What after Getting in an IIT or other top Institutions?

There is so much hype about getting in a premiere institution like an IIT  that students, well supported by their parents, spend multiple years preparing for the JEE. And after this herculean effort with a unidirectional focus of cracking the JEE, for many, getting in an Institute like an IIT becomes the ultimate goal, an end in itself.

But of course, it is not an end – it is actually the beginning – the beginning of a four year period of potentially tremendous growth and learning and solid education. Unfortunately, in this tough preparation to get in, this is forgotten.

It often gets worse. Often soon after entering, or even before, one hears statements like “I plan to do an MBA/xxx after my BTech” – a very unintelligent and sad statement as it disallows the four year of high quality education to influence the thinking, when the basic idea of good education is to strengthen the thinking abilities of a person. Institutes like IITs, and some of the IIITs, are unmatched in India in what they offer in terms of education and self growth. Courses are taught by highly learned faculty, all having PhDs, and the students in the class are all among the best in their school class (top few percent of all who applied). Brilliant students and top class faculty makes for a very potent combination for learning and growth. But this unique combination, which exists only in Institutions like these, is effectively wasted if the four years between entering and leaving the Institute are not taken with the earnestness they deserve.

What does this mean for a student?  Actually a very simple lesson: Treat getting in an elite Institute as not an end but the beginning of an exciting four-year phase of learning and exploration. Use the four years well – work hard, learn hard, and hopefully also play hard – and let this learning and growth help you define your goals after graduation and the bigger life-goals. Pre-decided goals will just get in the way – if you find something more exciting to do after graduation, for accepting it, you will have to first “fight” your old goal and maybe even explain to your parents/friends why a new goal is “better”. It is extremely hard to find a career that one can enjoy. There is no point in making it harder or taking these difficult decisions with insufficient knowledge or thought. Note that it is quite OK after 2 or 3 years to say, “I don’t like writing software and don’t have aptitude for it, so I think I will shift to management” as this is a decision based on self-discovery, not based on fashion, peer-pressure, or a general trend.

So my advice to students is that if you are able to get into a good institution like an IIT or some of the IIITs, which have the best faculty and the best curriculum the country has to offer, make good use of the good fortune and let it shape your thinking and development.  After two or three years of education – both from the curriculum and from the life in the Institute – you will be better prepared to make informed plans, which are likely to be more conducive to your style and strengths.  You may even find your passion in solving problems and building systems (engineering), exploring and finding new knowledge (research), or something else. And if you can find a career path that you can enjoy and which leverages your strengths, you will be one of the more fortunate souls in this world.

Selecting the program of study at the UG Level

Summers are a major decision time for students completing class XII – what degree program to enroll in.  In making this decision, I feel that students and parents give almost exclusive importance to opportunities after graduation, without giving sufficient weight to aptitude and interest. In this note, I will focus on including the aptitude and interest in decision making. (Of course, in India, availability also has to be kept in mind, but that is something for which decision is often made through other means) Note: These are personal views in a personal blog – use any ideas in this at your own responsibility.

First about the career possibilities after graduation. While a decade or more ago indeed jobs were only in a few areas and so people chose Engineering or Medicine. But as Indian economy has expanded and has become more diversified, it is clear that opportunities are arising in a host of other areas. And this trend will continue leading to decent job opportunities for people who are good in their chosen area of study. While the number of jobs in some disciplines like CS/IT may be huge, but so is the number of students graduating with these degrees (approximately two-thirds of the engineers graduating in the country are from CS/IT/ECE streams).  In other words, in other areas if the jobs are fewer, the competition may also be lesser. So the main challenge is to do well in the chosen program of study – if one does well possibility of getting decent opportunities are likely to be good.

There are two key factors that decide how well a student does in a program/discipline of study – aptitude or ability, and interest. With these two dimensions, we get four categories in which students may belong with respect to a program/discipline:

1. High aptitude, high interest
2. Low aptitude, low interest
3. Low aptitude, high interest
4. High aptitude, low interest

Clearly the ideal situation is category 1 – a student should choose a program for which she has the ability/aptitude and in which she has interest. Then doing well (at least as best as the student is capable of) is much easier as the ability is there and the student is enjoying the subjects. Amir Khan in “3 Idiots” falls in this category – he has the ability and has the passion for engineering, and so he tops in the class. There are, of course, many other benefits here besides doing well – higher degree of satisfaction, more happiness, less stress, etc.

Equally clearly is the counterpart of this case (i.e. category 2) – students should avoid programs in which they neither have the ability/aptitude nor an interest. Outcome of enrolling in such a program can be disastrous at worst, average at best. Unfortunately, many students continue to fall in this category – e.g. students who do not have an interest in computers and do not have the ability for CS/IT, still chose it, perhaps because that is what people advise them or perhaps because this is the “hot” area.

