CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

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UlanBatori
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CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by UlanBatori »

This thread is to discuss research in Indian academic institutions, generally in the "geek" areas of Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Sciences. Generally aimed at people who usually visit the MIL-forum, but please do not limit to defense applications: that would bring difficulties..
ONLY open-domain research, pls. Opinions on what works well, what does not, why, all generally welcome. Maybe one objective is to get college-bound ppl a better idea about technology R&D. And professor types some idea of what ppl in different parts of the world / different types of institutions encounter.
What is the publication/ review enviroment? Funding environment? Seriousness of project deliverables? Timelines? Expected "productivity"?
An underlying frustration/current is of course the role of Indian institutions in rapidly advancing technology and innovation in India.

One question I had at the start is:
Suppose HAL/DRDO/NAL were to call a Workshop, and seek 30 different Phase 1 proposals from academic institutions, centered on developing 3 or 4 radically different jet engine testbeds inside 5 years. The govt would promise funding to actually build the prototypes at govt. facilities, but the finished designs down to CAD files to be sent to the NC machines, have to come from the university teams. Each team could have input from any number of the 30 research proposals. Each proposal had to try to make an advance in ONE area, crucial to making one or more of the prototypes work. Overall, a very confused and challenging environment, no doubt.

The 4 testbeds could be (just a wild suggestion..)
1. Axial turbofan engine, bypass ratio of 1 to 2, dimensions no larger than Kaveri engine/LCA, T/W >10, thrust class of LCA and beyond.
2. Small turboshaft engine (for helicopters, UAVs)
3. Liquid hydrogen turbopump for GSLV class vehicles
4. Small turbofan/propfan, bypass ratio >4.

My question: Can you think of 30 academic institutions that could do a credible job? That would be a good starting point for discussion.
Last edited by Indranil on 21 Jan 2014 02:51, edited 1 time in total.
member_20292
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Re: Kaveri & aero-engine discussion

Post by member_20292 »

UlanBatori wrote:: I think engineering professors in Indian universities are, with few exceptions, plumb lazy. Underpaid for their positions, but way overpaid for their actual work ethic anbd productivity.
1. DST grants will not pimp a profs salary to the tune that an NSF (or equivalent) grant will an Amru Profs.
2. Best Indians are in Massa. Why don't some of them come back and join HAL as Prof emeritus?
Last edited by Indranil on 20 Jan 2014 22:50, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Changed your post. Don't give out personal information of other posters.
Anujan
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Re: Kaveri & aero-engine discussion

Post by Anujan »

UlanBatori wrote:: I think engineering professors in Indian universities are, with few exceptions, plumb lazy. Underpaid for their positions, but way overpaid for their actual work ethic anbd productivity.
OT but You have the cause and effect backwards Ulan-ji

In massa, the tenure system, reward system and the pay attracts and promotes only the most entrepreneurial*. In india it attracts people who havent been able to get a "real job"**

*By "Entrepreneurial" I dont mean "people who run off and start companies". I mean "people who get an idea, pursue it passionately, run from pillar to post to find money and people to work on it and then find a way to make it successful." This is pretty much what you have to do to get tenured. In desh on the other hand, you get hired, get promoted based on "seniority" - so all you try to do is become "senior". I could write reams and reams about it: A co-talib of mine did his pee-chaddi in physics in TIFR. Curious I read his papers and they had an author-list as long as Hanuman's tail. I made a casual remark "pure sciences seem to have big teams" to which his reply was "what big team? I did all the work. Followed by the name of my professor. Our HoD gets on all papers automatically. Then there is the dean who wanted to make a foreign trip so asked HoD to put his name on it. Then the professor whose lab equipment I used. Then the professor to whom my professor was trying to suck up to. And then the "senior" Pee-chaddi student in the lab because thats how my lab works".

So in this system would you pursue an idea or would you try to become the Dean? As the young ones say these days "dont hate the players, hate the game".

**Yours truly for some random reason or the other had the "good" fortune to tour the computer science department of colleges in such places like "vepambattu" in tamil nadu. The average time an "assistant professor" or "lecturer" spends there is six months or so. Till they find a job in Infosys and then they move. College retaliates by getting the marksheets and degree certificates of these applicants and locking them away in a safe so they cant find another job. Applicants cleverly have two copies of everything and give them one copy and using the other copy to find a job. College retaliates by making them sign a "bond" applicants leave anyway because they know that nobody is interested in tracking them down.

Tell me what do you think is the status of computer science "research" in such places where the ones that stay back are clueless bonded laborers?
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Re: Kaveri & aero-engine discussion

Post by negi »

Downside of having spent some time in west or for that matter any developed country is that we all start comparing the setup/system there with India, see reality is we are not there and probably will never be there. We will get our jet engine just like we did our CUS it's just that we will take some more time :).
Indranil
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Re: Kaveri & aero-engine discussion

Post by Indranil »

mahadevbhu wrote:
UlanBatori wrote:: I think engineering professors in Indian universities are, with few exceptions, plumb lazy. Underpaid for their positions, but way overpaid for their actual work ethic anbd productivity.
1. DST grants will not pimp a profs salary to the tune that an NSF (or equivalent) grant will an Amru Profs.
2. Best Indians are in Massa. Why don't some of them come back and join HAL as Prof emeritus?
Probably OT, probably not, but here is goes for what it is worth.

Actually Ulanbatori's post agrees with my observations and probably they will help answer your questions. I feel we are content with making engineers, not researchers.

I am a researcher in the field of high performance computing. My major professor is counted in the who's who of this field. About 5 years back he wanted to return to India. He started teaching at an IIT for one semester every year. I traveled with him for a couple of years. Here are my observations.

1. India is still not welcoming of professors of eminence who want to go back. Whereas China is setting up labs for them and actively scouting for them globally.
My professor first wanted to teach at IISc. IISc said okay great why don't you join as Asst. Professor. My professor said, please have a look at my history. To this he was told. Yeah, we know, but if you are good, you will soon climb the ranks! Obviously, he did not take up on the offer. He later took up an endowed chair position at an IIT. But he was always treated as the teacher who comes for 1 semester. Everything moved so slowly for him. Masters students did not care to look up who he is. Worse, they thought this guy wants a true thesis, which was a hindrance to get the degree and get out as fast as you can.

2. Money is not the problem. At least not in my field.
Compared to the level of competition and scrutiny in the United States, it is much more easier to get grant money in India. Atleast this is the case in Computer Science and Engineering.

