Life in IISc

Pinned post for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc

2012-01-30T05:30:00.000+05:30

This is a pinned post (i.e., this post will always appear at the top of this blog though newer posts appear below it) for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc.

Please, please read this site and the old posts, here, here, here and here. There are over 1100 comments and replies to these comments in these posts. Read them carefully before you post here.

If you require an answer to your question, post it with a name, initials, pseudonym or anything that is distinguishable.

Just one more postdoc

2012-01-27T05:00:00.000+05:30

I was talking to a former student (he was not my Ph.D student, but he was a student of my colleague) about his search for faculty position. He has completed three years of post doc in engineering and has now got a faculty position in what he calls a "second tier" IIT. He feels that if he does one more post doc in USA, he will get into that "first tier" IIT. I see many students, including some of my own former students, get into illusion that they will get this "dream" job if they do one more postdoc.

The following advice is apt,

The reality is that after 4-5 years of undergraduate, and 4-6 years of Ph.D. you've painted a pretty good picture of yourself. A few years of post-doc might help you gain some new skills, but that isn't going to make or break your career. Neither is that "just one more paper" going to make all the difference. Instead, people need to put the same effort into looking for a job as they do in doing research. The results might be a lot better.

There are still others who do not apply for these jobs thinking their resume is incomplete, whether they are worth applying and if they have to do one more postdoc. The best is to apply,

Because we all know that hiring is stochastic--that elusive "fit" you mentioned and variability in other candidates--it's probably a better strategy to start applying before we think we might be the ideal candidate. And with our minds' powers to reduce cognitive dissonance, we might just start convincing ourselves that we completely deserve what we're going after. I just stumbled on this thread, which I find pretty reassuring and hilarious.
http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php?topic=73013.0

I would think that the chances of getting a faculty position actually decreases after the third year of postdoc in engineering (sixth year in sciences). It could be also due my conservativeness to think that one should have a permanent (there is no other job which is more permanent and non-transferable than a government academic position) job rather than a temporary post doctoral position.

Republic Day

2012-01-26T10:14:00.000+05:30

In the Republic Day flag hoisting function, Prof. Balaram talked about the challenges faced by institutions like IISc. He mentioned that success can be only achieved by commitment and motivation of all sections of this community: students, faculty and staff. He mentioned that to succeed, one needs to be "patient and resilient" He certainly has these qualities and thus it is appropriate he expects some of this in his colleagues. A good book on this topic is "The Power of Resilience: Achieving Balance, Confidence, and Personal Strength in Your Life"

Lowered expectations

2012-01-24T04:30:00.000+05:30

In an article in the chronicle titled, "Upside of the Downturn", the author states that reduced expectations for our material success might make us happier, even if we’re poorer. The article goes on to say,

When expectations are high, the best we can hope to do is match them. When expectations are lower, matching them is easier and exceeding them is possible. By lowering expectations and keeping expectations modest, the downturn may actually enable people to derive satisfaction from activities and possessions that would previously have been disappointing. Managing expectations is a crucial determinant of well-being, and the downturn may be managing our expectations for us.

This is good advice for almost everyone working in government jobs. As the article notes (in a different context), "They may seek what is good about their institution, and be grateful for it, instead of noticing the ways their institution falls short, and resenting it."

Ph.inisheD.

2012-01-20T05:24:00.000+05:30

The above is the caption of the T-shirt featured under the column "Impressive Ph.D stories" The author concludes that the following are the keys to the success for finishing the doctorate quickly and effectively.

Always meet and report your work to your supervisor. At least once a week.
Set a goal and reason why you want to complete your Ph.D. That will drive and motivate you to finish your study.
Publish your work in reputable journals with impact factors. That's like an insurance policy during the VIVA.

I would just add a rider to point #1, which my advisor told me, "Give the progress and what you want to do in writing. What you say and what I hear may be completely different :-)"

Fellowships

2012-01-15T04:44:00.000+05:30

A postdoctoral student in USA (call him X) applies to the Ramanujam Fellowship and does not get even an acknowledgment. After a few months, he gets an offer for an assistant professor in IISc, joins a department in IISc and starts setting up his lab. On 2 Jan, a colleague calls him and says, "Happy new year to you. As a Ramanujam fellowship recipient, can you help me with my proposal?" X is surprised and denies being a recipient of the award. His colleagues points him to the DST website, which shows his name as being recommended ! He calls DST and finds that they have sent the money to IISc but had not informed X. IISc, of course, has taken the money but also had not informed X. Luckily for him, they did not ask him for a yearly report (yet!).

In another case, IISc is insisting that they pay me Rs. 25000 for JC Bose fellowship even though I am not a recipient of the same. When they paid me the fellowship in September, I informed them that I am not a recipient. So, they did not pay me the fellowship in October. In fact, to resolve the problem, they did not pay the fellowship of all the 39 recipients in IISc in October. Then, in November, after verification (!), they paid me the fellowship with arrears for both October and November!

In yet another case, IISc paid the fellowship of the DBT wellcome grant to a faculty, who had not got the fellowship. Apparently, DBT Wellcome grants are of two types: a project grant and a fellowship. Some get only the project grant while some get both. Apparently, this faculty had not got the fellowship but only the grant. He was paid the fellowship for one year before IISc and/or the faculty noticed. I will leave it to your imagination on how the case was resolved.Clue: The obvious solution is not the correct solution!

On this happy note of IISc paying fellowships to everyone ineligible, let me wish you a very happy Makara Sankaranthi and pongal.

Merit and academia

2012-01-13T04:30:00.000+05:30

Professor Balaram, in his editorial on Current Science, writes,

The Indian academic system differs dramatically from the American model in that, with very, very few exceptions, tenure is not an issue. Faculty are invariably recruited to ‘permanent positions’. Even in cases where the initial appointment is a contract of fixed term, renewals are practically automatic. Academic performance is not demanded and academic freedom often degenerates into a licence to legitimise non-performance....While both the carrot and stick are used equally effectively in the West to enhance academic performance, neither is available to most institutions in India. Administrations must follow the policy of benign neglect with respect to high performers, even while turning a blind eye to the significant dead wood accumulating in our institutions.

I do not know whether the tenure system will be generally successful in India, except in a few niche institutions like NCBS. In other places, this may actually result in high performers being denied tenure to ensure that "non-performance" remains the standard. Prof. Balaram fails to mention why administrators must follow the policy of turning a blind eye to the dead wood and neglect the performers. I do not think that there is an inherent need for an administrator to follow this policy. A strong head of an institution can turn down appointments and promotions to undeserving faculty. This may, of course, result in making him/her unpopular.Actually, it is the majority of (science) administrators who choose to follow this policy to keep their "bosses" (ranging from politicians to academic scientists who decide major policies/recruitment of "high" posts) happy.

New Year

2012-01-01T04:00:00.000+05:30

Unlike last year, I am not making a year-end round up, though I did more publications, reviews and committee work for IISc! People often discuss about new year resolutions.

Just as I was leaving a committee meeting last year, a young faculty remarked about the problems he was facing with his chairman. I spoke to him for nearly 5 min on how he could potentially handle the issue. My senior colleague, who was next to me, smiled and said, "Now, I know you are getting old. The older one grows, the more one starts giving advice.." And he was correct as I began to notice that I have really started giving unsolicited advice.

However,

When you’ve been there and done that and have the battle scars to prove it, the temptation to offer unsolicited advice can be almost overwhelming. Avoiding doing so feels almost like watching someone go into cardiac arrest and not calling an ambulance. But there’s a big difference between the analogy and the reality: The ambulance will actually help that person; unsolicited advice will not. Unsolicited advice is almost useless for one simple reason: Many lessons must be learned, not just intellectually, but emotionally. Taking action to change your life requires not only thought, but intent, and intent is driven by our internal pain and pleasure associations.

If other people really wanted your advice, they would ask for it. Happiness is not obtained from listening to others but by listening to oneself. On that happy note, wish you all a very happy new year.

India - anti-science ?

2011-12-26T05:35:00.000+05:30

The ex-director of IISc, G. PADMANABAN, writes in "The Hindu" and asks whether India is anti-science. He asks,

Is there nothing in this country of substance beyond Bollywood, cricket and politicians? But more seriously, if young minds do not opt for science, where are the role models? .... But unbridled activism against science and scientists will only lead us to miss out on technology options. We need to give S&T a chance to deliver.

But he actually answers (though possibly unintentionally) this when he says,

Each area has become much specialised and older generations, barring some, are not in touch with the developments. But they would not hesitate to make sweeping generalisations.

When the minister asks for a report from the academies on the issue of Bt Brinjal, all he gets is an unreferenced, non-trustworthy report, which does not list the authors or potential conflicts of interest. Further, selections at any level (whether it is recruitment in universities at the assistant professor level or whether it is election to fellowship of academies) are not purely based on merit. If this is the case of Indian science, why should young minds opt for science?

They obviously do not. When DST announced the INSPIRE fellowship for students who secure top 1% in boards or 10,000 ranks in AIEEE/JEE and pursue science, they were hoping many (10,000 was their target) will take up the fellowship. The results for 2010 indicate only around 45 have taken this fellowship through the competitive exam mode.

When scientists are unable to teach school children the joys of science, are unable to ensure career prospects for science doctorates, ensure transparency in recruitment and selection, if India becomes (or is) anti-science, the blame squarely rests on the scientists.

Journal pricing and h-index

2011-11-22T05:00:00.000+05:30

Prof. Balaram, in his editorial on journals, prices and related issues, raises many points. I could not agree more with the comment, "This concern about unreasonable journal costs is not widely shared in India..there is very little oversight in fighting rapidly increasing prices"

He is quite correctly shocked at the recent advertisement from a governmental agency asking post doctoral applicants to provide their h-index over the past five years. h-index was originally intended to evaluate the career of a research scientist and not look at the growth over five years, especially at the start of one's career.

Normally, this blog cites research articles but a research article on open access cites this blog !

Number of Ph.Ds

2011-11-21T05:30:00.000+05:30

IISc now generates the highest number of PhDs in computer science in the country. In 2011, 91 people enrolled for a PhD in computer science at the Computer Science and Automation (CSA) department in IISc, up from 35 five years back. Coupled with master's students, the department has more than 250 students on roll. This tremendous growth may be attributed to two reasons : (a) IT research labs in Bangalore (b) the current chairman of CSA. When some people become the administrative head of a particular department, the particular department shows remarkable growth both in terms of faculty and students. This indicates that leadership matters even when there is no direct benefit to the leader!

Update: The total number of Ph.D students enrolled in CSA is 91, not the number of students who joined this year.

Quality of teaching

2011-10-25T04:48:00.000+05:30

E. Balagurusamy, Member (Education), State Planning Commission, Tamil Nadu states

Our findings show that majority of teachers in many engineering colleges are in mediocre category. When the teachers themselves are lacking employability skills, how can we expect their students to be employable? So, the correction has to start from the level of teachers. It is time to have a serious look at the quality of teachers employed in various engineering colleges and arts and science colleges as well.

The quality is quite poor indeed. In a major NIT, half of the faculty in chemical engineering are B.E. who have graduated in the past year. There is nothing inherently wrong in this situation if these faculty came to teaching because of passion but it is mostly because they have been "pushed" into it due to lack of other options. If this is the state of NITs, there is no doubt that the quality is even poorer in other colleges. One way is to increase the number of doctorates who graduate from IIX and they go to NIT to teach.

Directors of IITs speak

2011-10-19T05:30:00.000+05:30

on various issues.

in a panel discussion on the state and future of IITs.

on the faculty crunch in IITs.

However, there is no mention that IITs receive around 100 applications (possibly more in science) for 2-3 positions and the faculty crunch is not due to lack of candidates but the lack of "quality" candidates, wherein the quality is defined by the respective IIT.

Dream

2011-10-04T05:09:00.000+05:30

Infosys chairman emeritus N R Narayana Murthy, "While only a couple of IITs feature in the top 50, there should be at least five IITs in the top 10 engineering schools in the world in the next 10-20 years"

Ideas without action mean nothing.