The other two cases, however, are more complex and probably more common.  A student is in category 3 with respect to a program, when she likes the program/discipline and wants to pursue a career in that area, but is low in ability for it. E.g. a student wanting to pursue a career in writing/engineering/medicine/science, but  not having good abilities for them.  Pursuing such a program is likely to lead to moderate achievements only. But as the student is interested, she is likely to enjoy her profession and job in this area – something which many people, unfortunately, cannot say about their chosen job/profession. A student can safely chose a such a discipline, if she has some aptitude for it (extremely low aptitude can be very frustrating.)

Category 4 is also possible and interesting – the student has the ability for the program/discipline but is not interested in it. E.g., someone may have ability in Maths, but does not like doing Engineering or Maths. Here it is better to distinguish between interest and dislike. If a student dislikes the area, then even if there is ability, there is no point pursuing it. But if a student does not dislike it, and does not have a strong liking for something else, then a program in that discipline can be worth pursuing, as with time one can develop interest and reach closer to the ideal of category 1.

But how does one know whether one has the interest or aptitude. Assuming that the entrance exam/criteria that have been established for the program is well designed (a big assumption!), aptitude can be checked simply by taking the entrance test – if you do well in the entrance test, assume that aptitude is there.  Knowing whether one is interested in a discipline is often hard.  If a student proclaims interest in an area, first it is to be determined if the student genuinely interested in the subject or likes the idea of that subject. E.g. is a student genuinely interested in writing/computer science or just likes the idea of being a writer/working-in-software-industry. If it is only the latter, then the student needs to clearly identify his interests.

Often people fall in the category of “not having any strong interests” – i.e. there is no subject/area/ profession that excites them a lot. Perhaps our upbringing is to be blamed for this, perhaps this is the natural state of affairs – most of us just simply do not know what we really like. In this case, one way to proceed is to identify what one does not like – often we are clearer about what we don’t like, e.g. some people just don’t like Maths or Chemistry or History. If this is clear, then the student can avoid the corresponding programs or  disciplines. And of the remaining choices, perhaps chose the one where the aptitude is the maximum – good aptitude will help in performing well which can give more confidence and often can even generate interest with time, taking student closer to category 1.

As the note indicates, the underlying theme is that one should chose a program/discipline that will put him/her in category 1. If one cannot start in that category then get into the discipline that can take one towards this category with time.

Why have Entrance Tests in Physics-Chemistry-Maths for CS/IT programs ?

Traditionally in India, the eligibility criteria for enrolling in a BTech program is that the student must have taken Physics, Chemistry, and Maths (P-C-M) in his High School (class XII).  As entrance exam for a BTech (CS/IT) is clubbed with entrance in other engineering disciplines, PCM also becomes the eligibility criteria for CS/IT. While the need for P-C-M as prerequisite for enrolling in disciplines like Mechanical, Civil, Mechanical can be argued, for CS/IT, while having Maths in XII is clearly desirable, need for Physics and Chemistry as prerequisites is very weak as most computing related courses do not need expertise in these subjects.

We started checking about the prevailing situation in other countries. The situation in US is as follows. For most University programs, including CS, you need to have completed your high-school, which is a 4-year program comprising class VIII to XII. The high school program of different states varies, but a common theme seems to be that they have to do about 2 years of science, 2 to 3 years of Maths, and about as much English, among other subjects. If we take class VIII to XII in CBSE together, we can compare it with US easily. In CBSE, most students do science in class VIII and IX, but after that they need not do science subjects. However, in class XI and XII students can, and often do, choose to do Maths and other non-science subjects like Economics, Commerce, Computers, Biology, Humanities, etc.  Those students who take Maths as one of the subjects for XII will therefore have 4 years of Maths, and at least 2 years of Science in class VIII to XII. By most US Universities’ criteria, that will make them eligible to seek admission in any program, including CS and Engineering. In UK they look at Maths primarily for CS programs. In Germany, they don’t care what you have done in high school, but they message that Maths is important for CS.

From the experience in these countries, as well from the nature of the program and its courses, it seemed clear that at least for CS/IT while Maths should be required, the science the students do in their high school is sufficient.

