From Nepal to Saint Mary’s College

Getting to Know the Spark Lab’s Shreejan Shrestha

By KATHE BRUNTON

Shreejan Shrestha’s journey to becoming a digital fabrication instructor and director of the Spark Lab at Saint Mary’s College took him more than 10 years and a distance of about 8,000 miles to complete. The Spark Lab is an entrepreneurial maker space and a hub for collaboration and innovation at the College.

While pursuing his bachelor’s degree in graphic design at Kathmandu University in Nepal, Shrestha met a visiting University of Notre Dame professor who introduced him to industrial design. Industrial design, he learned, involves not just the design of a product, but all the steps required to see it through to fabrication. He was intrigued by its scope of possibilities. And so, for his senior project, Shrestha explored aspects of industrial design, creating a company and building a brand around it. He designed ambient aesthetic lighting and found a market in apartment complexes and hotels. 

The project was so successful that he turned it into a post grad business venture. “That was the start; my entrepreneurial seed took root,” he said. “In my own way, I was trying to do something about Nepal’s lack of manufacturing abilities by creating a product made there with resources that we already had.” 

Very little manufacturing is done in Nepal, Shrestha explained, and most products are imported. “If you want to build something, you start from ‘before scratch’. Say you need a 2x4,” he said. “You would first have to find a log and hopefully a carpenter who could cut it down for you.”

His business prospered, yet Shrestha yearned to learn more about industrial design. At the point where he either needed to scale up his employees and production or pursue higher education, he chose the latter, and hasn’t looked back. He traveled about 8,000 miles to attend the University of Notre Dame, where he earned his Master of Fine arts degree in Industrial Design. His work there has been recognized by the LIT Design Awards, Core 77 Design Awards, International Design Awards, and he was invited to exhibit at Global Grad Show as part of Dubai Design Week. Shrestha began working at Notre Dame’s Innovation Lab as Industrial Designer, then later as Research Associate Scholar in the Industrial Design Department, teaching foundational courses and managing their prototyping lab.

“This experience has helped me understand, as an industrial designer, how important it is to pay attention to the details and anticipate potential pain points throughout the design process,” he said.

In 2023, Shrestha became the first full-time director of the Spark Lab, an entity that first opened in 2021 and to that point, had limited hours for student interaction. Today, in addition to his director role, Shrestha is also a Digital Fabrication Instructor in the Department of Art. His days are filled educating the campus community and broader public in the use of the Spark Lab and its various prototyping machines. 

Despite his busy schedule, Shrestha enjoys camping on beaches along Lake Michigan, one of his favorite places. “I love the lake,” he said. “Every chance I get, especially in the summer and some parts of fall, I go to the beach.” An avid traveler, Shrestha has visited 40 states.

Reflecting on his journey from Nepal to Saint Mary’s College, Shrestha smiled and said, “It has been a wild ride.”

October 20, 2026