Lab Rats : Infosys

India-Australia education ties still strong

Seema Singh — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:32:00 GMT

Despite the souring of ‘education' relationship between India and Australia, in the wake of recent attacks on Indian students there, institutional ties remain intact.

The first plans of the $10 million IITB-Monash (University) Research Academy, to be built at IIT in Mumbai, have been released. The Academy is expected to be ready for occupation in early 2011 and will have nine labs and can accommodate 350 researchers, though it has already begun taking students.

Acting CEO of the Academy Mohan Krishnamoorthy says there was strong demand for entry to the academy --1500 applications were received for June 2009 intake. Twenty-two researchers were finally selected.

It's great to learn that so many students want to do PhD. The joke in the academic community is that in many subjects, the number of PhDs produced in India is about the same as produced by ONE university in the US. We are talking numbers here, not quality!

But here students have a supervisor in both institutions, must study in both Australia and India and receive a dual PhD from Monash University in Melbourne and IITB in Mumbai. It's hoped the academy will support 350 research projects by 2015, says Krishnamoorthy.

The Aacemy plan

If you are thinking why make such a song-and-dance about a research academy, read this report which says the PhD number in India is growing by 20%, but in China by 85%. And this PhD survey which says why IITians don't go for PhD.

So maybe a fancy building, a foreign tie-up and a corporate management culture (most members of the advisory council are from the industry, with Infy's NR Narayana Murthy as the chairman) will inspire more students!

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Will Infosys be the bellwether again?

Seema Singh — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:05:00 GMT

Information Technology company Infosys Technologies Ltd. is credited with some firsts in the industry, which are too well known to be enumerated here. The reason for today's leadership call is different - setting up of Infosys Science Foundation with a corpus of Rs 21.5 crore, to which Rs 2 crore will be added every year.

It's a great step forward, though it could have been done a few years ago, when the industry was riding the economic boom, and I say this out of ‘greed' as that could have led the corpus to be bigger!

Anyway, kudos to Infy for this path-breaking initiative and I ardently wish that this leads some other business houses or large companies to undertake a similar exercise. I know another Infy co-founder, who now has a holding company with more than $1 billion invested across various start-ups, has been thinking of such a move but until it's announced I won't steal the thunder from him. (I don't know whether the idea is dropped which was very much on the table in the early 2008.)

I really hope that Infy initiative- annual award to scientists of Rs 5 million each in five categoies -- translates into something bigger and different that allows the Foundation to morph into a grant-making body on the lines of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, Lemelson Foundation, Broad Foundation, and a whole bunch out there which is defining science research, specially in the biomedical sphere.

If India has to develop, several areas of sciences (including social sciences and economics) need speedy funding, efficient monitoring, accountability, and a corporate-like no-nonsense approach. We can't always blame the government for it is not a monolith and can't change overnight, though it's making efforts (at least in biotech I know).

Here's an example: Leucoderma (white/light coloured patches) is a skin disease which Jawaharlal Nehru in the 60s mentioned as a scourge to be wiped off India's health landscape. Except for one Baroda research group, hardly anyone works on this. But, as a scientist told me, it needs just about Rs 12 crore (Rs 120 million) to plan and execute a project that could lead to credible drug leads. The Department of Biotechnology has granted Rs 5 crore (Rs 50 million) but since it is bound by its own rules, this means the scientist has to write another grant, go through the funding bureaucracy once again, and spend precious time on something which could have been easily avoided.

Corporatization of science research, and here I mean the operational aspect, is the need of the hour. As far as the prioritizing of research is concerned, the State does have a role, and in many ways, even a bigger role than before, so that we have our head, heart and outcomes in the right places.

PS: Readers, this is not discounting the efforts of a few industrial houses like the Tatas, who have done extraordinary work in funding and promoting science.

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Kissing math

Seema Singh — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 09:42:00 GMT

For long the stereotype that girls are poor (or less interested) in math has ruled our psyche, letting them shy away from this subject even though sporadic studies have suggested the opposite.

In one more instance this week, the most detailed study so far, vocational psychologists from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and other places say that self-confidence instilled by parents and teachers is more important for girls learning science and math than their initial interest.

For older girls, interest becomes central in pursuing a career in these disciplines but early on its confidence building that is crucial says the lead researcher Nadya Fouad. The US National Science Foundation and the National Research Council are pulling out all the stops in tracking the reasons why many girls avoid science and math.

Indian academicians do not want to enter into a gender debate at this point as the overall enrollment in math and science isn't encouraging and they are busy trying to address that.

As NSF and other global bodies strive to reverse the rapidly declining numbers of women in STEM (science, tech, engineering, math), US actress-mathematician-author Danica McKellar has a new book out called Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who's Boss which aims at encouraging math interest in young girls.

Kiss My Math is a sequel of sorts to her best seller Math Doesn't Suck and I think these two engagingly written books could form a good tool in any teacher's arsenal to make math cool.

I must admit I dropped out of pursuing math in higher studies (despite being good in numbers) largely because of this stereotype. But I think math, besides having enormous career prospects (read Why math will rock your world?), is crucial for a way of thinking.

By the way, did you know that NRN Murthy & Infosys have this in-house dictum -- In God we trust, rest all bring data to the table?

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