We also took a poll of students in our program on this topic. The thinking was that they are still fresh from school and can evaluate how much their school science helped in their learning in our BTech (IT) program. So, we took their views on a simple question: “If you had not done Physics and Chemistry in Class XII, but had done Maths with other subjects, how do you think it would have affected your ability to understand the material in the courses you are taught in IIIT-Delhi”.  The results were: About 45% felt that “it would have made it somewhat harder” and about the same number felt that “it would have remained the same”. A smaller fraction (about 10%) felt that “It would have made it somewhat easier”, while a very small fraction felt that “it would have made it considerably harder”.

We did a similar poll of CS faculty members from IIIT-Delhi, IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, and IIT Bombay. The vast majority of them felt that the level of difficulty would have remained about the same.

It was clear that there was good support to shift to Maths in Class XII as the eligibility criteria, rather than PCM. But why do it? Why not simply remain with the existing method of sticking to PCM? What will be the advantage of doing this? There are a few advantages. One clear advantage is that it can add diversity in the intake, which is even more beneficial for an IT program, in which we wish to emphasize the application domains more.  Second, this shift will also allow tapping students who have not gone through years of JEE/AIEEE coaching, which, as many have argued, have had an adverse impact on students’ attitude, learning abilities, and breadth. I.e. we can get some fresh, not-spoilt-by-coaching, students.

Finally, there is also a need in India to challenge some of the prevailing notions about education, as some of them seem to be out of tune with times and persist only due to inertia.  If educationists will not challenge thoughts/beliefs that may not be relevant for education anymore or may have been founded on incomplete knowledge and need to be re-evaluated, who will?

After all this background study, and a lot of discussions, IIIT-Delhi finally decided to take the lead and shift to requiring only Maths as a necessary pre-requisite for applying for admission to BTech(IT). Of course, the Institute still will have an aptitude test for selection.

Is IIIT-Delhi the right choice for you for your BTech?

Note: This is a personal view, and does not represent Institute’s policy.

I have earlier written a note Is IT the right choice for you, with inputs from various academicians, which gives some views on who should chose IT and who should avoid IT for their BTech. But even in IT, the programs of various colleges and Institutes vary a lot. This note focuses on whether the BTech(IT) program in IIIT-Delhi is the right choice for you.

In a short time, IIIT-Delhi has clearly established itself as an Institute of repute both for education and research. It has a highly qualified faculty and has established some strong research groups. However, being an IT institute, it is rather narrowly focused with only the BTech(IT) program. As the aim of the program is to prepare the student for challenging careers in IT, the BTech program has a strong element of hands-on exercises and projects – in many semesters students do two to three (sometimes even more) projects, each requiring a substantial effort. Along with a focus on practice and projects, as the Institute believes that without sound theory, practice remains ad-hoc, the program also emphasizes theoretical aspects, with most theory and math courses requiring proper understanding and practice.

Overall the program is very rigorous with each course requiring a few hours per week of effort beyond the lectures. While this does prepare the students quite well for challenging careers, it also requires students to put in about 20 to 30 hours per week outside the class. Students who cannot put this level of effort consistently throughout the semester often find it hard to cope, as courses move at a fast pace and there is no scope for slackness during the semester.

What does this mean with respect to the title of this note? Essentially, the program is primarily for those who are looking to make IT as their main career and who are willing to work hard and long with technology as well as theory for building their competence. For such students this will be a good program – I can even say that for such students, IIIT-Delhi probably offers a better choice than doing some other discipline in an IIT, or even CS in some of the newer IITs who do not yet have sufficient faculty in CS.

On the other hand, the program is not a suitable choice for those who do not like the idea of programming or spending long hours dealing with systems and theory – such students may find the program too strenuous and frustrating. It is not a suitable choice for those students also who want a BTech degree for safety/backup, but actually want to pursue something else after graduation, e.g. MBA –  for such students it is easier (and possibly cheaper also) to chose a program which is less intense and requires less effort, allowing them the time needed for their preparation (and yet providing the backup they need).

When time comes for making a choice,  students should first seriously think if IT is the right long-term choice for them or not. If IT is what they want to pursue for their studies and their immediate career after the degree, then they should seriously try to get into an Institute like IIIT-Delhi. Others may find that other options may suit them better.

Collaborative PhD Program

A strong sentiment expressed in the survey I had conducted regarding doing PhD in India was the desire to have global exposure, and spending some time in a research group in overseas (there was also a strong sentiment in favor of spending some time in industry research lab). Though we provided for up to two international travels for presenting papers to PhD scholars so they can gain some international exposure, we felt that it will even be better if the student can spend a summer/semester/year in an overseas lab/institute.  Towards this end, we championed the “collaborative PhD program”, for which even in the first year we got about 10 collaborators.  First the key features of this program:

 

• A PhD student is admitted into IIITD, from where he/she will get the degree. Interview for admission may be done jointly by IIITD and the partner group.
• The main supervisor of the PhD scholar will be from IIITD; a co-supervisor will be from the partner group.
• After doing the course work and starting the research, the scholar will spend 3 months to 1 year with the co-supervisor at the partner group/institution.
• Most publications will be joint between the scholar, supervisor, and co-supervisor.

