues into interesting experiences of Khem and the hosts in the episode as well.
Further details is available at our website. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Video for this podcast available in our YouTube Channel.
For this episode, we present to you a conversation with Dr. Prakash Shrestha, first Nepali scientist in hypersonics at the NASA AEMS research center. Dr. Shrestha got his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at IOE Pulchowk campus, masters from Purdue and doctorate from the University of Minnesota at Twin Cities. Following a PostDoc from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Dr. Shrestha Joined NASA in 2021, where he had previously worked as a visiting researcher. In this conversation you will find us discussing UFOs, Elon Musk, Dr. Shrestha’s core research and his journey to NASA to name a few. We really enjoyed this conversation and thought it was insightful as well as informational.
Dr. Shrestha’s journey is quite fascinating and inspirational. In Purdue, he got a chance to take a class and eventually work on hypersonics. Thereafter, he was fascinated by the domain and eventually got his doctorate in that particular domain. While it's difficult to carve a sustainable career track as a non-citizen in the aerospace industry in the US, Dr. Shrestha not only managed to do it but also was hired by a prestigious institution like NASA by waiving the citizenship requirement, which is extraordinary in itself.
We occasionally venture around other topics related to space exploration, journey to mars, SpaceX and the fun billionaire space race etc… to name a few. Follow along the episode to find out more.
People like Dr. Shrestha are an inspiring and a living breathing proof of potential that each and every Nepalese can unleash, given the right circumstances. We have a lot of untapped global talent in our country, waiting for the right opportunity. Dr.Shrestha’s Linkedin profile is open, feel free to reachout to him.
Lastly, a minor disclaimer: The opinions presented in this episode are strictly the personal opinions of Dr. Shrestha and the Hosts: Pikam and Umesh and none of the information presented here comes from any authoritative agency of any kind from any country.
Further details is available at our website. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Video for this podcast available in our YouTube Channel.
For this episode of the podcast, we have a conversation with Sunny K. Tuladhar: a solo progressive indie artist, guitarist and an engineer. Musically gifted sunny has one EP: Traveller’s Tale and an album: Charades in the Sky available to stream/watch on YouTube, Spotify, Apple music and various other digital platforms. The albums are also available to purchase on noodle. Sunny got his bachelors in mechanical engineering from Kathmandu University and is currently pursuing a masters degree in AIT thailand.
We start the conversation off simple, most people confuse Sunny K. Tuladhar with Sunny Tuladhar, a musical genius and guitarist from Jindabaad, a popular band in Nepal, but there’s a story here. Sunny K. was influenced by Sunny (from Jindabaad) and he began pursuing music from a young age (pre-secondary level).
Sunny likes to identify as a guitarist, but is also adept in other instruments like keyboard. How did it all start for Sunny? What were some of his inspirations? What does sunny feel about the music scene in Nepal? In general, what does an artist go through while producing music and how did sunny do it? Follow along the episode to find out.
Us being engineers, we can’t really get away from academia. We also discuss the positive experiences that Sunny had in Kathmandu University and how it helped shape his musical career. Additionally, we also discuss the age of the Internet and what it means for independent artists like him.
In summary, this was a chill and fun conversation and we really enjoyed it. Hoping that our audience will feel the same. Lastly, make sure to checkout Sunny on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Noodle and Deezer.
Further details available at our website.
Hello and welcome to this episode of the banal podcast. For this episode we are pleased to bring you a conversation with Prabhas Ghimire, an engineer, entrepreneur and a writer. Prabhas is the Co-Owner of Nepal Mind Factory, an engineering consultancy in Nepal. This episode primarily revolves around Prabhas’ experience with entrepreneurship and running a company in Nepal and some of the challenges associated with it. Additionally, we occasionally offshoot to other avenues percolating our psyche as well. All in all, this was a really nice episode and we sincerely hope that you guys will enjoy the episode. Cheers! Happy Podcasting.
For this episode of the Podcast, we bring a conversation with Er. Biraj Kafle. Biraj has been working as a telecom engineer at Nepal Telecom for the past 3 years. Biraj got his undergraduate degree in Electronics and Communication engineering at IOE Thapathali Campus and Master’s degree in Technology and Innovation Management at IOE Pulchowk campus. This conversation is centered around the organizational structure of NTC, the entry process and engineering duties at NTC. Additionally, this is also a chit-chat between old friends. Hope you will enjoy the conversation. Thank You.
Further details is available at our website.