Promising vision
Where does IIT Madras stand globally?
With the second strategic plan for IIT Madras having been put forth, Professor Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director of IIT Madras, answers questions on Vision 2020 for the institution. Excerpts from an interview…
The IITs have already grown into a brand. Why then hanker for an international rank?
The IITs are not meant only for undergraduate education. What you are talking about is our global position as a top undergraduate educational institution.
…you can’t do world-class undergraduate teaching without doing research also. Now the government has made it clear that they want research as a direct output, not just as a part of undergraduate teaching. So we have to aspire for a ranking on all outputs. We want to be known for our post-graduate output and research output as well.
The global rankings don’t capture this too well and the government wants to set up an Indian ranking framework which takes into account what our objectives are. But while this may be true, we must rank ourselves to see where we stand globally.
How will it change things?
It can only improve. We are also getting a lot of interest from the cream of undergraduate students, not just our own, after the launch of the direct PhD programme [PhD after BTech]. I recently met with 80 students we have picked this way; they’ve all come because they have made an early decision to get into research. As many hands were raised for industry as for teaching. This is very good for the country and for us to pick them early and nurture them. I was really encouraged by this.
Can you talk about the MoUs with foreign universities ?
We have MoUs with nearly 150 universities. With 50 to 60 of them there are PhDs being co-supervised with their faculty and with five there are joint PhD programmes planned.
You have talked about developing interdisciplinary centres. What are the directions in which IIT Madras is likely to make progress?
We are seeing very clearly that some 25 [interdisciplinary] centres are coming up. Propulsion technologies became obvious to me a year or so ago.
For about two years now, we have been working on getting the right centre, for our capabilities, on data sciences. We want an interdisciplinary group. We’ve assembled six to seven faculties, now it’s grown to about ten.
It will be based more on networks. Whether it’s a transportation network or a biological network or a network of wireless communication nodes, what you can learn about these systems and what is happening based on volumes of data that you generate, that is the area we want to look at.
There is a big centre on machine tools coming up. We have proposed a large centre in advanced manufacturing, to focus on very new areas of manufacturing, not what is traditionally understood.
You plan to change the curriculum so that students will be taking 50 per cent core courses and 50 per cent electives. Please elaborate.
There are some constraints of the IIT system by which students have to choose their branch at the time of joining — whether they know anything about it or not. There’s no easy way around this.
However, what we are saying is that we will define the curriculum for each of these majors in such a way that with the core courses, roughly 50 per cent, you will be legitimately qualified for a bachelor’s degree in that discipline; as you grow here, if you find that your interests are taking you [elsewhere], through the electives you can redefine yourself. Your degree might say you’re from metallurgical engineering, but your transcript will say you are also somewhat different. And very often in the world, jobs as well as higher education is as much based on what your transcript says as your degree. The students will be able to move in the direction they want.
Student life has changed in recent times. People are more isolated and face pressures, perhaps because of technology. Is there a plan to address this?
Our counselling setup is becoming bigger and better all the time. Now counselling is not just for those in trouble. It is for everybody.
We are now seeing that everybody is involved in some activity other than their academics — it could be sport, music, art, literature, debate… We are trying to track that. Our counselling is becoming more proactive. We try to find out the students who are not doing anything and ask them, “Would you like to do something [else]?” We are trying to open out more things for the students. We are trying to reach out and be more available, with quick closing of feedback loops so that we can counsel if they are in trouble of any kind or confused in any way.
The campus is poised to become more student-friendly. Can you explain?
One thing I have always noticed in many universities around the world is that there is a square — where it is very nice. Somewhere off the square there is a cafeteria and a lot of people hang out there. IIT Madras in particular has had to deal from its inception that it is in a very pristine natural setting. And we just don’t have a square — a central, human-designed, architected, space. For the new academic complex that’s coming up, we have found a way to create a big social space and a food court nearby. We need a place which is a very obvious hangout for students. The new academic complex is coming up where we used to have our big godowns earlier. There used to be a bus depot nearby, we got rid of that and it turns out that there is a big open area there which is going to become a quadrangle.
This is not the satellite campus?
No, the satellite campus may or may not happen. We are working with the Tamil Nadu government on that and they are trying very hard to find us suitable land. It obviously cannot be very far from [the main campus]. Finding a suitable land has been a challenge, but we have identified it and it is now at a very advanced stage of consideration in the government. If that comes, that will change our planning, but it will not change the need for that kind of place here.
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