$35 tablet

2011-10-03T05:36:00.000+05:30

The HRD minister announces the launch of $35 tablet on October 5, 2011. The specifications are 2 GB RAM, 32 GB HD, Wi-Fi and 5 inch, 7 inch and 9 inch screens. The cost of production is apparently Rs. 3000 but is subsidized by the government. The production CEO says, "it will cost as much as "a vegetarian meal for two at a five-star hotel in Delhi". This is one of the most ridiculous comparison that I have heard. While the CEO may have had several meals in five star hotels in Delhi and elsewhere, many of the students and the middle class have never even seen the inside of a five star hotel. Why? Because of this.

Pinned post for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc

2011-09-30T04:52:00.000+05:30

This is a pinned post (i.e., this post will always appear at the top of this blog though newer posts appear below it) for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc.

Please, please read this site and the old posts, here, here and here. There are over 800 comments and replies to these comments in these posts. Read them carefully before you post here.

If you post a question that has already been answered several times, it will be deleted. If you require an answer to your question, post it with a name, initials, pseudonym or anything that is distinguishable.

Congratulations

2011-09-26T15:45:00.001+05:30

to my friends and colleagues in IISc, U. Ramamurty and K.N. Balaji for winning the Bhatnagar award in engineering and medical sciences, respectively.

Congratulations to my good friends, Balasubramanian Sundaram and Narahari Sastry, for winning the award in chemical sciences.

Congratulations also to Sirshendu De, a fellow chemical engineer for winning the award.

Doing and finishing Ph.D

2011-09-22T05:00:00.000+05:30

Some links:

Complete Ph.D in four years

Graduate school to Professor

Lab habits + data management

Graduate School Survival Guide

Android apps

2011-09-19T05:20:00.000+05:30

I had previously written about the usefulness of having a net book. It weighs less than a kilogram, has a battery power of nearly 11 hours and can be used extensively during travel.

However, during travelling, especially when it is only for a few hours, one does not even feel like editing any text (except for small corrections). It is a good time to read books/papers and listen to music. I use olivepad, which is the Indian version to the Ipad and costs around Rs. 15,000. The advantage of olivepad is that it is touch screen, weighs less than 400 g and switches on instantly. It is directly synchronized to Gmail, Google calendar, Google tasks and Google docs. It runs on my favorite system, Android and has a number of free applications, including a heart rate monitor. I list below the applications that I have installed and often use.

The olivepad comes loaded with the software, "Documents to Go", which can read Doc,xls,ppt and pdf but can not edit any of these documents. You need to pay for the premium version if you need to edit the documents. OliveOfficePremium can view to view and edit Microsoft Word(doc/docx), Excel(xls/xlsx) and PowerPoint(ppt/pptx) files. In addition, it can view pdf and chm files. There are several instances where you just need a good editor for simple text. One of the best software for this is the Jota Text Editor.

Considering the large number of books available in the epub and pdf format, the best epub and pdf readers are Aldiko book reader and APV PDF viewer. The former (effective version 2.0) can read PDF but the APV PDF viewer is much better.

The android system was designed to manage its own memory and the concept of closing/exiting an app does not exist because the operating systems manages the memory and apps ensuring that the apps that run in the background do not use much resources. However, one needs to know which apps are running, memory used etc. This can be done by the software called ZDBox.

The olivepad comes with a browser but it is not as good as the Opera Mini browser in terms of speed and functionality. The olivepad also comes with a music player but it can not play some formats (like flv) and the moboplayer is probably the best software for playing videos. I used to be a state chess player and I found the software Chess Free to be quite good, though it is adware.

Please let me know if you have any favorite Android apps, especially for reading, viewing/listening to media and browsing.

New resolutions

2011-09-15T07:16:00.000+05:30

The IIT council met in Delhi and

proposed a pan-India common entrance test for admission to engineering programmes possibly from 2013.
suggested a hike in the tuition fees that can be paid by the student after graduation.
significantly increase the number of Ph.Ds

The third initiative specifically says that the IITs will produce 10,000 Ph.D graduates annually from around 1000 currently. This will be based on increasing the faculty strength from around 4000 currently to 16,000.

What does this mean? Currently, 4000 faculty guide 1000 Ph.D students annually (ratio of 0.25) but within this decade, 16,000 faculty will guide 10,000 Ph.D students annually. What will bring about this change of faculty willing to guide so many students? Faculty normally complain on the lack of students for not doing research. But, as pointed out by Prof. Dheeraj Singh, "One of my colleague once said that we talk about PhD program because it is in fashion to talk about research, and we need to justify not doing research. But we really don't want to admit more PhD students because we are afraid we will have to work harder. "

The IIT council seems to taken the view of lack of students for research seriously and recommended, "From 2013, students would have to pay the balance Rs 6 lakh if they take up a non-teaching job after graduation." The minister says, "The intention is to attract IIT students to teaching and research" Currently, around 1% of B.Tech students from IITs pursue Ph.D in India and I am not sure how this move will attract more students to research. Will the council exempt the fees for students who pursue research and teaching in USA rather in India? Why not introduce many schemes that will make research and teaching attractive in India? Will that not make more students to take up teaching and research rather than asking them to pay if they do not take up an academic career?

Lab assistants

2011-09-12T05:00:00.000+05:30

In the article, BU rated best, but students, the correspondent says A researcher and professor from the university told Deccan Herald: “The fact is, be it here or in IISc, money matters. Pay a few thousand rupees to the lab assistant and he will give you whatever you want for a whole month. As much as 70 per cent of the funds provided for purchasing lab equipment are pocketed by the staff. Even the remainder of the funds is used very business-like.”

Lab assistants do not manage labs in IISc and I do not think the above applies to IISc. I do agree that it happens in many universities in India but not in IISc.

JMET cancelled

2011-08-28T04:59:00.002+05:30

The joint management entrance test (JMET) used for admitting students into the institute’s department of management studies has been cancelled and replaced by the common admission test (CAT) conducted by the IIMs. Therefore, all IITs and IISc will use CAT instead of JMET.

For a long time, many IITs have wondered where their management departments rank vis-a-vis the IIMs. In India, the reputation of the institute is primarily governed by the cutoff in JEE/GATE/CAT and now we will know the "real" rankings of the management schools of IITs/IISc with respect to IIMs.

GATE eligibility

2011-08-26T05:40:00.001+05:30

There seems to a sudden change in the eligibility for GATE 2012. Apparently, prefinal students are not allowed to write the exam. I am not sure about the rationale behind the decision and it may be just to reduce the number of students taking the exam. In any case, I feel such sudden changes in the eligibility criteria should be informed to the candidates before an year or so.

ARWU rankings

2011-08-24T06:15:00.001+05:30

Only one institution from India has made it to the top 500 in the ~~ACWU~~ ARWU 2011 rankings: IISc.

Success

2011-08-24T05:19:00.004+05:30

After the trashing of the Indian cricket team by England in the test matches, there is a lot of discussions on the forums for the cause of this debacle. However, there are several more comments that claim that the Indian cricket team is the world champion. But this is in an ODI format and one can not compare formats. Superiority in one format may not translate to superiority in an another format.

Similarly, when talking to young faculty in IITs/IISc recruited from USA, it strikes me that success in US universities as Ph.D students and post doctorates may not necessarily translate to success as a faculty in the Indian system. Success in academic research can be defined in two distinct ways: (a) publishing in standard journals consistently (b) getting promotions, awards and fellowships. These two are not necessarily linked and the ascent to each path of success is different.

Grad school enrollment

2011-08-17T05:02:00.002+05:30

Admissions to foreign students in US graduate schools grow. The article in Chronicle says,

Much of that growth is fueled by a 23-percent expansion in offers of admission to prospective students from China, the sixth consecutive year of double-digit gains.
Admissions offers to students from India also jumped, by 8 percent, the first uptick in prospective students from that country since fall of 2007. India trails only China as the largest source of international students to the United States.
Offers of admission to students from South Korea, however, remained flat, compared to 2010, after four years in a row of declines.
Together, those three countries account for half of all non-U.S. citizens on student visas at American graduate schools.

On the contrary, a 10% increase in graduate school enrollment was not possible in India during the period of 1980 to 2005. Suddenly, the enrolment increased by 54% as the OBC quota was implemented and the government forced IITs (and IISc) to expand ! IISc has continued to expand its graduate school enrollment with the number of registered post graduate students crossing 3000 for the first time in its history.

You can also read a comparison of academic performances of Indian, Chinese and American students in UT-Austin.

Ticket pricing

2011-08-09T05:50:00.003+05:30

The above screenshot shows how the executive fare is lower than the economy class fare ! No one can beat the pricing algorithm of Air India.

Sherpas and teaching

2011-07-24T06:06:00.010+05:30

In a recent report, the author classifies the academic community in Texas A&M (and UT, Austin) as Dodgers, Coasters, Sherpas, Pioneers, and Stars.

So, it is thus confirmed that the only metric for research is research money.

Statistics and lies

2011-07-23T06:33:00.004+05:30

According to Wikipedia, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments.

In the case of great "achievers" of India, it apparently means that you can say whatever you want irrespective whether the statistics or data is correct.

Mr. N R Narayana Murthy says, ""In 2004, China produced 2,652 PhDs in computer science and in that year the figure was 24 in our country," " In 1967, at the electrical engineering department of IIT-Kanpur there were about 60 to 70 students registered for PhD. But today, at the same department if there are five PhD students joining in a year, that would be fantastic,"

First, the claim that there were 70 students registered for Ph.D at the electrical engineering department of IIT-K in 1967 is not very believable. According to the data that I have, IIT-K graduated only 19 Ph.Ds in 1967. Further, the claim that there are less than five PhD students joining in 2011 in that department is plainly ridiculous. According to the IIT Kanpur website, there are currently 110 doctoral students registered in electrical engineering department with nearly 25 students joining this year.

Second, I do not know where he got the data that China produced 2652 Ph.Ds in computer science. In 2004, US produced around 950 doctorates in computer science. According to the S&E report by NSF, China graduated 417 doctorates in computer science and mathematics in 2000 and I really doubt that the number shot up to more than 2500 in four years.

Before saying something on a public forum, it may be a wise to check the data. Of course, to get these data, one may require to use complicated technology like google search.

Update: My colleagues, Abi and Arunn, have written about in their blog, here and there, respectively.

Motivation

2011-07-16T05:13:00.002+05:30

In my post on interviews, I mentioned to succeed as a researcher in India, you need self motivation. I have been getting some queries on how I define self-motivation. As Martina Navratilova said - and it is something we must all know - "It is not about how good you are when you are playing well, it is how good you are when you are playing badly." If you are as enthusiastic as Leslie Knope character in Parks and Recreation, then you are likely to succeed!

New students

2011-07-14T04:55:00.003+05:30

I have put together a small writeup for new students joining IISc this august. Usual disclaimers apply.

http://tinyurl.com/iiscnewstudents

Update: The admission office called me and informed me that some students are requesting clarifications for some statements provided in the above link. Please do not do so. They are unaware of this information and IISc is not responsible for its accuracy. If you need anything specific, please write it in the comments. Thank you.

Pinned post for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc

2011-07-07T05:51:00.001+05:30

This is a pinned post (i.e., this post will always appear at the top of this blog though newer posts appear below it) for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc. Please, please read this site and the old post and this post. There are over 500 comments and replies to these comments in these posts. Post all your questions and comments here.

This has crossed 200 comments and a new pinned post has been created.

Degrees

2011-07-03T06:49:00.001+05:30

The common question one is asked during this time is "What is the scope and prospect of UG/PG/MBA in IISc?" I promptly refer them to this blog. Sometimes, people ask me about a direct MBA program started by IIM- I. Just like IISc, IIM has now started admission for XII standard students.

Regarding the five-year integrated Post Graduate Programme in management announced by IIM Indore, it has now been clarified that they can not award degrees if the student quits after three years. At least this has been cleared early. IISERs, which started five years back and has even graduated one batch of students this year, have not yet been given permission to give degrees.

Admissions - 2011

2011-06-15T06:48:00.003+05:30

I have been receiving several queries on both UG and PG admissions. Here is the status.