 

The financial model for this was that while the student is at IIIT-Delhi, we pay, and when the student is with the co-supervisor, the co-supervisor pays.

This program is a win-win for most involved – the student has the benefit of two supervisors, and also gets the exposure of working in another group/institute for some time. The supervisor and co-supervisor benefit by having a PhD student without having to pay for his scholarship for the full period, as well as build linkages and collaboration, which can prove to be very useful in future as international collaborations become more needed.

And this model avoids the complexities involved in joint degree programs, which require academic processes on both sides to converge on a common view, before proceeding – and this is an extremely complex and difficult exercise.

This model of collaborative PhD program is working well, as there is a lot of interest now across the world to establish collaborations in India. This year also we have many collaborations – most of them established by individual faculty members.

 

Completing PhD in Four Years in CS after BTech/BE

(Adaptation of a note I had written a few years ago)

PhD is a unique degree in that it is not focused on acquiring more knowledge, but is oriented around doing research. As research requires many abilities as well as creation of new knowledge, a PhD program is necessarily a long one.

Though many students who join the PhD program are not unduly worried about the time the program takes, there is also a section of students for whom the possibility of a long program is clearly a deterrent. So, even though the careers for PhDs in Computer Science have increased and continue to increase, in many cases, the perceived duration is discouraging these students from undertaking the PhD program.

In this note we will discuss how a PhD program can be comfortably finished in four years, after the B.Tech./BE, if the student is motivated and does not loosen up during the program. It is hoped that this note will help students who are inclined towards PhD take a more informed decision, and not just give up on PhD due to its large duration. (This is not just a hypothetical approach – I have successfully applied it on one candidate. Though one candidate is not enough data, as it was applied consciously and right from the start, it does provide a limited validation of its feasibility.)

There are essentially three phases in any PhD program. (1) Course work to gain breadth, (2) Identifying the area and problem to work on, and (3) doing the research work and writing results. All these three phases are roughly of equal duration – about 1.5 to 2 years each. They are often done linearly, leading to the program length of about 5 to 6 years.

The most difficult part of a PhD program is the phase two – identifying the area and defining the problem to be worked on in the thesis (which includes some a sense of how to approach the problem). It is often this phase in which a lot of time is spent – there is no tight course schedule to help, no deadlines, and no pressure of time as not too much time has passed. With some planning and initiative, however, it is possible to shorten the impact of this phase by doing parts of it in parallel with other phases.

To put this strategy in action, a rough schedule for a 4-year PhD is suggested, specifying what should be achieved in each semester.

Semester 1: Focus is on courses. The candidate should meet with different faculty; find out their areas of interest, and what type of problems they are working on, and try to Identify a faculty member with whom he/she may want to work with.

Semester 2: Do some advanced courses, and/or some “independent study” with the professor. Use these courses and extra study/independent study to engage with the professors to identify possible problem-areas for PhD. Here, it will help a lot if the potential advisor has some pre-defined problem which the student likes.

Summer, Semester 3: Finish the comprehensive (or qualifier or whatever it is called). Do further independent study to focus more on the problem-area, and generate (maybe small) ideas which can be developed further. Start active research.

Semester 4: Focus on developing the ideas and doing related reading. The developed ideas should be converted into research papers for conferences/journals, and where possible submit them for publication.

Semester 5, 6: Refine and/or expand the problem. Or work on some related ideas that got generated while working/reading. I.e. if the problem you are working on is not expandable, you can work on some related problems. Goal: Write at least two papers in this year. (It is better to start writing papers early, as they may not get accepted in the first attempt, and might need revision. As it is best to have some papers to your credit when you graduate, it is imperative that by the end of third year, a few papers have been written and submitted.)

Semester 7: Further development of ideas. Papers accepted in conferences which can be expanded, should be expanded as journal papers. Any pending or new ideas should be developed and papers written and submitted.

Semester 8: This is the closing semester. With papers written earlier, the thesis will be largely these papers plus a few chapters. The thesis writing effort reduces, but it is still a lot. The goal is to tie the loose threads, close pending issues to complete and submit the thesis.

The basic strategy in this approach is to start research work early, and to break the large problem of PhD into smaller problems of writing papers in closely related problems (or different aspects of some problem). In the process, it is ensuring that phase 2 of the PhD process is done in parallel with the other two phases of doing course work and doing research. Besides giving the satisfaction of visible progress in terms of publications, this approach has another advantage – with publications, the case becomes stronger and evident in the eyes of the thesis examiners.

