04 Blueprint: By Civil Engineering Department They were majorly influenced by the lack of faculty at the department. There has to be an appropriate trade off made between reducing the load and balancing of curriculum, which was highly skewed. Students just take up courses to pass it with 40 marks, thus leading to weak fundamentals. The basic idea is that one should be willing to learn.”
engineering was a field attracting major research opportunities and projects available, although my choice was not based on funding; I received scholarship only after one year. This focus of research in European Countries and U S has now shifted to Transportation, basically the design of Intelligent Transportation System.”
Graduates find a number of options at their discretion, three of which are to take a job in a core company or to do an MS or to pursue Ph.D. Which one do you consider is a better option for core enthusiasts?
What qualities do you attribute to a student whom you consider to be having a great future ahead? Do you consider marks, grades and CPI important criteria for grading students?
“Eventually one has to get a job, so one must attain a balance between job satisfaction and the pay, you cannot deny that there are others dependent on you and only job satisfaction should not determine your choice. Influence should be what one likes and not what others are doing or one’s non-suitability to some other job.” He stopped to ask me if I would like to pursue a Ph. D. in India, smiling at my answer he continued, “Ph.D.’s in India do not have equivalent value as that of a Ph. D. from outside. I would strongly recommend higher studies in US as there one learns the respect of law, labor and academic honesty. Indian companies do not employ Indian Ph. D.’s. Ideally, a Ph. D. should have a higher placement opportunity than a B-Tech but that is clearly not the case, the opposite is true in fact. I think a Ph. D. student should have higher knowledge than the professor on the topic one is working on. When I am not able to attract my own students into Ph. D., there is no point in keeping a large Ph. D. program.”
The integrated Rancho and Virus immediately spoke in reply to the latter question, “I would say it is a ‘Necessary Evil’ which I need to have to reward those who work hard, I need to reward them more. Those who know more, I need to give them more responsibility. I need to differentiate.” Readjusting his tone he added,” A student should have good communication skills, should not have rigid views, the views should be flexible and balanced. ‘Willing to take a chance’ is key attribute to success in what one does. But I would like to add that if you are happy, nothing really matters. It is not necessary that success fetches happiness. And you don’t need much to be happy! “On this I asked him if he defined success as happiness, to which he replied, “I don’t know what success actually means, all I know is that happiness is more important than what people call success. I am proud that I definitely belong to the happiest 10% people on this campus, although I don’t know if people count me in the top 50% most successful.” Having said this he laughed aloud.
Why did you choose Structural Engineering as specialization field considering the graduates now-a-days are very much inclined to transportation? Was it the same scenario at your time also? What should be the major factor impacting students considering the choices of specialization?
You have experienced the professional world for many years by now. Will you like to share your experiences about the kind of attitude, knowledge, skills etc. are required to be as good a survivor like you are?
“A major factor influencing the choice of students should be the financial rewards and the job profile. There is not much exposure to the students and hence the choice of subject is largely determined by the funding opportunities available. When I graduated, Structural
“I only know one simple thing that honesty and hard work always pay, sooner or later. In a professional life, you should do only what you know, I think we really lag this aspect. The deteriorating placement statistics are an indicative of the missing professionalism within our students. I have seen students who don’t even know
about the companies which come to interview them. One should go through the company profile at least once and try to find out where one fits in. It is very important for the students to realize that the companies have nothing much to do with the IIT Bombay degree.” What advice do you wish to give students both as a professor and as a professional? “You don’t need to be number one in everything but remain committed to whatever you do. ’Staying happy is a habit one should necessarily develop’.’ One should make the best use of the current situations.’ ‘Dream big and chase your dreams.’ ‘I strongly believe there is nothing one cannot achieve, it all depends on how badly you want it.’”. He further extended to share his advices for the placements “Students nowadays are very heuristic in their approach and look out for easier options. I always advise them that good grades will not hurt you, on the contrary they would fetch you more options when you graduate. I don’t believe that our lower grade holders are not well placed, but the difference is that you restrict your choices by a low grade. A decent grade point, around 8+ with robust communication skills and extra-curricular activities will definitely enjoy a decent enough job. I don’t mean to say that the topper will get the best job, but the above definitely holds true. As a Civil fresher, we constantly strike hard trying to do something different to prove ourselves above the higher rank holders of Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, thereby neglecting academics. I would advise to maintain a strict balance between the two.” Currently working on writing a book on Design of Structures based on his experience in the field, and with many prestigious professional consultancy works on his name, I wondered why he does not allow any Ph.D. student under him. To this response was unexpected and the deep thought behind it was that “I don’t have good students joining the Ph.D. program and I don’t wish to waste the caliber of the handful of good ones among them. I know that there will be only a very little value addition against the time and effort both of us would put in. Hence I consider this to be my effort to divert good students to better Ph.D. options available.”