UG: (BS)

Additional offers have been made based on performance in KVPY-SA (2009) and KVPY-SX (2010) examinations. From the KVPY-SX stream, offers have been made to all general category applicants with ranks of upto 209.
From the JEE stream, offers have been made to all general category applicants with ranks of upto 504.
Under AIEEE, offers have been made to all general category applicants with ranks of upto 248.

Emails and letters by speed post will be sent to all the selected candidates by this evening (June 15).

PG: M.Sc (Engg) and Ph.D

Many departments must have announced their provisional selection lists either on the notice board or on the web site or by both. The reason this is called provisional is because we have verify your certificates. In the case of PG admissions, no formal letters will be sent by email or speed post. Please log on to the iisc admission website and get your official offer letter printed out. The offer letters should be online by Saturday evening, if not, definitely by Monday evening (June 20).

Good luck and best wishes for your studies in IISc.

PG admissions

2011-06-08T22:04:00.000+05:30

I have been receiving emails enquiring about the differences between our M.Sc (Engg) program, M.E program of IISc and M.Tech programs of IIT. M.Sc (Engg) is similar to the M.S. programs offered by some IITs like IIT-M and is a research program. The M.E. program of IISc is similar to the M.Tech programs of IITs and is largely course based.

In IISc, a candidate for M.Sc (Engg) takes 12 to 18 credits of course work while a M.E./M.Tech student takes nearly 32-40 credits of course work. The more course work enables a M.E. student to pick up more basics and understand the fundamentals better. The average time for graduation for M.Sc (Engg) and M.E. in IISc is 2 years, 5 months and 2 years, respectively.

My advice: If you get admission to M.Tech in a major IIT with a good research program, choose it over M.Sc (Engg), unless you really want to do research, in which case the latter is better.

UG admissions

2011-06-05T06:56:00.000+05:30

The first set of offers for the UG admissions based on JEE has been announced. For the general category, this closed at 251. The earlier offers had been made on KVPY ranks.

Some people have been asking why IISc is admitting students based on JEE. Though IITs and IISc have no world class faculty, IITs have always had world class (defined by the honorable minister as applicants who have cleared JEE or CAT) students but IISc did not even have these students. By admitting students through JEE, IISc is filling up this void.

Interviews

2011-05-22T05:12:00.005+05:30

I have been receiving several emails enquiring about the interviews for (a) our research programs and (b) faculty positions. I give below some common questions and guidelines.

For research students:

The research interviews are conducted differently in each department and it is difficult to generalize. Some departments have two rounds of interviews, some have a written test followed by an interview. The guidelines for computer science students is given here (It is always amazing to me how Prof. Narahari manages some many things; he serves on many committee yet does wonderful research and also manages to put up these writeups).

Many interview committees will ask you three or four subjects that you liked in your undergraduation and ask you several questions based on that subjects. The emphasis will be on testing the depth of candidate’s understanding of fundamental concepts. Never attempt to answer questions in which you do not know the correct answer. It is okay to say that you have never heard of such a principle or law. Because the emphasis is on fundamentals rather on memory, it will be always be appreciated if the student says that he can derive the equation but can not recall it from memory. For Ph.D students, expect some questions on the project done during the masters. The problems you faced executing the projects, the principles you learned in that project and how you think the project helped you overall.

For prospective faculty.

Why did you choose your dissertation/post-doc topic?
Tell us about the theoretical and experimental aspects of your research.
What changes would you have made to your work if you were to begin again?
Why didn't you finish your dissertation sooner or why did you finish your dissertation so soon?
What are your research plans for the next 2/10/30 years?
What are possible sources of funding to support your research?
What facilities do you need to carry out your research?
How does your research fit in with this department?
Who would you collaborate with?
How many Masters and PhD students would you try to have in your lab?
Have you supervised any undergraduate or graduate students?
How would you involve undergraduates in your research?

What do you think is the optimal balance between teaching and research?
If you have to teach X course, what is the textbook you would follow?
If you could teach any course you wanted, what would it be? Why?
How will explain an concept of X to school children, undergrads, grads and colleagues?

Are you willing to become involved in committee work? If so, what committees?
What institutional issues particularly interest you?

I would advise that the faculty candidate read about the department, its current faculty and its facilities. Write to an unbiased person in the faculty and ask how much is really possible (Recently, we had a faculty candidate who wanted Rs. 10 crores to start up his laboratory. Some of my colleagues said it is not a problem. But, of course, it is. If you can do lots of research without the $2 million grant and then set up this large lab slowly, you can do it in 5 years or so. But it is very difficult to start up with a $2 million grant).

Have a clear writeup on your future research. It should NOT be a delta extension of your Ph.D or postdoctoral work. Be clear about the equipment (and its approximate cost) you need and an approximate size of the lab space required. If you say 500 sq.ft. of lab space is all you need but your equipment will occupy more than that, then the selection committee will not like it. A generic answer "I will manage with any lab space that is given to me" is worse.

Spend lots of time on making a good presentation. Most of the selection committee members come by the morning flight and leave by the night flight. Therefore, the number of hours is restricted to 10 am to 7 pm and this has to be divided by the number of candidates called for interview. Usually, the number of candidates called for interview is eight times the number of vacancies. Therefore, prepare for 10, 15, 20, 30 and 45 min presentations separately. Make the presentation interesting to an audience of your potential colleagues and answer all questions patiently. This is different in cases like IISc/NCBS etc. In these institutions, there is no formal interview of a bunch of candidates on a single day. In these institutions, the prospective faculty visit the department, spend a day or so. If the department is keen to pursue the candidate, the selection committee is specially convened on some other day and the candidate appears before the committee through skype or in person. The candidates who are called for interview in case of IISc are normally the people in which the department is interested in. The selection committee may overrule the wishes of the department.

In case of skype interviews/presentation, please keep the pdf of the presentations ready and mail it to them before the interview. The committee can follow the slides sent by you by looking at a local screen. Also, in this case, please be prepared to discuss your research without any presentation. As easy as it might sound, try practicing your presentation without any slides. Sometimes, we lose the connection during a skype interview. Quickly summarize what you have said so far and begin where you left off.

Be clear about the courses that you can teach and that you can not. Have plans of teaching in the first semester and clearly indicate which course you would like to teach. Do not give a generic answer such as "I can teach any subject in chemical engineering." If you are really that good in all subjects, you can say, "Though I feel that I can teach any subject in chemical engineering, I would like to teach thermodynamics ..." Expect a few questions in the subject you are going to teach.

Ultimately, different selection committee members look for different things in a candidate. For example, if a candidate has an excellent academic record (top 10% throughout in very good colleges, good publication record and recommendation letters that say he/she is creative and hard working), I would ignore a bad presentation. Others may not. Some members give importance to recommendation letters from "stars". Some do not. Some members give importance to the college where the candidate has done his B.Tech/ M.Tech/M.Sc (a degree from IITs always helps).

However, almost selection committees try to look whether the candidate has self motivation. You will not be able to rely on others to get you motivated and there is enough negativity around you to stop working. My senior colleague is a very good judge of people and he is almost 100% right when he says someone will be successful in India or not. In India, to succeed as a researcher, you need to manage the inefficient finance/accounts department, poor maintenance staff etc., yet manage to do "world class" research. Therefore, the faculty have to be positive, patient, persevering, deal all this with a good temperament and have the self motivation to succeed. If you have these qualities, you will also be put on several committees to help the administration of the institute and even if you stop doing research, you will be still useful to the institute !

I am sure that other knowledgeable readers of the blog can add to this in the comments.

Research Admissions

2011-05-17T06:16:00.000+05:30

I have been receiving several queries on research admissions to IISc. Please note that the admission to the Ph.D and M.Sc (Engg) programs is based on a wide variety of parameters: GATE, CSIR, JEST, IISc entrance test and many more entrance tests. Qualification in one of these exams does not guarantee an interview call. Different departments follow different cutoffs in various exams.

All letters for interviews were dispatched this morning and the research admissions for Ph.D will be held from June 4-5 for the interdisciplinary programs and June 6-10 for the other departments. Please check your application status on the web or wait for the interview letter or call the admission office.

While I have tried to help as many people as I can to know about the results (i.e., whether they have received the interview call), I can not give out the cutoffs for different departments in various exams. I agree with the applicant who felt that such information should be displayed on the web but I do not agree with the other applicant who "threatened" to file a RTI against me for not providing this information!

Impact factor and journals

2011-05-15T06:35:00.012+05:30

Two good articles in this issue of Current science.

The first article, Correlation between h-index, EigenfactorTM and Article InfluenceTMof chemical engineering journals,discusses the various parameters for ranking the journals. Irrespective of whether one uses the impact factor, eigenfactor, article influence score or the new factors like p-index, the top four journals in chemical engineering remain the same. The popularity of eigenfactor over the impact factor is that it is available for free and is quite comprehensive.

The second article,Use made of open access journals by Indian researchers to publish their findings, is quite interesting and discusses the use of open access journals and how Indian researchers publish in it. The authors rightly point out,

Both BMC and PLoS charge article processing fees as do many other open access journals. BMC journals charge between $ 1450 and $ 1640, PLoS ONE charges $ 1350, and PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology $ 2900 and other PLoS journals $ 2250. This could be a deterrent to most Indian and other developing country researchers.

It is certainly a deterrent for researchers like me who do experimental work. We would be better off in publishing the paper in another journal for free and using the $2000 for experimental work. The best way to make the work open access in India is not necessarily by publishing it in open access journals but by depositing the article in an institutional repository.

Tamilnadu elections

2011-05-14T06:04:00.002+05:30

Most ridiculous comment heard on Makkal TV as to why DMK lost.

Girls wearing jeans got carried away by Egypt rebellion, infatuated with anti-establishment, and voted against the DMK because they felt compelled to do the same as that of the Arabs.

UG admissions

2011-04-14T05:06:00.000+05:30

IISc, which has started the four year BS program this year, made the first set of admission offer letters to applicants. This was based on qualification in KVPY-SA/SB/SX. Further offers in this category will be made depending on the number of applicants who decline the offer. Separate admission will be made for candidates qualifying in JEE/AIEEE/AIPMT, after the results of these exams are announced. An announcement to this effect will be made on the official website shortly.

There has been a slight delay in announcing our M.E admission results because the same staff who handle the M.E admissions handle the UG admissions. However, please be assured that the M.E. results will be announced on the web by tomorrow or latest by Monday.

JEE question wrong?

2011-04-11T20:09:00.000+05:30

In the JEE paper of yesterday, one of the math question reads " Let M and N be two 3 × 3 non-singular skew symmetric matrices" I had thought that all odd order skewsymmetric matrices are singular. Is the question wrong? Of course, one can solve the question assuming M and N are 4 x 4 matrices and arrive at the answer (-M^2) but my point is the question wrong?

Overseas talent

2011-04-08T06:04:00.004+05:30

Professor Balaram writes on attracting overseas talent for faculty positions in India.

Strangely, while schemes for attracting overseas talent are enthusiastically administered in the funding agencies, initiatives that promote local talent are invariably run with limited interest and efficiency. Looking outward may be attractive and fashionable. Looking inward may be desirable and essential.

The other issue that should be discussed is why faculty recruitment takes so much time. It is not unlikely that a candidate hears from an IIT one year after the application. Unless processes are sped up, it is not easy to recruit scientists at any level.

3M

2011-04-03T01:05:00.001+05:30

The Indian cricket team wins at 3Ms (Motera, Mohali and Mumbai) to lift the world cup. Congratulations to the Indian cricket team. They do it for Sachin. Dhoni proves why he is the one of the best captains in the world - wins the world cup, T20, champions league, IPL... and leads India to #1 in both ODI and test cricket.

Elections

2011-03-31T07:36:00.001+05:30

In the elections in Tamilnadu, If you vote for the DMK, you will get a mixer, grinder and a washing machine; If you vote for the AIADMK, you will get a mixer, grinder and a fan. Therefore, the choice is between a fan and a washing machine. I called my friend in my village and asked him what he wants. His answer was simple, "Electricity"

No laptops

2011-03-22T05:16:00.000+05:30

The Indian Institute of Technology - Kharagpur has decided to scrap the controversial proposal to provide laptops to its faculty under a government scheme. The Cumulative Performance Development Allowance (CPDA) scheme provides Rs 3 lakh to each faculty member for the period of September 2008 to September 2011. In IISc, I think this money can not be used to buy a computer or laptop and can be used only for travel or consumables. Most of the experimentalists like me find this money useful when they run out of project money for a short while.