In this schedule, the advisor has to tightly manage the program (assuming that completing the PhD soon is a shared objective of him and the student). This approach implicitly assumes that the advisor has a relatively well defined problem to offer to the candidate. With the problem defined, in the second year, the advisor has to really guide the student in doing the work – i.e. the work is to a large extent decided and directed by the advisor, but executed by the student. The paper writing exercise will also be the same – the advisor will guide the student in the art of paper writing, and through many rounds of the first paper, help the student develop the ability to properly write scientific papers. In the third year the role of the advisor matures to being a collaborator – actively engaged in developing and generating ideas together with the student and writing papers. In the final year, the role should actively become more passive so as to let the student take the lead. The advisor should become more of a bouncing board, giving suggestions and feedback.

This approach is primarily geared towards completing the PhD quickly and developing research doing capability, on which a research career can be built. There are, however, some disadvantages of this approach. Due to its focus on time, it discourages looking at hard problems, which are risky and may require much more time. Also, the approach of having papers in related problems can provide breadth, but it can discourage working at a larger problem for a longer periods where results may come only towards the end. And it can also reduce the development of the problem-finding ability of the PhD candidate, as it relies a lot on the advisor proposing the problem. Overall, this approach  is geared towards someone who treats PhD as a starting stage of a research career where he is learning the skills of doing research, which he will further develop in the rest of his career.

 

Reducing the Duration of the PhD program

The basic objective of a PhD program is to develop researchers. PhD programs across the world vary a lot in the method they follow to achieve this objective. There are programs which have no course work (e.g. in UK and Australia), to programs which have a huge amount of course work requirement (e.g. in some Universities in US).  Some programs have elaborate, and often time consuming, PhD thesis evaluation process (e.g. in almost all IITs and most Universities in India), while some have far shorter with greater reliance on the evaluation of the PhD supervisor (e.g. most Universities in US).

How long it takes a student to finish a PhD in Computer Science also varies a lot – from 3 to 4 years in UK and Australia to 5 to 7 years in many universities in US, as well as in IITs. I have strongly believed for a long time that it is possible to have a high quality PhD program where PhD students can expect to finish their PhD in 4 years. To achieve this objective of completing in 4 years but without diluting quality, we took some key decisions.

• Course Requirement. A PhD should have some course requirement – that was very clear as I had seen that  often graduates of PhD programs with no course work requirement often do not have the breadth and rigor in their approach and are insufficiently prepared for a career in research, particularly the academic career (this is the primary reason why, for example, PhDs from Australia, where course work requirement is minimal, are often not preferred for academic positions in India, particularly when compared to PhDs from US, where most universities have decent course requirements.) After a lot of discussion and thinking, we settled on a requirement of doing 8 courses after BTech (and 50% of this after doing MTech), while keeping the option open to increase/decrease it, depending on the background of the student. This is equivalent to about 2 semester’s worth of effort (though a student may spread it over 3 or 4 semester, as he/she may spend some time doing research even in early semesters). This requirement will ensure that our PhD students will have decent breadth.
• Identifying the area of interest early. It is well known that in PhD programs that take 5-6 years, the first 2 to 3 years are spent in identifying the area the student wants to work in and the problem to work on. We decided that we will require students admitted to the PhD program to have some clear ideas of the areas they want to work in, and we will take them only if we have strength in those areas. Towards this end, even in our fliers and advertisements, we listed the areas in which we are looking for PhD students. By “forcing” the student to identify the areas early, we hoped to reduce the front end of the PhD cycle – the student can then easily identify the group and the advisor almost in the start (our rules require the student to identify the advisor within 2 semesters), and start identifying the problem to work on. This approach has the disadvantage that it disallows exploration, and it does not allow “uncommitted” students,  but we felt that it is better to stick to students who have a clearer idea of what they want when they are coming to do PhD. This seems to have at least one desired effect – students are getting involved in research and publishing early – within the first two years, many of the PhD students of the first batch have published some papers.
• Tight progress monitoring. Given the unstructured nature of PhD, it is very easy for a student to lose a year or two if the student relaxes a bit – it is far too common to see students who spent a few years just reading and exploring, but not pursuing any focused agenda. We decided that we will monitor each PhD student regularly for progress. For this we instituted a rule that each PhD student has to give a seminar once a year, which will be attended by most of the faculty, who will carefully evaluate the progress. (Of course, this also helped improve the communication abilities of the PhD student.) Later we added that in the winter semester, a short presentation will be given by the advisor of each student on progress of the student to the faculty. In other words, the progress is monitored each semester.
• Thesis evaluation. Thesis evaluation can easily take a year or more in many Indian Institutes. This is clearly one area where at least six months can be saved easily from the PhD duration, without any effect on thesis quality. We took the basic structure of evaluation in IITs, which requires the thesis to be evaluated by a few external examiners, and combined it with the use of technology and the evaluation process used in CS conferences, in a hope to reduce evaluation time. Essentially, the evaluators will be like PC committee members who are assigned a paper (the thesis) for review – they will submit their review in 8 weeks, after which there will be a PC meeting (the thesis defense) in which the final decision will be taken by the committee.