3. Lackadaisical mannerisms of governments and university bodies
India like China wants to be build large supercomputers. In fact the govt. stated that they wanted to build the largest supercomputer by 2015. But there is a huge difference between the stated objectives and movement on ground. My professor along with a NSF chair (of Indian origin) wanted to collaborate (actually help) India to build large supercomputers (It is useless waste of money to just put together large number of cores and get a top ranking supercomputer based on just a few benchmarks, the path that China took, unlike Japan. It gets you fame, not capability). They took a delegation from the US to India for providing know-how and even possible funding for a center in India. Very eminent people who traveled from the US were at the table at the given time. The opposite side of the table was empty. The first guy came nearly 1 hour after the stated start time!

Goal of most students : Placements
At IIT, I lived and talked with about 2000 graduate students living in 3 hostels each having 3 wings. There was minuscule percentage of people who were actually interested in research. All of them were Ph.D. students and they were really good. Most Masters students just cared about what jobs they could get into with the IIT tag.

Undergraduate students are worse. They look down upon graduate students as people who couldn't crack JEE. Their is a sense of smugness the day they walk through the gates of a big institution. "I have arrived!". This is very different in Western universities. The undergraduate here knows that he is the lowest in the pecking order. There are graduate students, then post-docs, then professors, and then really famous professors. They come with a "I need to prove myself" attitude.

I asked the professors what is the institution doing to stimulate the urge of students to get in the research. The first reaction is "Who are you to ask this question?", which I can understand (though this is the first question that famous western universities are jumping to answer). Then the answers came "our students are naturally passionate", "the egress of students to abroad has been arrested in the last few years". I asked them "how are the top 100 students all naturally passionate to study electronics, computers?" and "are you sure that you are not losing your students to financial houses in India now?", there were no answers.

My professor is actually right. He said increase the intake of JEE. At the end of first year, have one round of placements. Get the financial houses and students who want to join them can sit for these companies. Why waste 3 more years, of learning things that they will never use? Teach the rest who genuinely want to become engineers and scientists in their field.

P.S.
1. My professor gave up his cherished dream of relocating to India last year.
2. I am not trying to make an example out of an IIT. It is a great institution, but mostly at making engineers, not researchers. This is my opinion after seeing research institutes elsewhere.
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Re: Kaveri & aero-engine discussion

Post by Vayutuvan »

UB saar, with all due respect, "CFD codes validated over several decades from actual development of working engines, Airframes, etc." is what Fluent brings to the table. So, no it is not as simple as "solving a linear system". Something like that can be implemented in about 100 lines of code (if that) but will never be able to solve real problems where you have fluid structure interactions, temp. induced stresses, non-linearities in material properties (I - being a CS person - know lot less about these than you I am 400% sure), reynolds numbers. Heck one need not even write the code - just get BLAS/LAPACK from netlib (is it?) and one is done

Will write a bit more about what is involved in writing a solver in a few days (hopefully soon). All pieces are available either as open source or in journals, but it is very active field of research in numerical analysis (whose new name is Computational Science).
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Re: Kaveri & aero-engine discussion

Post by Vayutuvan »

UB saar,
invert matrices and solve finite difference equations, hey
By the way one should never never ever never invert matrices (unless one needs certain properties about a few entries of the inverted matrix). Always factor them and solve because

solution to Ax = b should not be computed as x = A^-1 b

but

first compute L and U such that LU = A

solve LU x = b

in two steps: Solve for y, L y = b; Solve for x, U x = y;

Usually A is sparse so that brings in a whole lot of graph theory, reordering etc. A also has some kind of block structure and condition number is important. If A is symmetric (which is the case in most structures problems) then one can bring in some linear algebra and eliminate lots of unnecessary computations. Then you have preconditioned methods which have the potential to solve very very large (think 1 billion variable) problems if one wants to do the simulation of the entire frame high Reynolds number (Turbulent flows).

And of course how do you know the numbers that one gets out of these solvers are reliable? So, back to build prototype, Wind tunnel verification, destructive testing, passing NAFEMS test suites. Composite materials bring in their own set of problems along with mode shapes.

Also engineering intuition as to what level of error is acceptable in the numerical simulation. Usually the stopping thresholds are set very tight so that at least one removes the error accumulatoin in the outside non-linear loop which could be run several times (even 100s of times) to converge. And you have to take into account shape and material property optimization. There could be side constraints, sub-assemblies, buckling.

If one throws the 100 line of code at any of these problems, it is a dead duck in the water - it would take months if not years get a solution. Throwing MPP/clouds/distributed computing all are going to have an inverse effect of parallel speed up.
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CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by UlanBatori »

Will post question here. A couple of years ago I saw an ad for a Pratt&Whitney Chair at IISc. I assumed this was a United Technologies move to counter the unfettered advantages that GE was getting in India, and start getting a piece of the engine Halwa. But I also HOPED that IISc folks would use the position to swiftly build a core of basic research that will take Indian propulsion technologies fast forward.

What came of this? Of course no miracles expected in 2 years (or was it 1 year) but just checking.
UlanBatori wrote: Commercial see eff dee codes are GIGO, and I make that fatwa with total authority and hard experience. BUT.. one can develop one's OWN See Eff Dee code, and put in one's OWN fudge factors and match known results very well. The difference is small but important: here you KNOW where you are cheating.

I think for turbomachine development, good See Eff Dee is a must, to get beyond 1-D Station Analysis and 2-D Cascade etc. Rotational effects are first-order, and no one has a real clue about the development of lift and drag on a swept, curved, cambered, twisted low aspect ratio blade with transonic high temperature flow. So who in India is working on that is my pooch.

And to get the blood flowing, I will state my other fatwa based on 30-year frustration: I think engineering professors in Indian universities are, with few exceptions, plumb lazy. Underpaid for their positions, but way overpaid for their actual work ethic anbd productivity. This is why India is unable to develop good engines, or good anything where true world-beating innovation is needed. Obviously in politics and music people are more hungry, hence we have world-beating naxalites and playback singers.

Point is, if you start work on a REALLY FAR-OUT concept today, you won't face any ITAR or anything, because no one has thought to mark that technology or believes it will work. Then you get far enough ahead with papers etc. and then you are not subject to ITAR etc because they are trying to steal from you, nothing gained by refusing to sell to you. This simple fatwa has proved impossible to drum into the cranial cavities of Indian profs. It's always:
Eej NAJA doing this onlee?
as criterion for whether they should exert to get off their musharrafs. Sorry, OT, but back to the P&W pooch...
UlanBatori
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by UlanBatori »

Commercial see eff dee codes are GIGO, and I make that fatwa with total authority and hard experience. BUT.. one can develop one's OWN See Eff Dee code, and put in one's OWN fudge factors and match known results very well. The difference is small but important: here you KNOW where you are cheating.