Admissions in IISc

2011-03-06T04:57:00.003+05:30

I have been receiving several queries on admissions to IISc. Unfortunately, I am unable to answer all emails individually because I simply do not have the data. For example, I have no idea on the cutoffs of GATE for various categories in different disciplines of study. All I can say that the cutoffs for the M.E. program are usually in the 99th percentile but I have no clue as to how many marks in the particular subject will result in that percentile.

The other set of emails is about admission without GATE. IISc does admit students to its doctorate program in engineering without GATE. The information brochure states,

Candidates with BE / B Tech or equivalent degree, with excellent academic record in the qualifying degree as well as in Standard X and XII examinations will be considered only for admission to a limited number of seats in the Ph D programmes.

However, I do not have any idea on the number of seats or what constitutes as an excellent academic record. Candidates without GATE are not eligible for the master's programs in IISc.

Though many of my colleagues contend that GATE is a stupid exam that should be scrapped, all I can say that the average marks scored by B.E/B.Tech candidates are not likely to be higher than the average marks that can be scored by a class XII student. Whether it is the fault of the exam or the education system in India can be a matter of contention.

IPL auction

2011-01-09T04:59:00.001+05:30

Will IPL affect Indian cricket? I certainly think so. Because of IPL, a larger pool of players will benefit both monetarily as well as get exposure with the top cricketers around the world. But it is also influencing it in a bad way. Players like Ishant and Irfan seem to have lost their interest in playing test cricket after their millions in IPL. Now, Robin Uthappa gets above 2 million dollars, while technically correct players like Dravid and Laxman get picked up for 25% of this amount. If this is due to the latter's age, then even young players like Vijay and Pujara get paid much lower than this because they can not score at a maniac rate. I believe that the current test series in South Africa was drawn because of two main players: Laxman and Sachin. These players came through the ranks when money in dollars was not the prime criteria for performance or working hard to perform well.

Good cricketers, like researchers, should be nurtured and are unlikely to perform if money is the only primary criteria and if the atmosphere is completely commercial. This is one of the reasons why the top private Indian universities do not attract the top Indian researchers despite the 3x salaries.

Autobiography of an unusual chemist

2011-01-08T05:54:00.003+05:30

In an article titled, "Autobiography of an unusual chemist", K. S. Jayaraman reviews the book "Climbing the Limitless Ladder – A Life in Chemistry" by Prof. C.N.R. Rao.

CNR has nearly 1450 papers with over 40000 citations and h-index of 89. He has graduated over 100 Ph.Ds, written/edited 42 books and has 48 honorary doctorates. When ones meets him, ones gets infected by his enthusiasm and gets an overwhelming thrust to work. I first met him in 2006 and when I was introduced to him, he simply said "I have heard about you. Do not be afraid of publish."

Later during the same year, I had cited his 1958 paper on experimental growth of titania in my single author work on the theoretical mechanism of growth of a phase of titania. I then saw him when he was taking his morning walk and he was curious to know how I got hold of his old paper published 10 years before I was born, what other experimental data I had looked at and how good was the model to fit growth of other materials. I was surprised that he had actually read my paper so thoroughly when it was not even in his current area of research !

Some snippets

Among the various offers he got, CNR preferred to join the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore because of "the extraordinary academic freedom" it provided.

I have worked seven days a week all through the years eating lunch at home only on Sundays.... the modest success that I may have had in research is mainly due to hard work.

Science is not about getting awards or writing papers; it is a way of life. It involves the climbing the limitless ladder of excellence.

(old) Pinned post for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc

2011-01-01T04:54:00.001+05:30

This is a pinned post (i.e., this post will always appear at the top of this blog though newer posts appear below it) for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc. Please post all your questions and comments here and please read this site and the old post before you post your queries.

This has crossed 200 comments and a new pinned post has been created.

Year end roundup

2011-01-01T04:17:00.017+05:30

IISc opens its portals to undergraduate education by inviting applications from XII standard students. Today is the first day to apply online for the program. Being involved in various aspects of this program administratively (not academically), I am excited about the possible success of the program but also worried at the teething problems of infrastructure.

Anyway, my personal year round up for 2010. Days include Sat/Sun. Hours and days calculated from the time reporting gadget for google calendar.

Number of days outside Bangalore on official work :32
Number of days outside Bangalore on personal work : 14
Number of days in Bangalore on personal work : 7
Number of hours spent on committee work for IISc : 920
Number of hours spent teaching in IISc: 29 class hours
Number of hours spent on research work: ~2000
Number of journal papers published: 28
Number of citations obtained: 654

Number of journal papers reviewed: 93

Blog Stats:

Number of posts: 65
Number of visits: 101,778
Number (average) of comments per post: 14
Number of posts without comments:4

Overheard

2010-12-25T04:33:00.003+05:30

..at the New Delhi airport while boarding the Indian Airlines flight to Bangalore. "I can't understand how rediff can say that Google is the best company to work for in terms of work and salary. Nothing beats a government job in terms of pay to work ratio. It is nearly infinity because the denominator is nearly zero."

Homeopathy

2010-12-17T04:34:00.001+05:30

One of my colleagues sent me this paper published by my colleague in IIT-B titled, " Extreme homeopathic dilutions retain starting materials: A nanoparticulate perspective."

This is possibly because I really believe that Homeopathy works, just like placebos. I am reminded of the conversation in "The Simpsons". Homer Simpsons panics after seeing one bear and gets the mayor to have a bear patrol. Then,

Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
 Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
 Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
 Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
 Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
 Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
        [Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
        [Lisa refuses at first, then takes the exchange]

Anyway, back to the paper. Homeopathy believes, contrary to all scientific evidence and thought, that potency increases with decrease of concentration. Thus "medicines" are sold at various dilutions from 1c to 200c. The paper discusses the procedure and concludes, "Further, we have shown that despite large differences in the degree of dilution from 6c to 200c (10^12 to 10^400), there were no major differences in the nature of the particles (shape and size) of the starting material and their absolute concentrations (in pg/ml)." All it means that no dilution really occurs beyond 6c.

Being busy

2010-12-17T03:02:00.001+05:30

Professor Balaram writes on being busy.

How often have we all heard the familiar, ‘I am too busy’ excuse, when something, however minor, needs to be done. As an administrator, of sorts, I have often had to recruit colleagues to the task of carrying out the many (and sometimes tiresome) chores that are so necessary in academic institutions. Not infrequently, accomplished and capable colleagues tell me, ‘I am too busy. Find someone else’.

In major institutions across India, one can classify faculty as those who do research and (a) serve on institutional committees (b) do not serve on institutional committees but serve on national committees (c) those who do not serve on any committees. Besides, there are a few faculty who do administrative work but no research and some who do neither research nor administrative work and, yet, constantly complain that they are busy.

Travail Travels

2010-11-24T16:45:00.004+05:30

I was travelling to Delhi and back by Indian Airlines/Air India. Of course, all government employees have to travel only by IA/AI.

As normally done by me, I took the earliest flight out of Bangalore at 6:15 am and planned to return by the 8:15 pm flight from Delhi. IA, in its own wisdom, has cancelled its most popular flight in the evening at 8:15 pm and changed it to an AI coded flight. If you are wondering what the big deal is because AI and IA have been merged and both depart from a single terminal, read on.

After landing in Delhi and attending the meeting, during lunch at 2 pm, I get a “pleasant” phone call that my AI flight leaving Delhi at 8:15 pm has been cancelled and they have rebooked me by the flight leaving Delhi at 4:30 pm. Of course, they did not bother to even think whether any meetings (especially in the government sector) start before 11 am or end before 5 pm. I told them that I have no way of returning by the 4:30 flight and they should rebook me to some other flight on the next day or cancel the 8:15 pm booking. The person on the phone gave me a toll free number to call. When I called there, I was told that I had booked online on the IA website but was flying AI flight, so the PNR number of the ticket changes and they can not do anything about it. So, they gave me a toll free number of AI. When I called there, I was told that they do not know the PNR number for the ticket. After calling IA and AI back and forth, I finally get the two PNR numbers of my ticket, as noted by IA and AI.

But the fun does not end there. Armed with multiple PNR numbers, booking numbers and IC/AI coded flight numbers, I call the IA website office, which is NOT a toll free number, to cancel the booking for my return flight. They say that they will charge me cancellation fees because, according to them, the AI flight has not been cancelled. She even helpfully informs me that I can report by 6:15 pm and board the AI flight. Just to be sure, I call the AI office and find that the flight has indeed been cancelled but they have not informed IA and they have no online mechanism to do so. So, I call back the non-toll free number, tell them that the AI office has confirmed the flight is cancelled and they should go ahead and refund my ticket. However, the person refuses because, according to her, the flight is still on. But the person on the helpline helpfully tells me that I can charge the cancellation fee to the government because they can mail me a receipt for the cancellation. Apparently, they do not understand the irony that they are charging cancellation fees for a flight they cancelled and assume that everyone who travels by IA/AI are government employees. Maybe if they behave like this, it will soon become a reality.

Contracts

2010-11-12T17:25:00.000+05:30

There is a vehement reaction (both for and against) on the downgrading of cricket player Yuvraj Singh's contract. Cricketers like Irfan Pathan and RP Singh have lost their contracts with the cricket board. However, this is not the time for these players to relax or complain. Because if they do, they will be called to handle baggage by Air India.

Three articles

2010-11-10T21:39:00.002+05:30

Three articles in this issue of current science are interesting reads.

Old toddy in new bottles

More about irreverence

Scientometric comparison of Indian institutions with other international institutions: a iCX map representation

The first and third articles refer to my work. I wish I had thought of the iCX map representation of my data, but then I am happy that Gangan Prathap used my data to graphically represent what I wanted to convey.

Recently, I was happy to see an eminent author in the field of photocatalysis, mention my papers, say their group were inspired by this and then extend the work to a different level. You only wish you had thought of it, but then you are happy someone did !

Congratulations

2010-10-26T05:39:00.000+05:30

to my friend and colleague, Ashutosh Sharma for winning the Infosys prize. Ashutosh has done amazing work in the field of interfaces and is considered an authority in the field. He is also one of the nicest persons you can meet and he has always been helpful and encouraging whenever I have met him.

His work is corroborated by scientometrics. He is the scientist with the highest h-index among engineers (34) and has the second highest number of citations in engineering (> 4000) in India.

In my opinion, he is richly deserving of the award and I can not think of anyone who deserves it more than him. Congratulations to him.

h-index

2010-10-24T05:16:00.001+05:30

ACS Chemical biology has been publishing a series of articles on h-index this year.

A satirical take. A nice article by Anirban on why the DBT policy in India is flawed. A detailed article by Seeberger on why trust is more important.

Congratulations

2010-10-13T22:43:00.003+05:30

to the Indian side winning the test series against Australia 2-0. Congrats are due to Vijay and Pujara for making the chase memorable. Pujara was sent ahead of Dravid because India wanted Dravid and Tendulkar to guide the chase when the ball will reverse swing after 40 overs. But they finished off the game before 40 overs !

Having been faithfully watched all the test matches in Bangalore, I have always been disappointed because India has never won in Bangalore after I returned to India in 1998. I had fly to Chennai to watch test matches where India would win. I watched all five days of this game. On the first two days of the game, I was in the A stand (Rs. 250), near long off. On the next two days of the same, I was in the N stand (Rs. 400), which is right on the top of the sight screen and my colleague, Praveen Ramamurthy and I went early to sit right behind the stumps on the third and fourth day. On the fourth day, after Tendulkar scored his double hundred, he was distracted by the white shirt I was wearing. Dhoni signaled to us and asked me to move slightly away. And, then Sachin got out after scoring ten more runs. Maybe he would have scored 250 if he did not make me move :-) I moved back to the original seat for the Australian innings. On the fifth day, I reached the stadium only after lunch and to see India cruise through !

My other colleague, Ramamurty, who is a great fan of Laxman, got me the tickets. Thanks, Ram. However, he did not come for the third day of the test match. He will surely regret it !