With these measures, we feel confident that a good student can comfortably complete his/her PhD in 4 years, without diluting the rigor and quality of the PhD.

 

Starting the PhD Program in Computer Science

As our goal was to develop IIIT-Delhi as a leading research-led Institute in the country, after starting the BTech program in 2008, we decided to start the PhD program in 2009. We felt that this will give a clear message that we would like to be a research-led Institute. Thankfully, by the end of the academic year 08-09, we had reasonable number of faculty acceptances, and a few research groups had evolved. So, we had decent capability in these areas to guide PhD thesis.

For designing the PhD program, the key input I took was from a survey I had conducted earlier of students from IITs at Kanpur, Delhi, and Mumbai on why they don’t do PhD in India and what will they want in their PhD program in India. From the survey a few things we picked some key inputs for designing our program:

1. A strong reason for not doing PhD was its duration and the uncertainty in the duration – good students did not want to spend another 5 to 6 years for PhD.
2. They felt that the stipend was too low, making the opportunity cost too high.
3. They wanted global exposure during their PhD program itself, possibly also of spending sometime in another lab/country.
4. GATE as a requirement was also considered an irritant by some

Reason 2 is relatively easier to handle. We decided to increase the stipend for our PhD scholars from the currently prevailing norms of around Rs 8000 to 15000 to Rs 20000 in the start (which has been further increased to 22000), which can increase to Rs 25,000 in later years – this ensured that their compensation during the PhD days was not to far off from the starting salaries in much of the software industry.

For reason 4, we decided not to insist on GATE as a necessary requirement. We also realized that by requiring GATE, we will be restricted to a very limited pool of students, which will be same as the pool that IITs are targeting. We believed that there were many good students who did not take GATE, but who might for some reason or the other decide to do PhD – good examples of these would be those who wanted to do a job, but after finding out about the jobs are not excited about the prospects; those who wanted to go abroad for higher studies, but finally were not able to do so due to visa, family reasons, lack of scholarship, etc; and those who have been in industry for a few years and now want to pursue higher studies. And for us, it will be best to target this group, besides, of course, also considering students with GATE.

This decision of not requiring GATE is one of the smartest decisions we took, as by this we opened new input sources for our PhD program, which were generally not tapped by other Institutes. And in our first batch of 8 PhD students, only two had GATE. We also later observed that most of the students who did not have GATE are doing very well in the PhD program.

Another very smart decision we took was to focus on BTech for intake into the PhD program. It is clear that the BTech pool provides the best candidates in the largest numbers – this is a fact that has been understood and used effectively by US universities for last many decades as they took BTechs from India directly into the PhD program, but not well appreciated by the more rigid Indian system which expects primary intake as MTechs, with BTechs to be taken only if they are “exceptional”. Taking BTechs also gives the ability to train them better as they will generally do many more courses in the Institute. The key to attract BTechs directly into PhD is to address their main concern about the “risk” involved in making such a long-term commitment. We directly addressed this by allowing an “exit clause” in our regulations – a student can leave the PhD program for any reason, and may graduate and leave with an MTech. This simple method, something that I had argued earlier in IIT Kanpur but was not successful in convincing the concerned bodies about it, provides a clear risk-mitigation to bright BTech students, who are then more likely to consider PhD option.

Then we took some steps for containing the duration of the PhD program such that a good student can finish his/her PhD in 4 years after BTech – this topic will be discussed in another post.  For global exposure we took two steps – one we decided that PhD students will be provided travel support for attending upto two international conferences of repute for presenting papers. Second, we designed a collaborative PhD program which allowed the student a possibility of having an external co-advisor from a top lab/institute anywhere in the world, and spending time with the co-advisor. The collaborative program is also described later in another post.