URA Achievers: Speak their mind….. Initially, like most of students, I also had a misconception that research is not my cup of tea and requires huge amount of time and commitment. Inspired by my peers, I with Mohit Gupta browsed through websites of different professors of our department to identify topics of our interest and finally took a project on groundwater modeling under the guidance of Prof. T.I. Eldho. At the start we were given few research papers and couple of books to go through. One should not give up at this stage and should realize that this is very important to master the basics concepts involved in the project and also should be aware about the current research going in the field. This is how professors also check the enthusiasm and commitment of the student. We did half project in summers and half in-sem and after 6 months we got the desired results. We presented study in UG research symposium organized by SPUR. Impressed by work Prof Eldho recommended us for URA 01 (Undergraduate Research Award). Then we presented a technical research paper in 45th Annual Convention if IWWA (Indian Water Works Association) and got it published in their technical volume. . The experience throughout project was extremely enjoyable. With sincerity and regularity even a UGs can come up with good research works and professors are more than happy to support enthusiastic students. -Saubhagya singh Rathore, 3rd Year
It all started with my Dec’11 internship at Ambuja Cements Ltd. where I had my first hands-on experience in preparation and testing of concrete. This internship increased my interest in concrete technology and as a result I approached Prof Nanthagopalan in around Feb’12 for a project to be done in summers’12. I told him about my winter internship and expressed my desire to work on High strength concrete and got approval for the same. Fortunately our academic council introduced Institute Summer Project Allocation scheme at the same time so I registered through it. Initially I thought of doing this project for 2-3 months only but as time passed on, my desire to get better results kept on increasing. I got a very good guidance and support from my guide which in addition kept me motivated. My work went well and I presented poster at institute Symposium. My guide was satisfied with my work so I thought of applying for URA after around 6 months of project work. I applied for it in Oct’12. This project also let me present my work in an international conference. Till this time we have achieved strength of nearly 130 MPa and I am continuing my work to achieve better results. -Dhawal Desai, 3rd Year
In my first year summer I was selected to pursue research under the guidance of Dr. Prakash Nanthagopalan in the field of “Concrete Technology” along with a few others. After initial process in which we understood the very basics of concrete we were made aware of the recent research going on in the concrete technology field and were given the choice a project of our choice. I along with my batch mates Ashwini Jain and Sudhanshu Mishra selected the field of “steam curing” for our research. We came with a plan which was approved by our guide after some discussions. It was only then that we set our feet in the lab. In the hindsight though this period involved no experimental work, it was the theory that helped us develop a technical understanding of the process involved and helped us analyse the data we obtained. After the semester began, we started performing the steam curing cycles which had been pre-decided. As these had to be done for a fixed interval of time (up to 12 hours) the work often involved working late into the night. We enjoyed every moment of it. On completion of the designated curing cycles we performed the required analysis and drew appropriate conclusions. At the end of this period of 6 months during which we worked for 8 hours on an average per week our professor found the quality of our work suitable for awarding the URA . The whole process spread over a period of 6 months was an enjoyable and learning venture and the Undergraduate Research Award was really the icing on top of the cake.
-Prateek Deogekar, 2nd Year