I think for turbomachine development, good See Eff Dee is a must, to get beyond 1-D Station Analysis and 2-D Cascade etc. Rotational effects are first-order, and no one has a real clue about the development of lift and drag on a swept, curved, cambered, twisted low aspect ratio blade with transonic high temperature flow. So who in India is working on that is my pooch.

And to get the blood flowing, I will state my other fatwa based on 30-year frustration: I think engineering professors in Indian universities are, with few exceptions, plumb lazy. Underpaid for their positions, but way overpaid for their actual work ethic anbd productivity. This is why India is unable to develop good engines, or good anything where true world-beating innovation is needed. Obviously in politics and music people are more hungry, hence we have world-beating naxalites and playback singers.

Point is, if you start work on a REALLY FAR-OUT concept today, you won't face any ITAR or anything, because no one has thought to mark that technology or believes it will work. Then you get far enough ahead with papers etc. and then you are not subject to ITAR etc because they are trying to steal from you, nothing gained by refusing to sell to you. This simple fatwa has proved impossible to drum into the cranial cavities of Indian profs. It's always:
Eej NAJA doing this onlee?
as criterion for whether they should exert to get off their musharrafs. Sorry, OT, but back to the P&W pooch...
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by Vayutuvan »

UB sir:
An initiative under the auspices of GoI DoE is getting off the ground by some really well-known names. In fact when you mentioned ITAR in the Kaveri thread my first thought was you are talking about this initiative. Little did I know about the older ITAR till I searched the web and went :lol: at the audacity of the name of this initiative.

Information Technology Research Academy (ITRA)
ITRA is a National Programme to build a national resource for advancing the quality and quantity of R&D in Information & Communications Technologies and Electronics (‘IT’ for brevity) while institutionalizing an academic culture of IT based problem solving and societal development by closely collaborating teams of researchers and institutions having expertise in the different aspects of the chosen research or application problems. The ITRA will focus on strengthening the nation’s competitiveness by expanding the R&D base in IT, especially by leveraging the large IT education sector and IT users such as government, industry and other organizations.

Initially ITRA operate as a Division of Media Lab Asia which is a not for profit organization of Department of Electronics & Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
One of the areas they want to look at is CFD/Computational Science and evolve into something like NSF.
Last edited by Vayutuvan on 21 Jan 2014 02:44, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by negi »

30 aa ? There are not even 30 good Aerospace ( where even theory is taught upto a decent level) engineering colleges in India leave alone the kind which can take a cut at designing a Kaveri class jet engine.
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Re: Re: Kaveri & aero-engine discussion

Post by UlanBatori »

That may not be quite correct. I count 5 IITs with aero B.Tech programmes (not a pre-req. for propulsion-related research, BTW, but may help slightly): IITB, IITD?, IITK, IITC, IITKgp. + IISc Blr. Plus the other IITs like Guwahati, Gandhinagar, Benares? Plus the new Space Science institute in TVM. Plus how many engg. colleges like Guindy in Chennai? I am sure each NIT is capable of participating, how many of those are there? So the number of institutions is there.

Question then is how many can put together a research proposal. I was hoping for some comments from ppl in these places.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by Indranil »

Forgive this nanha moderator. I had to swap the contents of a few posts around to have some continuity in the discussion. Fact is, I don't know how to change the time-stamps of your posts (I don't think it is possible :-o ). Hence the swapping of the contents.

I hope you guys don't mind. (Of course, one of the sentences of UB sir is still quoted before it is stated :wink: ) ).

Please carry on.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by UlanBatori »

Maybe I can clarify my own thinking better by saying this. Back in the "old days" people thought of Research as what won Fame and Nobel Prizes. Madame Curie, Jagdish Chandra Bose, C.V. Raman, Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein, all inspired awe and admiration, and people read book on their lives, and convinced themselves that they too wanted to be like that onlee. So they went into Research.

There was little thought or understanding on what drove this sort of work. It was just that someone was immensely bright, all teachers were in shock & awe, they won Gold Medals, and the Guvrmand just took them away and put them in gilded cages and palaces and gave them toys to play with, and voila! They came up with Nobel-Prize-winning discoveries and lived happily ever after.

But reality was always different. Pasteur and Curie and Bose all went into research because of what my CFD guru called "Da Fire In Da Belly" which is always the greatest motivator of research. Apart from the sort of motivation that Archimedes experienced. This fact never came through those books, or from our elders. That for people in research, that is their livelihood. They survive on putting their brains to work, and then doing very very hard work involving hajaar-hajaar hours of frustration and failure before they find the one small opening to drive through to the next obstacle.

**************************

When India became independent, research became immensely important, because there were problems to be solved, and suddenly there was no one to tell us what to do (of course one could just imitate what the Bhesht oph The Whesht did, still can..). The Guvrmand had a few urgent priorities: Dams for water. Better agricultural techniques to ward off famine. Nuclear energy. Bullets and guns to keep the Pakis away, and then tanks and fighter planes. And rockets and missiles. And spacecraft.

As the enemies closed in around us, these last ones became immensely urgent. Arms Embargoes, Sanctions... and just plain rip-offs of needed spare parts and ammo. Plus ever-fancier weapons in the hands of the enemy.

So there was urgency. A few scientists were called in. A few hush-hush projects were started in universities and research institutes like TIFR, BARC, VSSC, IISc, IITs. I remember a guy in my bro's class (many saal ahead of mine) in IIT or IISc - the hush-hush news was that he was developing an Indian version of a napalm-like goody. When his MS thesis was done, he was taken away to lead the setting-up of a plant.

That worked, when it was some gizmo or process that had to be replicated. Train someone to do it, tell them to head a project, give them leeway and some support..

****
Then came the discovery by American professors, that Indian graduates could actually read, write, count and even think. And rapidly, it became first a small secret, then widespread knowledge, that one could get an education and get paid by going to grad school in the west. Suddenly Research was equated to Go West. The success metric was PhD, Marry a Medical Doctor, make a few babies, then retire, start a restaurant, sit back and bellyache about the Guvrmand and go to weddings. The Nobel Prize was, well... some people still went after it.

*************************

But there never has been a widespread, formally-organized Defense/Govt academic research program in India, IMHO. There is a Ministry of Science & Technology, which is supposed to be magically able to read and decide on "proposals" sent in by researchers, and then stamp out funding to these researchers. Very ad hoc.