The analysts on the news channels that I am watching now somehow give the impression that we dominated the match throughout. The Mohali test was won only because of Laxman's outstanding innings; the Bangalore test was even-steven till this morning. One outstanding session on the fifth day in both the tests for India sealed the game and headlines like "India trash and dominate Australia" are unwarranted.

So are the surveys and articles on whether Dravid and Laxman should be dropped for the next matches against New Zealand. Dravid averages 45+ in the second innings in his career and Laxman averages 80+ in the second innings after March 2009. While they have immense talent, unless Vijay and Pujara demonstrate their mettle on bouncy pitches in South Africa and be consistent over a period, do not even compare them to Dravid or Laxman.

The best moments of the test match

SRT reaching 27, 50, 100, 150, 200 in the first innings and 50 in the second innings
Ponting getting out in the 70's in both the innings.
North's hundred. North seems to either gets dismissed below 10 or scores a hundred in every innings.
Vijay's maiden hundred in the first innings and the 306 run stand with SRT
Zaheer getting substantial reverse swing and Ojha's perseverance. Was not impressed with Sreesanth. Bhajji was good but not the person who bowled in 2001 in Chennai.
Pujara's outstanding fifty on debut. The last Indian who made a fifty in the fourth innings on debut: Gavaskar !
The lap of honor to the crowd and Dhoni calling the crowd as the 12th man.
My colleagues who gave me company !

Congratulations

2010-10-11T21:44:00.001+05:30

to Sachin Tendulkar for a wonderful innings today and to Vijay for a patient good innings. I was sitting behind the sight screen all day watching Sachin play and the whole crowd was enchanted. An Australian newspaper said,

At 37, he played like the kid who wished it wouldn't get dark. When Tendulkar made his Test debut, his teammate Cheteshwar Pujara was one. Now 22, Pujara, who has never known his national side without Tendulkar, waited and watched in the pavilion, itching to make his first walk onto a Test pitch, yet remaining as entranced as the rest.

Cricinfo had this to say,

Only a man blessed with immense powers of endurance could sustain a 20-year Test career and Sachin Tendulkar displayed exactly that quality on a day of Indian dominance in Bangalore. .....

The only man who didn't seem tired at stumps was Tendulkar. That's the benefit of 20 years of practice.

On his last tour of Australia, he was given rapturous ovations by an adoring public each time he went in or out. But the Australians might not have seen the last of him. Fifty Test hundreds is but a formality. Hundred international hundreds are there for the taking. But Tendulkar endures not in the pursuit of milestones, but because he can't fall out of love with cricket. And that's why, above anything else, he remains the most loved cricketer.

Publications - growth

2010-10-08T05:17:00.007+05:30

Abi, in response to my paper in Current science, writes

It's easy to get depressed after reading articles ...that provide a snapshot of the state of science (or, academia in general) in India. But snapshots do not tell us anything at all about the tremendous changes that we have been seeing and experiencing in India in the past decade or so. To get a good sense of the direction and pace of these changes, what we need are studies that track India's progress over the last several decades.

Therefore, I wrote such a paper recently, which will be published shortly. A snapshot from this paper.

Figure 1a shows that the total number of publications from India, China and USA over the period of 1960 to 2010. USA had a sharp increase in the number of publications in the early 1970s, while China shows a sharp increase in 2002. In 1996, India, China and USA published around 20, 27 and 320 thousand papers, respectively. By 2002, India and USA published around 26 and 320 thousand papers, respectively, indicating that the growth of publications were not significant in this time period. However, by 2002, China had increased its number of publications to 57 thousand, twice what it had published in 1996. However, the real remarkable growth is in the period from 2002 to 2009. In 2009, India, China, USA published 58, 280 and 414 thousand papers, respectively i.e., compared to 1996, India had increased by a factor 3, China had increased by a factor of 20, while USA increased by 30%.

One can look at the share of publications (i.e., number of publications published by the country divided by the total number of publications in the world). USA showed a marked drop in share of world papers from 40 to 29 percent between 1981 and 2008 while India has remained nearly constant with a world share of 3.0% in 1981 and 3.3 percent in 2008. As expected, China has shown exceptional growth in global share over the 1981-2008 period while Australia, Brazil and South Korea also increased their share of publications.

Figures 2a to 2f show the total number of publications from India, China and USA in major science journals from 1980 to 2010. The increase of number of papers in these top journals mirrors that the increase in the overall number of publications. An increase in the overall number of papers leads to an increase of papers both in the top journals and the bottom journals. Thus, the number of citations per paper has remained nearly constant (Fig 3) over the years for India, China and USA. This clearly indicates that an increase in the number of papers does not necessarily lead to loss of quality.

Nobel predictions

2010-10-06T05:56:00.012+05:30

for chemistry are here. Some names missing from this list but predicted by are ISI web of science are Japan's Susumu Kitagawa and American Omar Yaghi for porous metal-organic frameworks. These are not my predictions, I will give my predictions tomorrow :-)

Spectrosocopy & Application of Lasers, Zare/Moerner/+, 6-1

Nuclear Hormone Signaling, Chambon/Evans/Jensen, 7-1

Transition-Metal-Catalyzed Cross-Couplings,

Suzuki/Heck/Sonogashira/Tsuji/+/–, 9-1

Bioinorganic Chemistry, Gray/Lippard/Holm/–, 9-1The Field (everything not listed), 10-1Electrochemistry/Electron Transfer, Bard/Hush/Gray/–, 15-1
Techniques in DNA Synthesis, Caruthers/Hood/+, 15-1Instrumentation/Techniques in Genomics, Venter/+, 19-1Biological Membrane Vesicles, Rothman/Schekman/+, 19-1
Molecular Studies of Gene Recognition, Ptashne, 19-1Combinatorial Chemistry/DOS, Schreiber/+, 74-1Solar Cells, Grätzel/+, 74-1Pigments of Life, Battersby/+, 99-1
Development of the Birth Control Pill, Djerassi, 99-1Applications of NMR Spectroscopy, Pines/Roberts/McConnell/+/–, 99-1Development of Chemical Biology, Schultz/Schreiber/+, 99-1Self-Assembly, Whitesides/Nuzzo/Stang/–, 99-1Molecular Modeling and Assorted Applications, Karplus/Houk/Schleyer/Miller/+/–, 99-1Small Regulatory RNA, Ambros/Baulcombe/Ruvkun, 149-1
Eukaryotic RNA Polymerases, Roeder, 149-1Mechanical Bonds and Applications, Sauvage/Stoddart/+, 149-1Bio- & Organo-catalysis, List/Lerner/Barbas, 149-1Organic Synthesis, Evans/Danishefsky/Nicolaou/Ley/Trost/Stork/Wender/Kishi/+/–, 199-1Mechanistic Enzymology, Walsh, 199-1
Fluorocarbons, DuPont/Curran/–, 199-1
Polymer Science, Matyjaszewski/Langer/+/– 199-1
Understanding of Organic Stereochemistry, Mislow, 199-1Tissue Engineering, Langer/+, 199-1Contributions to Bioorganic Chemistry, Breslow/Eschenmoser/+, 199-1Nanotechnology, Lieber/Whitesides/Alivisatos/Mirkin/Seeman/+/–, 199-1Dendrimers, Frechet/Tomalia/+, 399-1
Astrochemistry, Oka, 399-1Zeolites, Flanigan, 399-1Molecular Recognition, Dervan/+, 399-1Molecular Machines, Stoddart/Tour/+/–, 399-1

Congratulations

2010-10-05T20:54:00.002+05:30

to the unsung hero of Indian Cricket, VVS Laxman for taking India to victory in Mohali. Playing with a very very sore back, the very very special man played a brilliant knock to win the test match for India. Even though he has done it numerous times, and his Kolkata knock being ranked by Wisden as the best knock by an Indian, he is India's Atlas but still an unsung hero.

Laxman has often been the most disposable member of the Indian team. It seems he has been playing for his place in the side throughout his career. Still he has played so many of these saviour knocks for India that he thrives on these situations now. Possibly he longs for them. At least he wishes he could bat the same way in normal circumstances as he does in crisis. Cricketers spend entire careers wishing to bat in crisis as they do in normal situations. That's the world of Laxman

Dhoni, Sachin and Sehwag endorse 21, 14, 7 brands, respectively, earning hundreds of crores. How many brands does VVS endorse? None.In the post awards ceremony, the camera pans to Laxman's smile when Ravi Shastri announces the man of the match: Zaheer Khan. That's the character of the unassuming man, who later apologizes to Ojha for yelling at him in the penultimate over and credits Ishant Sharma for the partnership and plays down his role in the win.

Why don't nice and unassuming people get duly credited? In science, I have seen a few scientists who have everything: good publications, large number of citations, patents, teach well and be not recognized. I am told this is because they do not have "quality of mind" (whatever this means). I do not know what it is equivalent in cricket. Maybe being flashy !

Another ranking list

2010-09-27T10:12:00.000+05:30

by a group in Australia based on data from Scopus. IISc's rankings:

Overall: 468
Sciences: 273
Engineering: 148

IIT-Kanpur is ranked higher than IISc in this ranking.

Congratulations

2010-09-26T17:19:00.002+05:30

to my colleague, Ananthasuresh, for winning the Bhatnagar prize this year.

Opinions and comments and their moderation

2010-09-22T07:03:00.004+05:30

I repeat myself largely from my previous post last year.

All opinions expressed in the blog posts are mine and mine alone. They do not represent my employer, IISc or that of the government of India.
For those who want to leave comments as anonymous, please leave a name, any nickname or even initials. Do not expect my response to your comment if there is no name or initials.
Comments on my blogs are not moderated. That is because even I though I may not agree with what you say, I believe in your right in saying so. This brings me to the main point: I am not responsible for the comments on the blog. They are expressed by readers and I neither endorse nor disagree with any of the comments, unless I explicitly state so in a subsequent post.
This blog post is the result of many anonymous comments that are completely off-topic and abuse some of my colleagues. These are quite offensive and I would have deleted them but usually these comments will multiply if I delete them. Therefore, my kind request is to refrain making (or responding) to these comments. Please do not respond to flames !

Please do not send me personal emails (unless it affects you directly) stating that you do not agree with some of the comments in the blog. Neither do I but I usually do not moderate comments. After all, I expect most of the blog readers to be educated and will respect each other.

Further, I am traveling from September 16 to September 30 with only intermittent access to internet.

Congratulations

2010-09-20T06:59:00.002+05:30

to my colleagues,Dr Kaushal Verma and Prof. N. Ravishankar for winning the Swarnajayanthi award of DST. Ravishankar and I have collaborated on many research papers and continue to have joint students and projects. I am very delighted to know that he has won the award this year. Congratulations again.

Stray dogs

2010-09-09T05:46:00.004+05:30

In the campus, which is quiet and pollution free, the stray dogs pose a major problem. The children have been chased by packs of dogs in the recent past. I walk from my home to the department and back. Normally, my working hours in the department is restricted to 7:30 am to 7:30 pm. However, yesterday, as I walking to my home at around 9 pm, a dog continuously followed me and nearly came to bite me. However, I had a bunch of research papers that I was carrying. I threw the bunch of papers at it and it ran away. While this is indeed a good use for my research papers, I think the administration should take steps to curb this menace. The problem is that the person who is in charge of this is retiring next year and does not seem to bother ! However, the main problem is that there is no easy solution. The BBMP is unwilling to pick up dogs, the NGOs only neuter them and bring them back, there are too many gates and places through which the dogs can enter. So, while everyone agrees that there is a problem, there exists no easy solution.

Education and empowerment

2010-09-07T05:45:00.005+05:30

Kapil Sibal, the HRD minister, spoke at IISc yesterday on the occasion of Sir Vithal N Chandavarkar Memorial Lecture. He spoke on empowerment through education. He talked about the enrollment ratios. The growth enrollment ratio, defined as the number of students who attend university to the number of students who attend school, is presently 12.4 per cent of 220 million and this should touch 30 per cent. Many developed countries have around 50 per cent. Similarly, the higher graduate enrollment ratio, defined as the number of students who do doctorate to the number of students who are graduates, is currently only 1% in India, as opposed to 10% in developed countries. He did not make the latter point in his talk.