So, we designed a program that addressed many of the key concerns of the youth about doing a PhD, without diluting the rigor of the program. For selecting the PhD scholars, we identified three basic capabilities that we felt are desired: (1) Strong conceptual/theory foundations, (2) Strong programming skills, and (3) Strong motivation/drive. We decided to evaluate all three aspects – for the first two we conducted tests – a programming test and a theory test. For the third, we relied on the interview. Thankfully we got over 200 applications in the first year – larger than what many IITs get. Finally, after a full day of exams and interview, we selected some candidates, eight of which finally joined us (this number is also very good as compared to many IITs), which gave our PhD program a very good start!

Shifting Life Gear and putting my Money where my Mouth is

Note: This post is almost totally personal.

Very soon after accepting the position, IIIT-Delhi had become a compelling dream for me, which I set out to fulfill with enthusiasm and optimism.  I had maintained a 5.5-day work week even earlier, I now shifted to a 6-day work week on a regular basis, focusing a lot of mental energies in devising systems, approaches, policies. For policies etc, there was an easy route available – we could take the policies of, say, IIT Kanpur, and just implement them. But then it would not have the changes that I had argued for even in IIT Kanpur. So, I decided that, while we will borrow heavily from IITK (and from IITD and IIITH), we will create our own policies, our own program, etc. But this was a big challenge, particularly when you don’t have supporting structure of other experienced people around you.  While taking up the position of Director, I was hoping to keep a good part of my professional life and R&D going. I soon realized that divided attention will not work – if I truly want to help create a good Institute, it will require, at least in the start, an intense commitment to it, even if it meant compromising my modest academic career.

It then occurred to me that the decision may actually be a larger life decision –  a choice between further personal achievement and academic reputation, and contributing to the society.  I was close to 50 already, and I thought that maybe it is time to change my life perspective from “personal achievement and recognition” to “giving to the society using whatever skills I have” – a significant shift of gears in life. I realized that the latter does not mean lack of recognition; it can mean recognition in a different sphere.  So the shift will not be so much in personal recognition, but on how I view life and what I want from it. And the task of building a new Institute seemed far more challenging and potentially satisfying than writing another book or a few more papers.

So I decided (there was really no other choice) to keep my professional activities at a low key for the next few years, and give my attention and mind share to building the Institute. And that is the way it has been for the last two years – for example, I have been able to write only one research paper on my own (my students have written a few more) and have given up the book writing project I had initiated. I also started declining invitations for membership of program committees, even of well respected conferences (for which earlier I would look out for), as they require time and mental commitments that I was not able to afford. And I started curtailing my travel to give lectures etc, unless it helped the Institute in some of its objectives.

Interestingly, writing did not stop – it just changed form. Instead of writing technical books and papers, I was now writing documents, manuals, course description, program development, policies, … and now this blog! I was also making presentations for students, for prospective faculty, for other stakeholders…. Net result of all this: my IIIT-D directory  is now significantly bigger than my IITK directory which has all the files from my HOD days, and from the almost 15 years I spent there! Just the major documents I developed for IIIT-Delhi, some with help from faculty colleagues from IITK, e.g. UG Manual, PG manual, Faculty recruitment related, Faculty handbook, tenure and promotion guideline, BTech/MTech/PhD programs, requirements document for the campus, analysis of statutes, etc will add up to a few hundred pages!

This shift in life-gear and focusing more on giving back, inevitably led to giving in financial terms as well. I had earlier contributed a few Lakh rupees to IIT Kanpur, but that was more out of fondness for the place where I have spent more than 40% of my life (5 years as student and over 15 years as faculty), and a desire to leave behind something there (so I set up a “Best Teacher” award in CSE, and a “Best Software” award for students). Since I was going to ask some friends to contribute to the Institute, I decided to put my money where my mouth is, so I can request with more moral authority. I was fortunate that in the recent past I had got consultancy projects from Nasscom (interestingly the offer letter was signed by the then President Mr. Kiran Karnik, who, as we know, is now IIITD’s Chairman of the Board) and  IBM, and had received projects from Microsoft and SAP, in which there was budget provision for honorarium. Some of these were about to end, some about to start. I shifted them from IIT to IIIT-Delhi and decided to contribute all my consultancy and honorarium from these to the Institute towards creating a corpus to support International conference travel for faculty and PhD students.

Thankfully, the Board decided that all private donations to the Institute’s corpus will be matched by the Institute. I convinced Mr. Shibulal, Director of Infosys, to also contribute towards this corpus, and he agreed to contribute Rs 20 Lakhs (the Directors of Infosys are just incredible in their giving – there are so many projects they are contributing to). So, we had a decent corpus to start with for supporting travel. (International conference travel support remains a challenge in India – more on this in another post.)