This is at the root of the problem. The threshold to get to the attention of the Ministry may be set too high for aam asst profs to overcome, so they either tag on to other well-wired profs and deans, or just don't bother at all.

As far as I know, the new Ministry of Science & Technology programs also do not appear to have any particular drive or focus other than "give out money". No coherent long-term drive towards grand objectives.

Which brings me back to the question about the P&W Chair and the propulsion famine in India. India is very much a net importer, entirely dependent on imports, for propulsion. This has to change. How do you achieve that?

Similarly with energy independence. The GSLV embargoes imposed by the AmirKhans finally drove ISRO to shed their long inertia about cryogenics (when I wanted to work on that back in the 1800s, they said: "We are poor countree onlee! We are going with Solid Bropulshun onlee! You go to AmirKhana and talk to Stephens Bolytechnic!)

Now India knows how to build a decent cryogenic third stage LH2-LOX engine, along with its turbopumps. Also have handled quite a few tank-loads of LH2 and LOX without blowing up anyone. So why not take a bold initiative towards LH2 Supersonic Transport jet engines? Why wait for the West to do that? Also, why not investigate hydrogen economy technologies for energy at the ground level?

Same for solar, biogas, you name it. Where is the focused drive that generates real R&D?
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by member_20292 »

^aayega saar. This weekend I was at IITD attending talks by its Profs. While not earth shattering, they were pretty good research wise.

But mentality is always : this topic is hot now, so lets put in a little of this ingredient and do it.

NOT

what are the important problems in my field and how do I solve them?
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by Vayutuvan »

UB ji: If you pick up the phone and call Prof. Ahuja, I am sure he will listen to what you have to say. You might have already met him (or may be not - he works in Image Processing, Coding Theory, and High-level Computer Vision and very well known). He was the founding director of IIITH.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by UlanBatori »

Well... no phones in Northern Himachal.. :mrgreen:
Getting back to the propulsion thing. Maitya has listed a whole set of advancements that are needed. Wonder how to turn that into a coherent program, at least on a make-believe basis. Obviously no one group can break through all of those, but one might be able to list the items, and put next to each one, a list of entities who might be able to tackle it.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by SaiK »

Under the NCCRD [UGC], IISc propulsion does flow models but largely for rocket engines [ISRO related works].

but I guess, you may want to look at these labs where DRDO propulsion panel links to:
http://drdo.gov.in/drdo/boards/ardb/pro ... ojects.htm
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by UlanBatori »

THANKS! What a resource! Though I must say they do keep up the "Institutional Memory". Projects by Prof. T.K. Bose, IITM? Wow! That's at least 35 yrs ago!!

Which suggests part of the issues. Not many projects, for a need so great and a nation so large!
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by SaiK »

saab, it is a honor and privilege to hear your concerns.. and i hope you can influence the research clout and energize them to some quantum levels. worst case from my pov: would be the triggers for funding and keeping the programs alive. onlee best wishes to our institutions to not succumb to both babooze and firang pressure, and get good guidance from people like you.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by shiv »

UlanBatori wrote: One question I had at the start is:
Suppose HAL/DRDO/NAL were to call a Workshop, and seek 30 different Phase 1 proposals from academic institutions, centered on developing 3 or 4 radically different jet engine testbeds inside 5 years. The govt would promise funding to actually build the prototypes at govt. facilities, but the finished designs down to CAD files to be sent to the NC machines, have to come from the university teams. Each team could have input from any number of the 30 research proposals. Each proposal had to try to make an advance in ONE area, crucial to making one or more of the prototypes work. Overall, a very confused and challenging environment, no doubt.

The 4 testbeds could be (just a wild suggestion..)
1. Axial turbofan engine, bypass ratio of 1 to 2, dimensions no larger than Kaveri engine/LCA, T/W >10, thrust class of LCA and beyond.
2. Small turboshaft engine (for helicopters, UAVs)
3. Liquid hydrogen turbopump for GSLV class vehicles
4. Small turbofan/propfan, bypass ratio >4.

My question: Can you think of 30 academic institutions that could do a credible job? That would be a good starting point for discussion.
Shri/Smt/Kum UlanBatorji, I have no specific answers to your questions but over the years, having read little titbits of news items of which engineering colleges seem to take part in little programs where the DRDO has requested collaboration, I have come across the names of a few institutions outside of the usual "IIT" list that one hars about. I can only name a few Bangalore institutions and I suspect there must exist similar set-ups in other places such as Poone, Chennai, Delhi. From time to time I read names like RV Institutions, PES Engineering college, Ramaiah and a couple of others. There are all privately owned and run colleges whose seats are lapped up first by toppers who generally also get IIT/BITS Pilani seats as well in the rank lists but do not go to IIT for various reasons.Funding seems to be no issue and they attract regular and visiting faculty of the "best there is" kind.

These are the types of places that one would need to look at. I think a dedicated defence/strategic research body should throw in funds towards such institutions because the basic human material can be found there. I think faculty are given great salaries and it would be easy to find people who would be happy to get a fat salary to live in Bangalore rather than a fat salary to live in Kharagpur.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by NRao »

Shri/Smt/Kum UlanBatorji,
Or abcdefgh would suffice. - (edited to avoid misleading - JE Menon)
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by UlanBatori »

Copied from other thread, a post by vina
vina wrote:
[Potential drawbacks of Compressor Contra-rotating Rotor Stages]
Couple of small fly-in-the-ointment points though:
1) How do we actually implement it - by introducing a pair of counter-rotating concentric shafts is it? So one counter-rotating concentric shaft corresponding to the HPT-driven shaft and another similar one for the LPT-driven shaft, is it?
Do we possess the level of manufacturing maturity required to come up with such a complex gearing mechanism etc - we are no US after all!!
Plus what about the weight-penalty of introducing new shafts etc (maybe not of the same scale as that saved by removing the stators, but still there'll be considerable weight penalty).
Zimble onlee.. Cut & Paste, Beg & Borrow, and rebersh yin jin ear what you have. I mean, we already have the Pigasses oops Pegauses engine from the Harrier, which uses a contra rotating spool. Cut paste and copy that yin-jin-earring from that !

But that is too late for the Kaveri. Maybe for the next YinJin. The priority should be to get the current Kaveri to upto design specs, for that the problem is materials. Get that in , the rest will fall in place.
Exactly. Long back, after the Battle of Khemkaran, the guvrmand distributed hundreds of Patton tanks, armored paki-carriers, etc to the deserving engineering colleges and public parks of India which were then (and now) in dire need of pakistans. Very educational: first time I was able to see one of those fine machines.

