Silver linings (incl. Exciting Collaborative Research)

Good or bad, “this too shall pass”. This truism can be unnerving to people who prefer some constancy around them, something they can cling on to, something like a buoy, in a turbulent ocean.

But, at the end of April 2009, we were looking ahead at a roller coaster ride whose only promise was that each day would be different from the previous one.

What would it be for someone in a busy hospital bed? Something that will take my mind off from the troubling anxiety of the probable to the possible solace that I had experienced in the past and, if lucky, might experience again? I felt a sense of relief when I told myself that I should continue to do what one had been doing the last 20 or so years - teaching and doing research.

Fortunately, I was on sabbatical leave during the period of my initial rounds of chemotherapy in India and the subsequent continuation of treatment at MDA (MD Anderson Hospital in Houston). So for people back home I was just on sabbatical. This also made it easy to remain in the hospital without worrying about the day to day commitments that I would have had to take care of if I were at IITB.

So much so, many of the students I was guiding - Masters and Ph.D students - were not quite aware of my exact whereabouts. That was a blessing in disguise - because their expectations - in terms of timely response to their work-related queries and worries demanded that I devote my attention to their needs; I was too busy with that to worry about my own problems!

Even now I count myself as being very lucky to have had such a nice diversion during my treatment days. To top it all, I even managed to give a set of (guest) lectures in the course on “Embedded Systems” during this period not once but several times.

In terms of research, those were exciting, even heady, days. Prior to the unravelling of all the La (Leukiemia') related events - in the first 3 months of my sabbatical - SK and I visited Saarbrucken, Germany, working at MPI (Max-Planck Institute) and collaborating with Prof. GW (Gerhard Weikum) and his research team. Along with them I started work on a new problem - tracking and detecting dynamic events from postings in internet news sites (and later in social media like Twitter). MPI’s wonderful research atmosphere and the many winding paths through the surrounding forests helped recharge my batteries in a short time. The many discussions I had with researchers there and the visitors that passed through were invigorating. These interactions continued even after our stay at Saarbrucken came to an end, culminating in two highly cited pieces of work.

I will share with you another, brand new, line of thinking triggered during the rather trying treatment days at MDA prompted in part by my interactions with colleagues and well wishers. I have begun to call it, "A computational approach to energy management", and is the mainstay of the work at "Smart Energy Informatics Laboratory", established after my return to IITB campus. The excitement in this research area, with enormous practical implications, will be reflected in my future blogs.

Why Oh Why

• Why am I bothering to write this? 
• Why would/should anyone bother to read this?

                  Everyone  seems to be happy in their own comfort zones....

                    Why should I invade their private thoughts, 

                       expecting them to reveal their reactions 

                         to what has so far been my personal experiences? 

                     I have spent a lot of time pondering about these and other questions.

After being on both sides of the fence I finally decided to resume writing with the understanding (to myself) that I will continue to write if and only if I believe that there are (new) readers. So this is my plan. Writing something like this requires a lot of discipline, both during the years about which one is writing and also when recalling the relevant years. Some sensitive information will have to be touched upon.

So I decided to write this in the form of a set of musings to myself,  one “note” every few days, sometimes more, depending on interest and time availability. I would like to write about topics that will benefit others.  If there is something about which  you would like to hear from me, or obtain my perspective, please let me know by adding to the comments section of a relevant blog entry below. If I can do justice to that topic I will try to respond.

 

• Why do I presume that my experience will help others ?
  
  My fight with leukaemia (La for short) and the side-effects of its treatment lasted several years. The occurrence of  La is on the rise - if one goes simply by the number of questions that have come to us from friends and relatives of patients affected by it. Globally, WHO statistics also corroborate this. 
  
  
  The same is true for the neurological disease (I prefer to call it ND for now) that I am supposed to have. This was diagnosed in 1987
  
  Neither of these is a so called “Lifestyle Disease”, one that can be cured by a change in lifestyle - say by following a disciplined daily regimen of healthy food, exercise, sleep, etc. Neither can be "cured", at best they can be observed and controlled and even that is not guaranteed.
  
  
  But life has to go on. By sharing my experiences and narrating it in a way that comes to me naturally, my hope is that it will help others - affected by these and other similar diseases and ailments and cope with their problems and also ease the pain for their near and dear ones.
  