He spoke on the connection of education to GDP, lack of more than a million elementary school teachers, the foreign university bill and various other reforms including the education finance corporation indicating that priority lending rate should be given to investors in education. He also mentioned that the education sector would witness investments to the tune of billions of dollars in the next two decades and become the fastest growing sector in the country. My colleague, Abi, asked him about the role of philanthropists in education and he mentioned that a few philanthropists indeed can make a huge difference in the education sector and gave the example of Azim Premji of Wipro.

Overall, it was a good talk and his two quotes "We believe education is as, if not more, important than infrastructure." "The government wants to be far removed from the processes of education but not from the objectives of education." stood out.

M.E./M.Tech Admissions

2010-09-04T07:10:00.001+05:30

IITs have a problem in filling up the seats reserved for SC/ST/OBC students. IISc seems to have a different problem. 591 seats were offered for M.E/M.Tech admission for 2010. Only 322 students joined. Some departments, in particular, showed a sharp decrease of students joined to students offered. In the general category, the number of students offered admission in aerospace, chemical, civil and materials engineering was 22, 17, 33, and 25, respectively. The numbers who joined were 6,3,5, and 11. Thus, some departments showed only 16% acceptance rate...I think it is a matter of concern, though many apparently do not think so.

Priority Inbox

2010-09-04T05:43:00.003+05:30

Earlier this week, Gmail introduced priority inbox. I used to use the multiple inbox feature of gmail labs to organize my email into five main categories by the judicious use of labels: emails sent by editors, emails that require actions like reviews/reports, emails sent by director and other important administrators, emails sent by students/collaborators and all other emails. But I felt that the multiple inbox looked clumsy, though it did a wonderful job. The priority inbox looks much better though I do wonder why it’s limited to four sections. I would have been happy with five though I can combine my first three categories into two categories. I wish one or two sections in priority inbox could be configured as one of the multiple inboxes. I like the approach of priority inbox better, but still would like to add one or two sections tailored to my needs.

Match fixing

2010-09-03T05:56:00.000+05:30

Harsha Bhogle discusses on the recent cricket match fixing controversy.

Why do I play this game?

If the answer is that you want to excel at the one thing that you are good at, that you want to find the limits of your ability, that you relish the challenge of a competition, that you get goose pimples putting on your country’s colours and walking out to the expectations of your countrymen, you will pursue those goals and take whatever reward you get. Invariably it will be handsome.

If the answer is that you want to earn a good living as quickly as you can, that you want to bask in the comforts of the material pleasures that your talent delivers to you, you will take whatever financial inducement comes your way. Inevitably it will be tainted, inevitably the dessert will be laced.

It is our choices that tell us who we are.

Ganguly, as always, puts it forthrightly,

In our playing days, we could hardly believe such a thing. During my captaincy, betting issue used to figure in the discussions with Tendulkar, Dravid, Kumble and me. But nobody could dare approach us. May be they (the bookies) judge players by their characters before making the move.

Can/Will anything be done? Prem Panicker writes wonderfully

Nothing further was ever done. Change venue, rinse, repeat, and there you have the story of India’s dysfunctional cricket administration. Seriously — what fools are we, that we expect honesty and integrity to flourish in this soil?

It has often been said that we are good at only playing games.. not in sports. If you dream of India as a Utopian society, free of crime, injustice and evil, we can achieve this by turning our weaknesses into strengths.

Rankings

2010-08-25T05:06:00.006+05:30

Subsequent to my post on Shanghai Rankings, a commenter enquired, "Is the low ranking of Indian institutes due to lack of Nobel Prize winners, Science/Nature papers etc? Would the ranking be significantly higher if one considers only citations or papers?" Some of my colleagues asked whether it is possible to rank Indian institutions by considering only citations and/or papers. Well, there is the essential science indicators (ESI) ranking by the ISI web of knowledge. Please note that the rankings are based purely on the publications and the citations obtained. This is for a 10 year window and this is updated every quarter. Here is the ranking of IISc in different fields:

Chemistry - 136
Physics -311
Mat. Sci. -73
Biology and biochem: -387
Eng. -175
Geosci - 404
Comp. Sci - 128
All fields: 457

ESI also ranks scientists and the top 1% of scientists find place in this list. How many scientists from IISc figure in this list? Well, it is as follows:

Chemistry - 8
Biology - 1
Physics - 1
Geosciences - 1
Engineering - 3
Material Science - 2

A typical response that these do not mean anything and citations and publications do not count for much. Only in India is a scientist who does not publish (and therefore does not get cited) called scholarly. In any case, the data is presented and please make your own interpretations.

Receiving gmail as sms

2010-08-24T04:58:00.001+05:30

If you are like me who is unwilling to buy a GPRS phone (though IISc will pay for it) or spend money to check email, then you can get email alerts from gmail to your phone as SMS. One service that I have used for a long time is way2sms.com. You can register your mobile at way2sms.com and forward your gmail to username@way2sms.com.

In June 2010, Microsoft hotmail opened up free SMS services for its email services. Though I have had a hotmail account for a long time, I switched to gmail in Sep 2004 because I love the conversation view of gmail. Therefore, I now forward my gmail (with filters) to hotmail and I can get sms of important emails. What are the filters that I set? Only emails from editors, my students, "good" colleagues and important administrators. Please look here for extensive details on how to set up the forwarding and filters.

Shanghai Rankings

2010-08-23T21:02:00.004+05:30

The rankings:

IISc - Overall - 301-400

Engineering - 76-100

Chemistry - 76-100

Physics/Maths/Biology/Computer Science/Business - not ranked

IIT- Kharagpur - Overall - 401-500

Engineering - 76-100

Chemistry/Physics/Maths/Biology/Computer Science/Business - not ranked

No other Indian institution figures in the rankings. According to Wikipedia, the ranking compared 1200 higher education institutions worldwide according to a formula that took into account alumni winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (10 percent), staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20 percent), highly-cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories (20 percent), articles published in Nature and Science (20 percent), the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index (20 percent) and the per capita academic performance (on the indicators above) of an institution (10 percent).

JEE

2010-08-23T19:16:00.000+05:30

Another post with an argument for keeping the JEE in its present form. The article says,

An issue that no one seems to care a hoot about is the imminent merger of engineering and medical tests, the AIEEE and the AIPMT. Such a combined examination will be cruelly indifferent to the plight of all those who prepare for both the disciplines in a bid to keep their options alive.

Why? The combination of AIEEE and AIPMT will merge two examinations and keep four papers (Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology). A student interested in both medicine and engineering can write all four; while students interested either in medicine or engineering can write three of the four. I do not understand what is cruelly indifferent to this plight. The article goes on to say a number of corrective measures to the mistakes in JEE this year.

Error 3: The Instructions on “Question Paper Format and Marking Scheme” for section IV in the Hindi version of Paper 2 was wrongly printed. Each question in this section was shown to carry 3 marks instead of 8.

Corrective Measure: Each question of section IV of Paper 2 will be evaluated for 8 marks.

This is the typical response from an administrator but not that of a student or faculty. A student may not attempted the question because it carries only 3 marks and would have attempted it if he/she had known that it had carried 8 marks. Often it is a question of time and mark management because no one scores 100/100 in these papers.

For example, in JEE or GATE, for multiple choice questions, we have one answer and four choices to choose from. It is not uncommon that sometimes that all the four choices are wrong. The corrective measure taken by the administrator is one of the following: (a) that all students who have attempted the question are given full marks or (b) all students irrespective of whether they have attempted the question are given full marks (c) no one is given marks and the question is not evaluated.

All this seems to be fair. But it is not. A student, who is proficient in the subject of the question, may spend enormous time (say five min) trying to solve it again and again and keep finding that the right answer is not in one of those choices. Another student may not even attempt this question. Because the differential marks between a rank of 100 and 500 in GATE is so low, all this will count.

Interesting...

2010-08-23T18:52:00.000+05:30

Two interesting posts by L. One is on the thesis on the slangs used in IIT-Madras. The other post says, "The Leela and other 5 star hotels do not have provision for / do not allow patrons to come in on a bicycle. Actually, coming in a car would perhaps be the least environment-friendly part of staying/eating at a 5 star hotel. So why crib about not being allowed to come on a bicycle?" Well, they do not allow autos also to come in. Some time back, I was asked to attend a conference in Bangalore in a five star hotel. Because the hotel was very near IISc and that I do not own a car, I just took an auto from IISc. I was surprised when the security guard refused to allow the auto inside the premises saying it was beneath their status for a customer to come in an auto. I usually find that conferences on finding solutions to world hunger are held in five star hotels.

Undergraduate

2010-08-20T22:34:00.000+05:30

While welcoming the new students who joined IISc two weeks back, the associate director mentioned ""When we studied here, it used be biting-cold in August. We had steel cots with no bedsheet and lots of bed bugs. Imagine sleeping on it! The bed bugs have vanished, but the steel cots are still there." He also said that students put on weight in the first two months of stay here because of the good food in the messes but lose that weight when they are in the fourth year (or n+1th year) of graduate studies. Prof. Balaram mentioned how the 100th batch is special and went on to say that 101st batch will be even more special because it will be first batch that has undergraduates entering IISc.

The website for the undergraduate program is here. The official details can be found on the website. The website is modeled such that the left side links are stationary while the content in the right side links will be dynamic and change as the program develops. For example, recently the poster was designed, printed and mailed to 16,000 schools across the country. These posters (both the English and Hindi versions) are now downloadable from the website. The website does not look nice in Chrome but looks fine in other famous browsers. Some might find the "flowery" language in the introduction to be cliched but the faculty who wrote that means well. Much of it was actually written for a press release but much of it was removed before it was released to the press.

It is likely that most of the students admitted will be through KVPY, JEE, AIEEE etc. Thus, in most cases, they will qualify to get scholarship from DST through KVPY or through the INSPIRE program. IISc will not provide scholarship from its funds but the students can get the scholarships from DST and study in IISc. The 4-year program (originally suggested by the three science academies) is in the first in the country from a premier institute and it is likely that it will be considered equivalent to the five year M.Sc or the four year B.E/B.Tech program. Therefore, students will be eligible to write GATE/CSIR-JRF etc. Please note the word "likely" in the above paragraph because all this is yet to be approved by DST/MHRD etc.

Many alumni have asked me why only materials and environmental science are offered and not in mechanical and electrical engineering. There are two primary reasons: there is no dire need to start undergraduate in engineering when IITs are doing an excellent job and the unwillingness of many engineering faculty to start such a program in the department.

Tenure

2010-08-15T10:39:00.006+05:30

On Independence day, as you stand in front of the Tata statue in IISc, one is thankful for what IISc has provided - academic freedom.

There is a lot of discussion of tenure and how many non-faculty (and some faculty) view it. In USA, there are very few "deadwood" professors in major research universities. This is because there is a fairly rigorous review system even for tenured professors. The salary of an active high flying professor could be nearly twice or even fourfold that a less active professor. This is in addition to the summer salary, where a faculty would make nearly 20-30% more by bringing in funding. Therefore, while tenure in an US university assures a lifetime job, constant evaluation makes sure that there are significant differences between professors. When I was a graduate student, I used to see many professors (all tenured) on Sundays, holidays (even on independence day :-) because they loved what they did for research. For them, tenure meant that they need not submit a list of publications with the h-index to get their contract renewed. Tenure in such places are also essential because one can work on long-term problems.

In India, one does not have such problems. There is job security right from day one and there are no salary differentials at any level or between levels. This gives you the ultimate academic freedom.

Passwords

2010-08-13T05:42:00.000+05:30

There is an interesting article on passwords and how insecure many passwords are. Faculty usually have to remember several passwords. For example, one has multiple email accounts, an username and password for each journal that they review or submit papers. For example, I have user accounts for at least 60 such journals for which I regularly review or submit papers. It is rather impossible to remember passwords for all these sites and, though one might use the same passwords, it is not very secure. For example, I used to use passphrases (of 35 characters or so) for the primary email account and bank accounts, while I used very simple passwords for forums, where you comment once in a while.