So what stops GOI from donating some very "used" injuns or at least the spools thereof, to poor deserving colleges, to set up a lab where they do measurements and See Eff Dee predictions and structural resonance prediction using Element-e-Phinite on the performance of such things? Just one working HP compressor (lighter than LP compressor) with a hefty electric motor (or even an IC engine) to run it, could work wonders in the hands and minds of a few deserving profs and ishtudents. I am sure such things exist in the various Maintenance shops and diploma institutions around the country, but the Modern Generation of engineering students (and faculty) in India may look down upon things that require lifting a pipe wrench etc. This is an obvious way to "know" how to solve the myriad practical problems that keep theory from working in practice.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by vic »

I don't major Universities have set up, labs, equipment and experience to start ab-initio Gas turbine work. We must do pairing of Universities with Pvt Sector and PSUs who are working on some or other type of Turbine projects and then give them projects to compete on. My list:-

BHEL + IISc
NAL+BHU
L&T+IIT, Delhi
GTRE + IIT, Mumbai
HAL + IIT Kharagpur
TATA+ IIT, Madras
Reliance+IIT Hyderabad
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by member_20292 »

UlanBatori wrote:
So what stops GOI from donating some very "used" injuns or at least the spools thereof,
1. Too busy with work/ will not take initiative outside of work for fear of being labelled non-conformist and then chucked out of social acceptance for said non-conformity.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by sattili »

shiv wrote: Shri/Smt/Kum UlanBatorji, I have no specific answers to your questions but over the years, having read little titbits of news items of which engineering colleges seem to take part in little programs where the DRDO has requested collaboration, I have come across the names of a few institutions outside of the usual "IIT" list that one hars about. I can only name a few Bangalore institutions and I suspect there must exist similar set-ups in other places such as Poone, Chennai, Delhi. From time to time I read names like RV Institutions, PES Engineering college, Ramaiah and a couple of others. There are all privately owned and run colleges whose seats are lapped up first by toppers who generally also get IIT/BITS Pilani seats as well in the rank lists but do not go to IIT for various reasons.Funding seems to be no issue and they attract regular and visiting faculty of the "best there is" kind.

These are the types of places that one would need to look at. I think a dedicated defence/strategic research body should throw in funds towards such institutions because the basic human material can be found there. I think faculty are given great salaries and it would be easy to find people who would be happy to get a fat salary to live in Bangalore rather than a fat salary to live in Kharagpur.
Welcome back Shiv ji :D , I have been longing to read your posts again

[OT Alert]
Bit of OT but I would like to share a personal observation. More than a decade ago, I used to stay in Paying Guest accommodation on Wind Tunnel road in B'lore. Due to its proximity to HAL, many students used to come and stay in that place for 2-3 months to complete their B.Tech projects in Aeronautical Engineering. On one occasion a chap came from IIT-Bombay, he is the topper of his class and a bright energetic person. His alumini is encouraging him to come to US for masters while this chap don't want to leave his parents and go to a distant land. His project guide in HAL gave him a task which this chap completed in a week and was eager to do more. However his guide or non of the HAL folks are ready to give him anything more. Frustrated this guy completed all the projects given to other students from other colleges (about 12-13 projects). Finally he succumbed to his seniors persuasion and decided to go to US. Before he left he told that the slow pace of work in HAL will kill his enthusiasm hence going to US. There could be reasons why HAL cannot give more critical projects to these young chaps.

We need institutions which will actually harness the energy in young talent and guide them on the path of research. As Shiv ji said there is no dearth of colleges other than IITs that has talent and facilities. Even an engineering college in the area that I stay boasts the following
is one of the few colleges in Karnataka who can boast of Aeronautical Engineering branch and certainly the best aeronautical engineering colleges in Bangalore.

The department has well equipped laboratories such as Aerodynamics lab (with a modern wind tunnel), Aircraft structures lab, Propulsion lab and Modeling & Simulation lab to name a few. Very few aeronautical engineering colleges in Bangalore has lab infrastructure as we have.
I think the model that should be adopted for the Aeronautical development should be that of DRDO-RCI (Research Center Imarat). Focused on basic research in cutting edge areas. We know how successful RCI is in realizing several technologies through their research. When I saw the NDTV reports on K-15(B-05) missile launch, its heartening to see so many young scientists on that ship dancing as their hard work paid off.

We need to reverse the trend of students coming to HAL or ADE asking for projects, rather these institutions should be going to campuses and conducting tournaments, challenges etc to find talent and nurture them.
[/OT off]
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by UlanBatori »

[deleted]
Last edited by UlanBatori on 22 Jan 2014 21:53, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by shiv »

UlanBatori wrote:
Exactly. Long back, after the Battle of Khemkaran, the guvrmand distributed hundreds of Patton tanks, armored paki-carriers, etc to the deserving engineering colleges and public parks of India which were then (and now) in dire need of pakistans. Very educational: first time I was able to see one of those fine machines.

So what stops GOI from donating some very "used" injuns or at least the spools thereof, to poor deserving colleges, to set up a lab where they do measurements and See Eff Dee predictions and structural resonance prediction using Element-e-Phinite on the performance of such things? Just one working HP compressor (lighter than LP compressor) with a hefty electric motor (or even an IC engine) to run it, could work wonders in the hands and minds of a few deserving profs and ishtudents.
The only things that stop them are
1. Inability to think laterally as you do
2. Imagining that gobar gas and water filters are all that this country needs to make.

Hundreds of old aero engines must be lying about and really need to be distributed. I can tell you that a dead nonworking item related to a student's area of interest can be very stimulating - I say this from personal experience. As a young medical student all those picked bottles of preserved human heads, limbs and organs fascinated me so much I would spend hours going around absorbing stuff that sticks with me 40 years later.

There is a joke I heard - teacher tells her students, "I will give 5 Pounds to the one who tells me who was the greatest man on earth". The Irish girl says St Patrick. The Buddhist boy says "The Buddha". Abdul says "Mohammad". Teacher then asks little Jignes(h) . Jignes says "Jesus Christ" and gets 5 Pounds. Teacher asks "But aren't you Hindu? Why did you say Jesus?". The boy replies, "I know Krishna was the greatest, but for Jignes, bijness is bijness."

The point is that India has always used "bijness" buddhi to take the attitude that whatever is available for sale can simply be bought and it took decades of denials and sanctions and craploads of money to make someone come up for air and say "Duuh?"

