By Taylor M. Coffman
Herald Correspondent
For the last sixteen years, Sanford resident Guneet Bhatia has been making strides in the energy industry, innovating new systems and techniques to make energy systems more reliable for customers and workers alike. Over the years, he’s developed an impressive list of accolades, including being a global industry pioneer and a mentor to the next generation of innovators - now, he’s hoping those same qualities will make him eligible for an exclusive visa.
As an Enterprise Architect for Siemens Energy, Guneet Bhatia is responsible for building systems around gas and steam turbines to make them more reliable, more optimized, and better managed. He, along with the 40 people he supervises, work on a global scale to build systems that help Siemens’ customers reduce energy costs, minimize their carbon footprints, and reduce the risk of major system failures, like those that hit Texas in 2021.
Aside from working on the energy systems themselves, Bhatia has also been at the forefront of advancing technology to assist power plant workers, including a robot to work in dangerous areas not fit for human workers, and camera-based machine learning systems that are trained to help workers catch potential problems earlier than ever.
These innovations have led to many opportunities for Bhatia, including several academic papers, keynote speaker accolades, and the Innovation Leader Award through the Global Recognition Awards, as well as the ability to shape the next generation of innovators by mentoring PhD students through the University of Central Florida. If there’s one opportunity he’s hoping for above all, it’s being eligible for the exclusive EB1A visa.
According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the EB1A visa is awarded to people who “demonstrate extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics through sustained national or international acclaim.” Understandably, it’s a very exclusive reward, and recipients usually have to put in lifetimes of work to achieve it.
When asked why he was working so hard to pursue this visa, Bhatia said, “The U.S. is a country of innovation. I came here, and I’ve stayed here for so long, because of the path forward which this country provides to innovate new things, new ideas.”
He described the U.S. as a place when “you get to drive, instead of being in the backseat and seeing what others are doing.” Additionally, the U.S. is a global leader in the energy sector by necessity; it’s a big country that needs to both produce and consume massive amounts of energy, leading our scientists - people like Guneet Bhatia - to be constantly coming up with new ways to produce energy cleaner and faster.
Getting the EB1A visa, says Bhatia, would open up a host of new pathways for him, freeing him from the restrictions of the visa he’s currently operating under. If he’s awarded the visa, he has plans to potentially begin his own startup, imparting what he’s learned in the energy industry to others and using his software knowledge to bring in yet more innovations to make the world a better, more efficient place.