Now, I have completely moved to an online password manager. I am aware of atleast two very good online password managers namely Roboform and Lastpass. They will autologin and fill forms for you after you login to this extension. Luckily both of these password managers have extensions in Chrome.

Chemical Engineering Journals

2010-08-12T18:28:00.000+05:30

The growth of four general chemical engineering journals based on Scopus database. Conclusion: all are same now.

Supersaturation, melting, cooling

2010-08-12T05:14:00.000+05:30

Retrograde melting is the process of a solid substance turning to liquid as its temperature decreases. The supersaturated wafer precipitated out its metals in liquid form as it cooled. Why is this important? Well, the melting process can be used to remove impurities in silicon-based semiconductors such as solar cells. Read all about it in the advanced materials. Similarly, you can also freeze water by heating it.

Sacrosanct JEE

2010-08-09T05:07:00.003+05:30

I am often told by my colleagues how well the standards of B.Tech in IITs are maintained because of only one single thing, the JEE, which is non-corrupt and sacrosanct. However, RTIs have brought a spate of inconsistencies in the administration of JEE as well as admission to IITs. The latest is the quota system in IIT Kharagpur.

Documents accessed by HT using the RTI Act show the country’s oldest IIT — started in 1951 — blocked 25 per cent of its seats in popular five-year integrated science courses (up to M.Sc level) for handpicked nominees, even as students from the rest of India had to clear the IIT-JEE for admission.

IIT wards merely needed 60 per cent marks in their Class XII Board examination and should have appeared in the IIT-JEE to be eligible for the quota seats, doled out at the institute director’s discretion.

Between 2003 and 2005, those who got in through this illegal quota didn’t even need to appear for the entrance exam.

There is an interesting story about a state chief minister, who gave all the government contracts to his sons. When questioned, he said whoever gets it will be somebody’s son, so why not his own? Apparently, it is not restricted to only politicians and IIT Kharagpur faculty (at least some of them) used it. I will not be surprised if these wards who were admitted without qualifying in JEE went on to secure good grades in their degree and passed out with even medals. Then, it clearly shows that not only the admission system but the system of evaluation is also not sacrosanct.

Ph.Ds in India

2010-08-07T11:27:00.000+05:30

In a poorly written article titled, "IIT-B becoming an assembly line of PhDs?" the author says

Even as India grapples with how to increase the number of researchers, IIT-Bombay recorded a slight drop in the number of PhDs this year. The Powai institute had contributed the highest number of 200 PhDs to India last year. This time the number was 179.

Contributed to India? Ph.Ds graduating from IIT Bombay are not donated to India. Even otherwise, many of these Ph.D's go abroad for postdoctoral studies. Further, anyone working on statistics knows that one has to look at 3 or 5 year averages rather than compare it year after year. Further, there are many IITs that now graduate around 160 to 180 doctorates per year.

Space crunch

2010-07-31T05:53:00.002+05:30

There is a severe space crunch in the hostel this year. An idea was proposed by the Dean, Admission Committee and the Students’ Council to ask existing students to volunteer to share their single-bed rooms with the freshers and, in turn, not pay the hostel fees for the semester. This was not a success and less than 1-2% volunteered. However, the student council and its volunteers did a wonderful job in receiving new students.

How did we land up with this situation? Well, the OBC quota was implemented and the number of seats had to increase by 54%. Thus the number of M.E/M.Tech seats had to increase by 54% over a staggered period of three years. Though this was implemented immediately, the money for the construction of new hostels was sanctioned much later and the construction started only last year and the new 900 room hostel will be completed only in Aug 2011. Further, due to pressure from various sources and measures like not requiring GATE for admission to Ph.D, the number of Ph.D's admitted in engineering has nearly doubled in the last two years. The increase in number of M.E/M.Tech seats was 27% this year. Thus, this year (like last year), nearly 800 students were admitted while only 650 rooms were available. However, every student has been provided accommodation on campus. Alternative arrangements were made and students were accommodated in old guest houses and even the ex-director's bungalow (which is vacant now) [This does not mean that this accommodation is poorer than the hostels]. Hopefully, it will be resolved in the next few months as senior Ph.D students graduate and the students move back to the hostel. This situation is not unique only in IISc but also in IIT-B and other places.

Fundamentally, the way campuses are constructed and maintained have to be changed. Currently, the administration spends a huge amount of time maintaining the hostels and houses on campus. The current HRAs are fixed by the government and it is not possible for students to stay outside comfortably. One way is to pay high house rent allowance to both students and faculty so that they will stay outside. On the other hand, students who get scholarships from CSIR, DBT etc get around Rs. 4000 as HRA, which IISc will reimburse if they stay outside. If some students move out, the situation will considerably ease.

Search for meaning

2010-07-12T05:38:00.004+05:30

Pavan Soni in his blog writes (I like the following paragraph; does not mean that I agree/disagree with the other issues mentioned in his blog),

Now the point I want to drive home is the amount of peace that faculties and students here at IISc have with themselves and with the work they do. A mere walk at the campus will take you to 'good old days'. Bicycles around you, professors walking in their slippers (often talking to themselves), and virgin, lush, green forest with quite a few species of animals. It's a jungle of different kind.
I appeal, just for once, to students to visit the campus of IISc, interact with students and faculties (if you are lucky) and gauge their worth.

Faculty recruitment

2010-07-04T07:20:00.001+05:30

I get a few emails a week from prospective faculty to IISc/IIT asking why they were not selected while people with inferior records were selected. I can not answer them because I have no expertise to judge. Further, several factors go into the decision and it might be difficult to say what was favored and what was not favored.

Check the profile of the current faculty in the department and see whether there is a fit. Many engineering departments in IISc may prefer to recruit only people who work on theory or modeling (though they may claim otherwise). In IISc, except for the materials department, nearly 75% of engineering faculty work only on theoretical or modeling/simulation. While there is no prejudice, it becomes easier to judge the quality of a prospective faculty who works on similar lines.

Other factors that go into the selection are the recommendation letters, academic background etc and it is difficult for me to compare and justify any decision. Therefore, I will refer all such emails to this post.

BSNL combo plans

2010-07-04T06:07:00.001+05:30

This is in response to several emails asking me how to get reimbursed for broadband when the bills are higher than Rs. 250. This will be the post that I will link to.

IISc (and most probably, IITs) reimburse your telephone and broadband bills, up to a certain maximum. These limits are Rs. 750 for telephone and Rs. 250 for broadband. Telephone can include both landline and mobile charges. For Rs. 250 for broadband, BSNL allows only 1 GB of download and no free night time downloading. To avoid this, one can choose a combo plan from the many combo plans that are offered by BSNL.

For example, one can choose BBG FN Combo 600, which gives you 350 free calls on your landline and 2.5 GB download in your broadband and you also get free download during the nights (2 am to 8 am). Choose the plan carefully, because some plans limit your download speeds to 256 Kbps. For optimum use, choose plans that allow speeds up to 1 or 2 Mbps.

Air travel exemption

2010-07-04T05:56:00.003+05:30

I receive lot of emails that ask me about the air travel exemption from traveling in Air India/Indian Airlines. This will be the post that I will link to.

Write this letter, send it by email as well as regular mail/fax. If you do not hear from Mr. Chhikkara,then call him and he will do the needful. He is very helpful and prompt in response. However, if there are comfortable flights in Air India from your place to the destination and back, permission will be not granted. For example, if you want to fly private airlines for Bangalore to Delhi and back, it will be not allowed. Air India flies five times every day from Bangalore to Delhi and back and there might be no good reason that private airlines should be chosen.

A sample letter.

Joint Secretary,
Ministry of Civil Aviation,
Rajiv Gandhi Bhawan,
Safdarjung airport
New Delhi -110003
Phone: 011-24610372/011-24610364
Fax: 011-24640213
Chhikara.sk@nic.in

Dear Mr. Chhikkara,

Sub: Air travel approval by private airlines for travel for official duty

I am writing this letter to you in connection with the circular issued by the Ministry of Finance, Govt. of India, notifying the usage of Air India for travel on official account by the officials of the Govt. and autonomous bodies.

At the outset, let me thank you for your prompt response in granting me permission to travel by private airlines previously.

I have to fly from Bangalore to Hyderabad on 24th March 2010 and back on the same day to attend an official meeting at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. The meeting starts at 10 am and is scheduled to end at 5:30 pm.

There is a direct flight from Bangalore to Hyderabad, which reaches Hyderabad at 9 am and I will be able to reach the meeting venue by 10:30 am, which is okay. However, the return flight from Hyderabad to Bangalore is scheduled to depart at 17:05, which implies that I have to leave the meeting venue by 3:00 pm. This is not possible because important decisions have to be made in the afternoon and the meeting is likely to end only by 5:30 pm.

Therefore, I kindly request you give me permission to return by a private airlines at 21:00. Thus my travel plan is as follows.

1. Depart from Bangalore to Hyderabad by Indian Airilines at 8:00
2. Depart from Hyderabad to Bangalore by Kingfisher Airlines at 21:00 on 24th March 2010.

Thanking you in advance and awaiting your favorable response.

(old) Pinned post for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc

2010-06-25T21:48:00.002+05:30

This is a pinned post (i.e., this post will always appear at the top of this blog though newer posts appear below it) for prospective faculty to IITs/IISc. Please post all your questions and comments here and please read this site before you post your queries.

This has crossed 200 comments and a new pinned post has been created.

Interviews

2010-06-12T06:22:00.001+05:30

It has been a long week of conducting interviews to select research students. During the last weekend, nearly 200 candidates were interviewed in two days by 4 to 5 committees in the nanoscience center. Throughout the last week, nearly 90 candidates were interviewed in the chemical engineering department. In the department, we have a two stage interview. A screening committee, of which I am a member, interviews the candidate for 15-20 minutes on mathematics and general chemical engineering principles. We select roughly 25% of the candidates and send them to another committee, which interviews them for around a hour per candidate. The selection rate of this committee is roughly 50%. This translates to a ratio of 1:8, which is also the average in the institute.

However, these interviews always leave me pondering with a question. Suppose you interview a candidate who has scored very high (> 90%) in X and XII standard, has a very high AIEEE score, went on to join a good NIT, topped in most of the semesters there, got a GATE rank within the all India rank 10 and the performance of the candidate in the interview is very poor. Would you select him/her? This year (as in past years), we did not select two candidates who fit the above background. Despite a very sub-par performance in the screening interview, we selected them to go to the final interview but they did not make it to the final shortlist. The question is how well would they have performed in courses and research, if they were selected based purely on academic record without any interview.

My view is that we should always select candidates for the master's degree with a consistent academic record irrespective of the performance in the interview. Because there is no strict restriction on the number of seats available, a candidate who does not have a great academic record but performs very well in the interview can also be selected. But that is just my view and opinion and it is something for me to think about as I travel out of Bangalore on Saturday.

Library Budgets

2010-06-11T21:37:00.004+05:30

I have written extensively on library budgets before. My alma mater, Univ California, has once again shown the way to deal with commercial publishers. After successfully dealing with Elsevier, they have now taken on Nature group of publishers. In the chronicle article titled Univ of California tries just saying no to rising journal costs, the letter issued by the Univ of California says,

The letter said that faculty would also organize "a systemwide boycott" of Nature's journals if the publisher does not relent. The voluntary boycott would "strongly encourage" researchers not to contribute papers to those journals or review manuscripts for them. It would urge them to resign from Nature's editorial boards and to encourage similar "sympathy actions" among colleagues outside the University of California system.

I encourage readers not only read the article but also the comments that follow that article. The Nature group of journals responded to this and the UC system was quick to counter their arguments. I found the latter letter to be extremely well written and persuasive. Of course, very very few scientists in India publish in journals like Nature or even review for them, forget serving on their editorial boards, and thus boycott would not work against Nature. However, the same policies could be followed in Indian universities for other journals published by commercial publishers.

The librarians may note the cost paid by Univ of California for the Nature journals. It is worthwhile to note that all the IITs put together (all 15 of them) and IISc will have less full time equivalent researchers (FTEs) than a single UC school, yet we pay several times more. It is an atrocity that we pay commercial publishers for access to journals in case of some new IITs, which have less than 10 faculty. I hope, one day before I retire from academics, that librarians in our country will take interest and try to reduce the library budgets by negotiating in consortiums.