You cannot buy creativity and originality. That needs to be stimulated and your suggestion is a great one IMO.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by member_20292 »

shiv wrote:
There is a joke I heard - teacher tells her students, "I will give 5 Pounds to the one who tells me who was the greatest man on earth". The Irish girl says St Patrick. The Buddhist boy says "The Buddha". Abdul says "Mohammad". Teacher then asks little Jignes(h) . Jignes says "Jesus Christ" and gets 5 Pounds. Teacher asks "But aren't you Hindu? Why did you say Jesus?". The boy replies, "I know Krishna was the greatest, but for Jignes, bijness is bijness."
:rotfl: :rotfl: :)
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Re: Kaveri & aero-engine discussion

Post by Viv S »

Anujan wrote:OT but You have the cause and effect backwards Ulan-ji
.
.
.
:rotfl:

This was one of the most hilarious posts I've read on BR.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by Virupaksha »

Shiv used to use a word for what is spewed on this thread, - Fractal recursivity.

IITs were NOT established for research, they were established because India had NO engineers. They were established to provide a reasonable number of decent engineers so that when a HAL or ISRO, needed an engineer, there could be one. Research was supposed to be done in them.

All these are well and good, one thing missing - money.

and since it doesnt grow on trees, well.

True research projects, except in philosophy need a LOT of money. Ever saw the schedule of a typical IIT professor in 1990s and the schedule of a MIT professor? Ever saw their funding and their alumni trusts.

You want to give away old engines to institutes, good. Say, one of the students breaks a gear or some such part. Who would replace it, the student cant, while the college has no funds and decides to let the engine to rust and thus taking its place in the back of a lab where no one sees it.

Remove the NSF, NASA and defence grants to colleges and then I would like to see research in these places. The mean size of an NSF grant is 1,56000$, in indian rupees, it is 1 crore Rs. I would like to see our students experimenting in competetions like SAE Baja, but dont even get me started on the funding it requires. One university funding was typically hundreds of thousands.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by UlanBatori »

This was one of the most hilarious posts I've read on BR.
But it is too true, those are real constraints. This is where it is "designer research" - research done because you have to be seen to be doing research, not to actually achieve any progress. As in
We are doing genetic algorithms also onlee!


Sorry, I don't agree that lack of money for R&D is anywhere the issue. True that present grants may not be sufficient to make real progress, but that may be because there is no serious system of saying: We NEED this problem solved, you tell us how and what it takes and let's figure out how to do it. The technical sponsors in the US have a tough job selling their research "portfolios" to the upper levels, and they in turn to the Agency Head, and they in turn to Congress and POTUS. But... they just do it.

My friends in DRDO and other places say that in India it is more like the Soviet system: they just find some hot-shot (based on caste, family, in-law of Mantri etc in India, which is the problem) and make him an Akademician, and then pour tons of rubles on him ... and expect results or else.

I think the problem of rocket motor stability was an example where the GOTUS (and I am sure the Soviets) spent hajar karod $$ over some 50 saal to try to "solve" the problem. Generated very many Pee Ech Dee theses too. Eventually some of the veterans left to pursue devices where they were sure to CREATE instability because that was so much easier than trying to prevent it. But they had a very focused effort, they brought the researchers together every 6 months or so to rip into each other like sharks (I have been slide projector operator at one of these). It was like being on the BRF New Clear Deal thread. :eek: The "moderator" was a Navy Commander who had probably been grounded because the sharks complained about cruelty. And he was probably the mildest person there. But they sure made a lot of progress - and when ppl claimed that it was slow, what are we getting for the $$ we gave you, etc, the response was: "Each university research project is less than the cost of one Navy shell. Maybe about 1/100 the cost of one failed launch of a missile". This is the value of university R&D relative to Defense system acquisition, EVEN WHEN the acquisition is domestic, not imported with a factor of 5 overcharge.

There is a difference between this sort of national-level research, and R&D done for industry. The latter is tied very much to relatively short-term profit. The former is not. So the former needs other forms of "motivation" to get progress.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by Vayutuvan »

Exactly the reason why not much R in Industrial R&D. My observation (US context) is that most R is done in academia with no application in sight. May be 1% at most will get to the market and 5% of that 1% becomes a product of middling success. Money flows like water and just like water wastage in the US money is also wasted.
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by Kartman »

UlanBatori wrote:Will post question here. A couple of years ago I saw an ad for a Pratt&Whitney Chair at IISc. I assumed this was a United Technologies move to counter the unfettered advantages that GE was getting in India, and start getting a piece of the engine Halwa. But I also HOPED that IISc folks would use the position to swiftly build a core of basic research that will take Indian propulsion technologies fast forward.

What came of this? Of course no miracles expected in 2 years (or was it 1 year) but just checking.
Another P&W chair in Hyderabad (in Aerodynamics or some such, not Propulsion) was filled by a very well-known/high-profile former NAL-director/IISc prof. Perhaps, they haven't been able to find any such luminary from within desh for the Propulsion chair?

As for why P&W would want to setup such a chair (other than considerations of competitive advantage w.r.t. GE)? I doubt if they really expect anything very useful to come of these chairs at all :P ... think offsets :mrgreen:
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by srin »

About the research in India ...
I used to work in a startup and we used to visit some campuses around the country for fresher recruitment. It was then that a prof from an engineering college started to pester us about projects, and the powers that be figured out that yours truly was jobless enough to cater to this prof and promptly put us both in touch. The problems started then.

First was that this worthy prof wanted me to suggest a project for which she would get funding. Yes - the funding from Govt was the prime criteria. I gave a few suggestions and she picked one and wanted me to give the problem statement, methodology and approach and the final outcome. And here's the kicker - funding. She rejected the only feasible project I gave because it did not require a lot of computers to be bought and that she had MTech's in the lab and she had to support them. :eek: I escaped by talking to a few folks in my company and giving a modification which made it extremely theoritical computer science into which she can sink all the computers in the world and it still wouldn't make a difference. She accepted it :lol:

While I was doing my PG in IIT, I did get the "attitude" from the UGs that someone mentioned above. But that or the research part wasn't the most striking thing. What was really horrifying was that except for a couple of profs, the rest were really really awful teachers. And one of the "good" prof that was there, who was a very good teacher, didn't get his promotion from Asst Prof to Associate prof (I think - i forget the heirarchy now) because he didn't have enough papers published. OTOH, there was another prof, who was the HOD, and who had a lot of papers and it just wasn't worth attending the lecture.