  
  Yes, more than the uncertainties and pain felt by  patients, is the agony and helplessness of friends and relatives close to them, people who regularly interact with them.
  
  

  
  The (In) significance of Dates and Times
  
  As time goes by, for the mere mortals amongst us, even the dates and times of occurrence of many seemingly significant events become difficult to remember. So when one is asked to narrate events from the past, quite often myriad of  dates tend to get associated with those events. Reflecting on such cases now I realize that independent of the accuracy of the dates, if the date and time of the event in question seems plausible, one should examine the intent of the speaker / writer in narrating the event in question, and if that is compelling, move on. It serves little purpose to dwell on temporal aspect of the narration, especially if  there is some reasonable takeaway from it. Throwing out everything that is said is like throwing the baby out, with the bathwater.

  This is the principle that will guide my writing in these blogs.

  
  

  A celebration of life and thanks-giving
  
  
  In some sense this attempt is also a celebration of the many people whose good wishes and sincere help contributes to the recovery of someone whom they may never meet but are compelled to help by their humanity and selflessness.  May this tribe grow !
  
  
  How can you help?
  
  
  Please let me know what other topics you would like to hear about. I have a list of my current thinking in one of the notes.
  
  
  
  
  With respect to the topics I have covered already, I would like to hear your views about the tone, style, usefulness, etc.... 
  
  
  Corrections/comments very welcome and will be appreciated. 
  
  

  These blog entries reflect the encouragement from many + the edits and changes suggested by a few wonderful friends including  Jayant, Malini, Nanditha and Sudarshan. My sincere thanks to them. Of course all the omissions and commissions are mine.

  Please include those who are afflicted by the likes of La and ND in your prayers and hope these will be tamed soon.
  
  Finally, 
  --- use every opportunity that comes your way to donate blood and platelets.
  --- sign up as a stem cell donor.
  
  
  Thanks in advance!
  
  Krithi

 

Some return, most won’t -- Implications for Indian Research(ers)

It has been s couple of decades since I returned to India after spending almost equal  time in the US. But even today when colleagues from the US come to  visit me, they ask about my experience being back in India. With most of them, I get the feeling that the thought of returning to India is on their minds and that is where it will stay. The percentage of Indian faculty in the US academia, especially in STEM subjects is much higher now than it was a decade ago, in almost all the universities in the US, independent of their rank in various “polls”. What is surprising is that the Indian representation in non-engineering areas is also becoming significant. Clearly, the number of  Indian students going abroad does not seem to have decreased.

Even though in the 1990’s there was a dip in the number of students going to the US immediately after their Bachelor’s degree, the numbers are rising again, but not close to the large exodus in the 1980s. What appears not to be on anyone’s radar is the number of people who do not go out immediately after they graduate, but leave after t(a|e)sting the waters for 2-3 years. When I did a quick check of students who did their Master’s project under my guidance during  the last 10 years, I was shocked to find out that almost all of them are working in the US -- with a small number opting for further studies.

Yes, brain drain is alive and kicking!

Optimists point out the involvement of many Indian Venture  Capitalists in Indian startup funding, the many incubators at almost all academic institutions in India, etc.  But, despite this silver lining, alarm bells should be ringing everywhere given the net departure of talent from India, albeit in avatars beyond the usual. One can hear some bells making feeble sounds,  their impact not commensurate with the demands of the ground reality.

The government for its part is creating several avenues for Indians abroad to return, or at least “pay back”.

The  entry is the VAJRA scheme which aims “at boosting research work and enabling new and cutting-edge technologies that India now needs.” They are designed to attract PIOs to spend time in India. These are useful but my personal feeling is that they don’t serve the ultimate purpose of having more PIOs back in India, for good. I am not saying that the hosts and the guests don’t feel good at the end of such visits but the benefits rarely linger to affect the host institution in the long run.

The various funding agencies in the government are competing with each other to formulate collaborative  funding opportunities for Indians here and abroad to work on problems that will positively impact people everywhere. I myself have been a beneficiary of such funding in more ways than one and will continue to go after them. But having been in the midst of things, I am not so sanguine about their overall effect, given the real problem on the ground.