System and outliers

2010-05-15T06:37:00.001+05:30

Harsha Bhogle writes about three reasons for the failure of India's campaign in the Twenty20 world cup,

Not one of these three shortcomings was unknown, and it would be easy to blame the system and the coaches for it. Teachers don't write exams, students do, and eventually they must figure it out themselves, and so we must return to attitude. There is no point blaming the pitches and the bowlers in domestic cricket for the inability to play short-pitched bowling. Gavaskar emerged from the same school, as did Tendulkar, Dravid and even Laxman. Abhinav Bindra and Saina Nehwal are products of such a system. Azharuddin emerged as one of the world's finest fielders. Greatness lies in rising beyond the system. It isn't the system, therefore, but work ethic that lies at the heart of success. I'm not saying India's cricketers don't possess it, it's just that they don't display it often enough.

I admire Harsha for a lot of things, including his deep knowledge of cricket and administration. However, I have to differ from him on this. There is a significant difference in the system where Sachin, Dravid, Kumble or Laxman came from and the current system. At that time, there was hardly any money in the domestic circuit. Today, a cricketer makes much more money from IPL, ODIs etc before they play a single test. This also reduces the time for practice and improving the talent.

Kumble, in Hindustan Times, writes

The pressure during the IPL is very different, as you are performing for your franchises. It's quite intense. Perhaps, the players felt more in their comfort zone when they went back into an Indian set-up and it cost them. It sounds odd but it makes sense. ...Their positive mindset was the difference between them and India, as evidenced by what Dhoni said after the loss to the West Indies. 'We'll play Lanka and go home'. India seemed already resigned to the fact that they were out and that was unacceptable.

The pressure for playing for franchises is higher than playing for India may be shameful and unacceptable but that seems to be the fact. Because the franchises pay more and makes one more accountable, players seem to put more pressure on themselves than when they play at the international level. The difference on the pressure seem to be as stark as a person who works in a startup company vis-a-vis a person who works in the government sector.

What this means is that the system is not geared to produce good players and we seem to depend on outliers to take us through and win events. Thus, it seems that players like Dravid and Kumble are outliers in the system. There are more than 1 billion people in India, 21 million in Australia and, yet Australia have a better win-loss record against every other country in all forms of the game. This does not happen by accident. Their system is consistently producing classy players, players who are "freaky" and can win matches from any situation. If the bowlers have an off-day and the top order fails (like yesterday's game against Pakistan), two players bail you out and the other team are shocked into submission and defeat.

The academic system in India is not different. We seem to be happy with producing outliers (like a CNR) and have no system in place to consistently produce the best talent or convert the talent you see in startup companies to work for government research institutions.

Congratulations

2010-05-12T07:03:00.003+05:30

to Viswanathan Anand for winning the world championship. It was a good game 12, when he defeated Veselin Topalov in 56 moves. Topalov's declaration before the series that he would neither offer nor accept a draw clearly had a liberating effect that resulted in an entertaining world championship final. If the game 12 was drawn, it would have been 6-6, tie breaks would be in place and the rapid format would have helped Anand. However, I am happy that Anand closed it early by winning game 12.

Due to the volcanic ash resulting in flight delays, Anand was tired in the first game, which he lost by making a blunder in move 23. He should have definitely won game 9. Surprisingly, he ran short of time and had to play move 40 in two minutes. He should have exchanged two rooks for the queen but he played Rh8+. Topalov replied with Kd7, which was followed by Anand's Rh7+. I think he should have played Re4 instead of Rh8.

In game 12, people are calling move 38 by Topalov i.e., Qf1 as a blunder but I feel that 31. exf5 by Topalov was a blunder. Anand immediately replied with Qxe4 and he had nearly won. The game continued till move 56 but this sealed it.

Anand thus became the first ever player to win the title 3 times, after his victories in 2005 and 2009. Congratulations again !

Adventurism and Irreverence

2010-05-11T21:30:00.000+05:30

Abi writes about Mashelkar's article on irreverence. So does Balaram, who writes,

Success will undoubtedly need more than irreverence. It will need professionalism, a clear understanding of the virtues of collaboration and cooperation and an honest and rational system of measuring and assessing performance. It will also require commitment, enthusiasm and resilience.

The key, in my opinion, is the lack of an honest and rational system of measuring and assessing performance. In addition, it is the lack of a critical mass of scientists and researchers, as discussed later.

A recent article in Current Science discussed on scientometrics, cricket and Wisden. The author criticizes the administration for the lack of leadership qualities, spells the name one of the greatest batsmen of our times, V.V. S. Laxman, wrongly several times in the article and concludes that the bane of Indian science lies in the use of scientometrics and the lack of leadership.

Cricket is the not the correct sport to be compared with science. The number of people who play cricket in India is much higher than the number of people who play cricket, say, in New Zealand. Thus, if India performs better than New Zealand in cricket, then one is not surprised. Maybe we should compare tennis with science. Except for an occasional star or two at the world level, and with no singles winner at any Grand Slam event, it is similar to Indian science. The lack of winners have not led to people not playing tennis and if there is an occasional Grand slam winner, he/she will be an outlier and not the norm. To produce Grand slam winners (or Noble prize winners) consistently, requires effort, investment and commitment not just irreverence or leadership.

The number of scientists in India is much smaller than the number of scientists in China or USA. So is the GDP alloted for research. Thus, the output of researchers will be proportionately smaller. For example, India produces 650 engineering Ph.Ds per year; the number of Indians getting engineering Ph.D's from USA alone is higher than this. To determine how India is performing compared to the world, one has to provide normalize this activity with size. Such an article has been recently written by Dr. Gangan Prathap, who concludes by saying the following,

For India to reach this league, not only must it increase its investment by 30–50 times but its number of R and D workers by 30–80 times.

Unless this is done along with an honest and rational system of measuring and assessing performance coupled with an "assured" decent job for an average scientist, India's S&T will never become a leader.

Airlines, cost and travel.

2010-05-05T19:37:00.001+05:30

All government employees (IIT/IISc faculty, for example) have to travel by Indian Airlines (Air India) and, if flights are not available, one can travel by private airlines after taking appropriate permission. In a notification dated September 7, 2009, the government announced that one has to travel by economy class only by Air India irrespective of the entitlement. As of April 1, 2010, this has been relaxed and thus one can travel by executive class, if one is entitled. A full professor is entitled to travel by executive class.

The cost of the executive class fare is four times that of the refundable economy class fare. For example, the "normal" refundable fare available for Bangalore to Delhi is Rs. 7000 while the executive class fare is around Rs. 28000. However, many travel by "full fare" economy class ticket, which costs around Rs. 23000 because there are no cancellation charges and, after all, it is one government agency transferring money to another government agency.

So, how good do the airlines fare in terms of number of passengers that transport with the number of aircraft that they have? Have a look at the table below. Currently, their air fares are higher than almost all other airlines. Considering that Air India transports very few passengers because of the fares, especially considering the huge number of aircraft in their possession, doesn't it make sense that they reduce the airfares and make it more competitive?

Board exams and JEE

2010-04-14T18:58:00.001+05:30

The IIT directors have proposed this radical idea based on using board marks for shortlisting to admission to IITs.

Entrance exams were made necessary because of several reasons, (a) corruption in the board (or university) exams (b) lack of any need to real talent to secure above 90% in board (or university) exams in some states and (c) wide variation between the marks of the state (or university) board.

Thus, JEE (and later GATE) was introduced. The first reason can possibly not be serious because these candidates will hopefully be weeded out of the system during the course work in IIT. However, this is not the solution to arrive at a corruption free board exam. The second reason is more serious because the student only mugs up the material and does not really understand anything. This is true in many universities offering B.E/B.Tech and if one solves the last 10-20 years question papers, that is sufficient to get a good score. Thus, entrance exams were supposed to test the ability of the candidate. Unfortunately, due to the predominance of coaching institutes, it is no longer possible. The last reason i.e., of the wide variation in the marks of the boards is possibly more difficult to solve. Students from different state boards perform in a very diverse way in these exams and the statistics show the performance of the students from different state boards are vastly different. Hence a proper normalization will be a tough task. A simple percentile representation from different state boards might look democratic but will not be accurate.

I do agree with some importance given to board exams (maybe as a filter) and then having only one exam for all institutes in India. Board exams should be used only as a filter and the marks should not be counted for admission for the reasons outlined above. However, due to the reasons outlined above, I am not sure whether any radical changes to overcome the "coaching classes" syndrome is a good idea because coaching will now adapt itself to "tuition classes" for board exams.

Journal prices and libraries

2010-04-09T22:17:00.006+05:30

In the article titled, P.T. Barnum's list, the author says,

I am sure that telemarketers and tv evangelists are willing to pay big money for lists of gullible people. I am going to give you a similar list for free, a list of libraries that apparently are either almost entirely inattentive to cost or have so much money that they don't know what to do with it.

In India, most of the big scientific libraries in India form the list. In the article titled,Libraries, Journals and Publishers, Prof. Balaram discusses in detail the problems plaguing our libraries.

In the USA and other developed countries, the increasing subscription rates resulted in many libraries conducting usage studies and eliminating journals that may not have been eliminated in the past. However, the libraries in India have rarely conducted such studies and by embracing the big deal, the Indian libraries have got into a mess that is difficult to get out, especially when the librarians of the most influential libraries are unwilling (and uninterested) to do so. To illustrate this issue, look at the article published in nature.

To understand the academic publishing market, it is useful to examine the competitive characteristics of the two markets in which publishers compete: for readers and for authors. Within the class of Reader Pays publishing, journals fall into roughly two institutional types: those owned and controlled by 'non-profit' professional societies, including some university presses, and those owned and controlled by profit-motivated commercial publishers. As the table indicates, libraries typically must pay 4 to 6 times as much per page for journals owned by commercial publishers as for journals owned by non-profit societies. These differences in price do not reflect differences in the quality of the journals. In fact the commercial journals are on average less cited than the non-profits and the average cost per citation of commercial journals ranges from 5 to 15 times as high as that of their non-profit counterparts. How can such dramatic differences persist? If one automobile manufacturer charged 6 times as much as its competitors for a car of lower quality, almost nobody would buy its product. Those who want only one car would buy the better, cheaper car. Those who want two cars would buy two of the cheaper ones rather than one cheap one and one expensive, inferior one. Journal articles differ in that they are not substitutes for each other in the same way as cars are. Rather, they are complements. Scientists are not satisfied with seeing only the top articles in their field. They want access to articles of the second and third rank as well. Thus for a library, a second copy of a top academic journal is not a good substitute for a journal of the second rank. Because of this lack of substitutability, commercial publishers of established second-rank journals have substantial monopoly power and are able to sell their product at prices that are much higher than their average costs and several times higher than the price of higher quality, non-profit journals.

How does one overcome the problem? If you are a scientist, try reading through the links provided in this website and understand the risks of supporting an inflated library budget. Currently, the library budgets of India to commercial publishers runs into nearly 30 million dollars. To put this in further perspective, the journal budget of IISc in 2009 was 11.5 crores, of which 10 crores was paid to commercial publishers. However, of the 1400 papers published by faculty of IISc and 30,000 references cited by the authors of these papers, only 39% of these were to journals published by commercial publishers.

PS: Thanks to Madhan muthu, the librarian at NIT Rourkela and one of the few people who understands the issues, for the links.

Fundamental flaws with Indian education

2010-04-09T21:10:00.000+05:30

Raju Narisetti, managing editor, The Washington Post, began his professional career by selling cheese and butter for a dairy cooperative but soon realised that his calling lay elsewhere: in journalism. He says

The focus on year-end exams, the static nature of testing based on rarely updated textbooks, the unwillingness to formally recognise and reward intra-year two-way conversation in a course between students and teachers, the fixed set of subject pairs you can take rather than being able to build your coursework, teachers who aren't measured by their ability to attract students to willingly attend classes, teacher education that is ancient in its focus on curriculum development and teaching methods -- the list is endless and yet something that can be fixed because it isn't rocket science.