Sorry - I'd give a lot for good teachers than really good researchers.
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Re: Re: Kaveri & aero-engine discussion

Post by Kartman »

UlanBatori wrote:That may not be quite correct. I count 5 IITs with aero B.Tech programmes (not a pre-req. for propulsion-related research, BTW, but may help slightly): IITB, IITD?, IITK, IITC, IITKgp. + IISc Blr. Plus the other IITs like Guwahati, Gandhinagar, Benares? Plus the new Space Science institute in TVM. Plus how many engg. colleges like Guindy in Chennai? I am sure each NIT is capable of participating, how many of those are there? So the number of institutions is there.

Question then is how many can put together a research proposal. I was hoping for some comments from ppl in these places.
You don't have to be limited to counting only the AeroE departments... MechE/ChemE departments can also possibly such work. So if one starts counting:
* Tier 1: IITs-B/K/M+IISc; in term of research, these are the somewhat serious places.
* Tier 1.5: Old and established engg. colleges that were upgraded to IITs, plus some old-IITs that have slipped (IITs-D/KGP/Roorkee/BHU) characterized by decent research, but only in a small number of areas. Also add some of the more dynamic/upcoming IITs - Ggn and Hyd
* Tier 2: Very distant second to Tier 1 or 1.5 :(( Only a half-dozen places such as NIT-Trichy/Surathkal, CEGuindy, BITS-Pilani, JadavpurU plus most of the new IITs. IIST (ISRO's captive institute in TVM) hasn't taken off very well really, but given it's an ISRO effort, I'm not writing it off yet! Most of the new IITs are only glorified NITs, IMHO, and are not very likely to change in the near/medium term :(( :((

Of these:
* Some groups within the Tier 1 or 1.5 should be able to handle specific high-end/long-horizon research areas (the R in R&D).
* Several groups within Tiers 1, 1.5 and 2 would be able to do specific engineering tasks (aka the D in R&D).

Note that I say only some/several groups might actually be able to deliver! Overall, not a very large pool, really...

And why is the pool so small? In a word, faculty :(
Money is NOT an issue any more :!:

All IMVVVVVVHO onleeeee... std disclaimers apply :mrgreen:

More later, if time permits...
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Re: Kaveri & aero-engine discussion

Post by Kartman »

indranilroy wrote:
I am a researcher in the field of high performance computing. My major professor is counted in the who's who of this field. About 5 years back he wanted to return to India. He started teaching at an IIT for one semester every year. I traveled with him for a couple of years. Here are my observations.

1. India is still not welcoming of professors of eminence who want to go back. Whereas China is setting up labs for them and actively scouting for them globally.
My professor first wanted to teach at IISc. IISc said okay great why don't you join as Asst. Professor. My professor said, please have a look at my history. To this he was told. Yeah, we know, but if you are good, you will soon climb the ranks! Obviously, he did not take up on the offer. He later took up an endowed chair position at an IIT. But he was always treated as the teacher who comes for 1 semester. Everything moved so slowly for him. Masters students did not care to look up who he is. Worse, they thought this guy wants a true thesis, which was a hindrance to get the degree and get out as fast as you can.
Your advisor's experience at IISc (w.r.t. the joining as Asst. Prof. nonsense) is not typical, but rather an outlier! I know of profs at IISc who returned and joined at senior levels, and similarly at other IITs.

But such exceptional cases apart, there are severe cultural/attitudinal issues with such "eminent NRI prof parachuted back to desh" scenarios. For instance, the slow pace at which things move :(( Or that students are not very serious :roll: And the "eminent prof" often really riles up the unwashed natives with the constant gyaan on "how things are done in bidesh".

But people who are in it for the long haul have learnt how to get things done :twisted:
Anecdotally, people who've been abroad for a long while (say 10 years), but not too long have returned and adjusted reasonably well and have learnt to navigate these administrative/cultural/political minefield and are "doing well". All the major IITs/IISc have a large number of such people in every department now!
As with the usual R2I stories, the 40 or 50-plus peepul have a hard time when they return.

But, yes, I agree that there is no concerted effort, unlike in China, to attract the big-shots from bidesh.
2. Money is not the problem. At least not in my field.
Compared to the level of competition and scrutiny in the United States, it is much more easier to get grant money in India. Atleast this is the case in Computer Science and Engineering.
True in most fields. In fact, both the level of competition and quantum of funding is very favourable compared to the US scenario of the 2000s (not the current, more dismal one)
3. Lackadaisical mannerisms of governments and university bodies
India like China wants to be build large supercomputers. In fact the govt. stated that they wanted to build the largest supercomputer by 2015. But there is a huge difference between the stated objectives and movement on ground. My professor along with a NSF chair (of Indian origin) wanted to collaborate (actually help) India to build large supercomputers (It is useless waste of money to just put together large number of cores and get a top ranking supercomputer based on just a few benchmarks, the path that China took, unlike Japan. It gets you fame, not capability). They took a delegation from the US to India for providing know-how and even possible funding for a center in India. Very eminent people who traveled from the US were at the table at the given time. The opposite side of the table was empty. The first guy came nearly 1 hour after the stated start time!
Again, this is an outlier experience. Most faculty at IITs/IISc would jump at the possibility, if not for anything else, at least for the chance of a few junkets abroad that such collaborative ventures engender :P And these days there are a large number of such offers from univs abroad for collaborashun, ranging from the US to Europe to Australia...

But personally, I'm always vary of such offers... remember VSA and Carnegie Mellon and Sankhya Vahini (at one extreme). The more benign offers (much like the Snecma-Kaveri JV scam) onlee want you to part you with your money :mrgreen: Many of these are trawling for good PIGS from desh since the numbers emigrating (at least from IITs) have really gone down in the past decade.
Truly altruistic offers (such as your advisor's) are very, very rare.
Goal of most students : Placements
At IIT, I lived and talked with about 2000 graduate students living in 3 hostels each having 3 wings. There was minuscule percentage of people who were actually interested in research. All of them were Ph.D. students and they were really good. Most Masters students just cared about what jobs they could get into with the IIT tag.

Undergraduate students are worse. They look down upon graduate students as people who couldn't crack JEE. Their is a sense of smugness the day they walk through the gates of a big institution. "I have arrived!". This is very different in Western universities. The undergraduate here knows that he is the lowest in the pecking order. There are graduate students, then post-docs, then professors, and then really famous professors. They come with a "I need to prove myself" attitude.