And then, there is the much talked about effort  go after "foreign PhDs".
This is likely to cause turbulence in Indian academia if by diktat preferential treatment is forced to be given to somebody not based on what they are capable of  but where they did their PhD.

What are the implications of all this for Indian research and the people involved in it?

The Current situation: We have many good faculty in about a dozen top-class institutions in India. Some of them got their PhDs abroad, but not all.
Most have high aspirations. Now, research-oriented faculty everywhere depend on their students to convert ideas into something tangible. When students do not or can not deliver, the impact of the faculty suffers, visibility of the institution takes a hit and the country as a whole is affected.

If one takes a serious look at even the dozen institutions mentioned earlier, we notice that they do not have enough of any of the ingredients necessary to make a substantial difference in research, be it the number of high quality faculty, quality time for faculty to concentrate on research, high caliber students in good quantity, dependable infrastructure needed for focussed research, etc.

We must take cognisance  of  this current situation and resolve to utilise our human and other resources better.

Recommendations: High quality faculty leads to high quality of the graduating students as well as high quality research output during and after their PhD, provided adequate resources are available for conducting the research. So,

1. Enable faculty to focus on their research:

Today faculty (even in the top institutions) do everything from deciding which research problem to work on to procuring/maintaining  common infrastructure like microphones for their classrooms. These and the many mundane things in between leave very little quality time for sustained high quality research. Hence, there is an urgent need to improve the provisioning of dependable support staff so as to release more time for faculty research.

2. Enable the participation of high quality research students:

Good students form the vital staple for good faculty research. There are many bright students across India who would like to do their PhD right here in India. They have to be spotted and nurtured. But,  for many of them, preparing to jump through  all the hoops during the admission process is something they feel they can do without. As a result, a potential PhD student is lost to some other country and it tilts the scale even further in favour of that country.

Just like faculty are at liberty to choose their area and topic of research, they should also be given the flexibility to scout for and recruit the type of students they need. Institutions should have faith in its faculty in all research-related decisions, including student hiring. Such flexibility will also help in retaining the best of our own students.

Institutions must also work to increase the catchment area for students which currently consists of college teachers, who are required to have a PhD for promotion purposes, researchers in IT companies who do part-time PhDs, spouses of faculty in campuses like IITs, and those who are committed to being in India and accomplishing their dreams. Nurturing not only the faculty but also the promising students in the colleges that feed to the IITs should be attempted in earnest.

3. Enable students and young faculty to pick up the necessary skills to become better researchers, thinkers, writers, problem solvers:

The average student in India starts his/her PhD. work  less prepared -- on almost all fronts -- than his/her counterpart in the West. This means he/she needs more time to get up to speed and the net result is that the student’s productivity and hence that of his advisor suffers. Still, we must expose the younger researchers to the necessary tools and techniques without which they will feel handicapped throughout their careers.

If the above steps are taken, faculty and students can be held  to higher standards when it comes time to promoting them or giving them their degree. Senior faculty  should take the time to understand what the younger faculty have accomplished and promote only the deserving ones. This should be done to maintain quality as well as to dispel any doubts about the impact of giving faculty more flexibility in conducting their research.

Unless we depart from the status quo very soon, the multiplication factor -- the spreading of the intellectual output -- of  academic  researchers in India is likely to plummet even more, compared to that of their Western counterparts.

Given the autonomy the (I)IITs have (had), it is not apparent why these steps have remained elusive; things have changed enormously over the last couple of decades (See “Computer Science Research in India”. IEEE Computer 30(6): 40-47 along with the complete report (1997) to get a “before” picture).

The Indian IT Companies, along with the Indian Labs of many IT companies based outside India have played a large role in the above positive movement.
In addition to increasing to the number of potential jobs post-PhD, they have also helped enhanced the PhD intake. For example, the TCS Research Fellowship program has funded more than 200 Ph.D. scholars since its inception, and awards and fellowships instituted by others (e.g., Intel, Google, etc.) have made doing a Ph.D. in India an attractive proposition.

As a result of such measures, the gradient of the quality and quantity of

research  is positive and that has caught the attention and imagination of

people elsewhere but it has been a mammoth effort to maintain the positive

slope, even if it is vastly overshadowed by China’s. 

Yes, there are some positive signs, but there is a lot more that can be, and

needs to be, done.