In making this largest donation decision, there was another personal factor at play. Though over the years we had become financially quite well off due to improved salaries, royalties from my books, earlier investments doing very well, etc, I still had, and have, a very middle-class mentality about money – always a desire, while spending, to get value for money.  E.g. I still will not buy a Rs 4000 shirt, or a 15000 coat for myself. I still hold that being value conscious is a good value to have. But it can easily be viewed as a miser hiding behind a value, even by you yourself – and this nagged me. These acts of giving to IITK and then to IIIT-Delhi were also to convince myself that the value I hold is sound and that it is not about undue attachment to money accumulation. The ease with which I was able to write these checks also convinced me that the “tight fisted” approach that I still display at times is about getting value for money, not just about money. Personally, these acts of giving have made it easier for me to live with this value, and I have now far less envy of people who are able to splurge on good life styles and good things in life – I realize that they simply have a different meaning of “getting value for money” than what I have chosen.

BTech(IT) Program – Designing the Core Courses

The previous note discussed the overall structure of the BTech(IT) program, and relationship of the IT program with CS program. As discussed, much of the core in a CS program and IT program is similar (in fact, as it turns out, the core we have in IT is a superset of the CS core, as we have included courses like databases and software engineering as part of Core in IT due to their obviously wide applicability in applications.) But what about a common core computing course in the two programs – does it need to be different in IT than in CS?

As the orientation of IT is towards application, while that of CS is towards science, within a course also there should be subtle differences, if they are to be fully honest to the CS/IT orientation (they need not be – as education, though focusing  on a discipline, is much wider in scope and objective, it always can, and indeed should, incorporate elements that don’t fully align with the “major” of the program). The main difference will be in courses that focus around some computing technology/artifact, which many CS/IT courses do, like databases, operating systems, etc.  A CS course in these subjects may focus exclusively on science or technology aspects, and they often do. An IT course on the same topic, however, can  (must?) include aspects of usage of these systems. A good example is course on Operating Systems – while a CS course may focus on internals of an OS and how to design an OS, a course in OS in an IT program, after covering the necessary basics, should also focus on how to use OS features/APIs to build efficient applications. Similarly, in the databases course, while the CS course can focus primarily on the internals, the IT course can focus on building applications, and include whatever understanding of internals is necessary for this.

Another change in courses is on the use and nature of projects. In IT, clearly, there is a far higher need for project work. Furthermore, the scope of projects can be wider – projects exploring the use of technologies/concepts in some other domains should be encouraged (while in CS they may, at best, be “tolerated”). Hence, we encourage project work, and also encourage picking of projects from different domains as well as from outside the Institute.

As we focused on building strong communication skills, we took great care in designing the core courses in the communication stream. The Critical Reading course, a course which is very dear to me, was to expose the students to the “world of ideas” by reading and discussing highly influential essays (some of which can indeed be life/perspective changing) – in the process, besides building reading, writing (students are to write summaries) and presentation (they are to present in class the summaries) skills, also develop deep-thinking skills.  This course discussed classical essays like the “Happy Man” by Russell and “Tragedy of Commons” by Hardin, to contemporary essays from books by Stephen Covey (on effective time management), Daniel Goleman (on Emotional Intelligence), Nandan Nilekeni, Narayana Murthy, etc. I spent an enormous time selecting the essays for the first offering, taking inputs from a wide range of thinkers. Though many students did not appreciate the course in the initial offerings, I remain convinced that this is an excellent course for Engineering students, who often have poor reading habits and do not venture into the “world of ideas”.

Similarly, the technical communications course is structured so that the student, besides developing technical communication skills, can also develop knowledge about an topic, as well as some abilities to synthesize ideas from multiple research papers on a topic and put them in some perspective. The course has three parts to develop three related capabilities. First part is to synthesize ideas from research papers and then write a report and present it. The second part is to write technical documentation/help for some software. And the third part is to do forecasting on any technology or trend – i.e. future gazing.

Another new core course we introduced  was on “advanced programming”. While designing the stream of courses for software, I realized that in most CS programs, we have a basic programming course, then a data structures course (which often is treated theoretically), and then we have courses on OS, Compilers, DBMS, etc. which may have some programming elements (and often they don’t), but are not focused around building these skills. However, all CS graduates are expected to have well developed programming skills. To further develop the programming skills, we introduced the course on “Advanced Programming” in second year, after the student has done the data structures course. In this course, as the name suggests, advanced concepts are covered – currently these include object orientation,  some OO patterns, and concurrency. A hidden goal of this course is to introduce into programming advanced programming environments (like Eclipse), and professional techniques like source code control, use of programming standards, etc.

Most other courses in the core portion of our BTech(IT) program are fairly “standard” and may be found in various programs.