I asked the professors what is the institution doing to stimulate the urge of students to get in the research. The first reaction is "Who are you to ask this question?", which I can understand (though this is the first question that famous western universities are jumping to answer). Then the answers came "our students are naturally passionate", "the egress of students to abroad has been arrested in the last few years". I asked them "how are the top 100 students all naturally passionate to study electronics, computers?" and "are you sure that you are not losing your students to financial houses in India now?", there were no answers.
All sadly true :roll:
"The egress of students to abroad has been arrested.." but no thanks to research interest... all due to mucho moolah that the investment banks/consulting companies, etc pay!
However, there are a small but not insignificant number of both faculty and students who do take research seriously :) Unfortunately, their efforts tend to be scattered and Brownian motion-like and there is no synergy to achieve a "larger national goal" or "grand design"... and this is where the role of the gobermund is lacking.
My professor is actually right. He said increase the intake of JEE. At the end of first year, have one round of placements. Get the financial houses and students who want to join them can sit for these companies. Why waste 3 more years, of learning things that they will never use? Teach the rest who genuinely want to become engineers and scientists in their field.
I've actually proposed the same thing... saves the student's time, parent's money, faculty's effort, and precious hostel space! AWMTA, as RM would say :P :mrgreen:

All IMVVVVVVHO onleeeee... std disclaimers apply :mrgreen:
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Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by UlanBatori »

Exactly the reason why not much R in Industrial R&D. My observation (US context) is that most R is done in academia with no application in sight. May be 1% at most will get to the market and 5% of that 1% becomes a product of middling success. Money flows like water and just like water wastage in the US money is also wasted.
I have a different take on this. Good academic research is SUPPOSED to be done **with no application in sight***, because the best breakthroughs will generate much bigger payoffs in something far down the line that you cannot even imagine now. This is part of the issue: ppl declare that BECAUSE they have no clue of any application, their research is good. :roll:

But certainly research in engineering ****IMO!!!!**** must be done with some intention of solving a problem that has not been solved before, or finding a better or different route to the solution. Is it the RIGHT problem to solve, is a matter for much agonizing. You may only have a glimmer of hope that there IS a solution, not how to find it. That's what Peechdee PIGS are for, after all.

The above tries to capture the reasons for friction between the researcher and funding agency and its reviewers. More on that later.

So how does one make the connection between the nation/guvrmand's NEEDS, and the academic researcher's abilities/ideas/skills? There has to be an intermediary, or more than one level of intermediary. In the US, since it was set up due to Da Fire In Da Belly circa WW2, there is the 6.x classification:
6.1: Basic (academic) research. Totally UNCLASSIFIED. Open literature. Success criteria are not Patents or Products, but peer-reviewed publications, & students educated. OK, they like to hear of Invention Disclosures and Technology Transfer, but really it is all about Papers and PhDs.

6.2: Applied. Some done in university academic schools, some in university Applied Labs (full-time researchers), some in industry, Small Business and govt. labs. Since they have to pay at DOO-hours not PIGS-hours, the budget is about 3 times as big as that of a 6.1 project. May also be much shorter term, usually incompatible with PeeChDee.

6.3: Prototype/System development. Usually outside university scope. Industry/govt. lab projects. Budget about 10x of 6.1.

6.4 System field tests/deployment etc. Budgets 1000x 6.1
**************************************************

I am sure there is every INTENTION in India of doing similar things (or maybe not, I don't know how the Brish1t/ Oiropean systems work, and Indian system may be more modeled on Soviet System as my friends explained). But I don't see such a system set out. The most important component of the US system, that can make or break the whole enterprise, is not the researcher or the PIGS, but the Technical Monitor. These people (the best) are utterly dedicated. Capable of sitting for 10hrs/day, 5 days a week, watching PIGS and profs flip chart after mind-numbing chart, and are able to absorb enough to ask very sharp questions. The best ones carry a Little Black Book that strikes terror in every researcher.
Let me quote from what you said at last year's review..
:eek: :shock: :((

But they also go to war for the researcher, and fight for every paisa they can squeeze out of the budget to give you. They actually READ your papers.

Do you have someone similar in the Indian system? Because THIS is the person who takes your squiggles and application-less papers, and explains to the fearsome Jarnails with all their ribbons, why it means a breakthrough. I usually did not know WHY they liked my research (on the rare occasions when they admitted doing so), and they certainly did not want me developing their weapon systems! They are not paid much, they have to travel half their lives, and sitting in these presentations must be murder on their health. But... they matter.

Beyond that, you need good Systems Engineering, to tell you what advances are needed, and why they matter. You cannot ask the academic researcher to know what benefit a given small advance will have on the overall scheme of things.
Kartman
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Posts: 107
Joined: 15 May 2007 20:53

Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by Kartman »

UlanBatori wrote:
Do you have someone similar in the Indian system? Because THIS is the person who takes your squiggles and application-less papers, and explains to the fearsome Jarnails with all their ribbons, why it means a breakthrough. I usually did not know WHY they liked my research (on the rare occasions when they admitted doing so), and they certainly did not want me developing their weapon systems! They are not paid much, they have to travel half their lives, and sitting in these presentations must be murder on their health. But... they matter.
I'm not sure whether we have someone similar in principle... but in practice, it is a very clear NO :((
Don't know about earlier, but of late how things have worked is that senior netas/babus woke up with dhoti shivers and decided that "we need to catch-up with panda"... their solution is to throw money at the problem, lots of it !! The money goes to relevant ministries/babus, whose job is to make sure it gets disbursed on their watch, preferably to people who will spend it without creating a scandal that brings down the wrath of CAG/CVC/CBI on said disbursing babus. That's it ! Review boards do oversee the projects, but there's very little sign that gobermund has a big plan, a "grand design", only CYA :(( :roll:
NRao
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Joined: 01 Jan 1970 05:30
Location: Illini Nation

Re: CSEMS Research in Indian Academia

Post by NRao »

@Kartman,

May be the solution is to establish the equivalent of the SEZ - a "zone" where research is solely promoted. Devoid of the normal hustle-bustle of a normal campus. ???? A Geek Research Zone (GRZ - pronounced as Greez). People working there are well funded, provided with real high quality direction in all matters (funding, seed money, PM, etc) and are given huge tax breaks or the like.




BTW, late 80/early 90, India led the world in publishing papers. As someone put it then - of no worth, "worth" being defined as something that translated into $$$$. IIRC NYT had an article on this subject. So, the brain power was there and I suspect is still there. But there seems no urgency to put all that effort to benefit someone/thing.
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