The Counseling Center at IIT Kharagpur was instituted on September 2nd 2009. We had lost four students to suicide in a span of less than a year. Many felt a void on campus in addressing student mental health issues. The Counseling Center was formed under the office of Dean of Student Affairs as part of an initiative to address that void, with a mandate to promote student well being and to act as a coordination center to address student mental health issues.

We now have three counselors, two full time and one part time and two consulting psychiatrists. Hundreds of students have passed through our doors. Most have been self-referred. Most have had time-limited problems that resolved in due course.

When we started there was deep reservation about the adjective “mental”. Were we implying that some of our students were insane? Quite frankly no! We are living through the neuroscience revolution. Advances in neuro-imaging and cognitive neuroscience are rapidly unraveling how the mind works. Mental, we replied, meant just “to do with the mind”.

The process of counseling, my clinical psychologist colleagues say, involves actively thinking about new strategies to address a problem, and find better ways of living. This is done in a safe confidential environment. The counselor acts as a neutral non-judgmental facilitator. Who could argue that every one of us at some point in time could benefit from talking things over with a highly trained, non-biased, mind-sherpa?

In any given week most of the cases that we see in the Counseling Center have to do with juggling activities, trying to find a work life balance, managing conflicts with peers, managing conflicts with supervisors, managing conflicts in romantic relationships, trying to figure out how to focus better, especially when managing conflicts from all these sources.

Certain pathological conditions that require ongoing therapy, such as bipolar affective disorder or unipolar depression, can appear in the twenties. The most inspirational experiences I have had at IIT-Kgp have been in the past two years, watching some remarkable young men and women learn to cope with a chronic medical condition and march out of IIT-Kgp with their degrees, ready to conquer the world.

Sadly, this semester we lost a very bright, talented young man to suicide. Pankaj’s death gets us to rethink. There is still a lot that we can and must do as a community to prevent suicide.

TSA: You have studied Engineering at Oxford University. What was the motivation behind transitioning to Science Journalism as a career?

AS: I did some student journalism at Oxford and really enjoyed it. Although I love science and engineering, my personal passion is writing, so I decided to give journalism a shot when I left university. It turned out to be a good choice, because there are few reporters out there who are comfortable enough with science and maths to report on these kinds of issues effectively. Today, I love my job.

TSA: While researching for Geek Nation, what were the examples of scientific insight (if there were any) from India that stood out as particularly revolutionary and path-breaking? I think the most unusual was open source science, which is being used to develop a new drug for tuberculosis. This disease kills two Indians every three minutes, and yet there hasn’t been a new cure for around 40 years. So it’s exciting to see such a radical approach to drug discovery being used to come up with a low-cost, effective solution. I just hope it works.

TSA: In your book, you mention a peculiar combination of science and pseudoscience that seem to go together within the Indian Scientific establishment. How do you think this contradiction can be resolved?

AS:Well, it’s not so much a combination of science and pseudoscience as a sitting of the two next to each other. It’s certainly not the case that serious laboratory researchers or engineers turn to superstition to air their work. On the one hand, I think tolerating a broad spectrum of views and ideas is a good thing because it removes intellectual limits. but on the other hand, there does need to be a stronger scientific establishment to take a stand when there is hokum
or fraud.

TSA: Your visit to IIT Delhi must have given you a glimpse into how IIT’s function. How do you think they compare with the best of the world? What can be done to transform them from a hub of ‘drones’ to a hub of ‘geeks’ ?

AS:I think it’s already happening – I met many inquisitive, entrepreneurial IIT students on my travels. The key is to transform the IITs from plain teaching colleges to outstanding research institutions, and to some extent, there have already been moves by the faculties to encourage that. Students need to learn that staying on to to do a PhD and further research can be good for their careers.

TSA: Are IIT’s and IISc at the forefront of technological advancement in India, as it it widely believed or is there more to Indian Science then just these premier institutions?

AS:While the institutes are great at producing talent, they’re certainly not the best at producing research and innovation. That honour belongs to organisations like TIFR, CSIR and other private and government laboratories.

TSA: On a macro-level, is the institutional mechanism to promote scientific research, in place in India?

AS:Well, I think more could be done to remove hierarchies and promote a culture of reward that truly promotes young talent. This would make research institutions a more attractive place to work. Also, of course, funding into research and development needs to be ramped up across the board.

TSA: Finally, now that ‘Geek Nation’ is on best-seller lists, what are your future plans? Any book we should watch out for?

AS:I’ve been thrilled with the response to Geek Nation, and I definitely plan to write more books in the future. What they will be about and when the next one will come is a mystery for now. I’m still mulling it over! In the meantime, I would love it if IIT Kharagpur students would join the Geek Nation Facebook page so I can hear see their thoughts.

TSA:We would love to have you here. Are you planning to visit IIT Kharagpur anytime soon?

AS: If that is an invite, then consider it received! I would love to come and visit the campus… Just let me know when.

Consider the first claim: Is it true that the IIT-JEE is a fair competition? Can anyone compete and win? Or is the game strongly rigged to favor some over others, based on socioeconomic factors that are arbitrary and derive from accidents of birth? India lacks equality of opportunity due to many disadvantages, for e.g., of family income, social class, gender, caste, language, etc. So the runners on the racetrack to the IIT don’t begin at the same starting point. What does it mean to say that the first to cross the finish line deserve their wins?

Take my own example. I was born into an upper-caste, riding on eons of unearned privilege over 80% of Indians. I was a boy raised in a society that lavished far more attention on boys. In Gwalior, my parents fell closer to the upper middle-class, had university degrees, and valued education and success. I lived in a kid-friendly neighborhood with parks, playgrounds, and a staff clubhouse. I had role models and access to the right schools and books, the right coaching classes, and peers preparing for engineering entrance exams. My background gave me a sense of security and self-confidence that put me ahead of perhaps 96% of Indians—the odds that I would excel in the JEE were huge from the start. This made me think: was it me or my background that won?

As for the second claim about my academic merit, many natural gifts and aptitudes lay at the heart of it, gifts like analytical acumen and good memory and cognition—at least the kind that matter for the JEE. I was lucky to be born with some of these gifts. But can I claim credit for what is a matter of chance? I was lucky in another way too: I lived in a society that happened to value my aptitude for science and maths. It served me well in an India looking to modernize and the U.S. facing a shortfall of engineers. Would I have done as well in an earlier age when rewards favored those with an aptitude for trade or government bureaucracy? Centuries ago, society valued other aptitudes, such as sculpting bronze in Chola India, civil administration in Mughal times, or being a seafaring merchant among the Pandayas.

Which brings me to the third claim: What about the personal drive and hard work I put into cultivating my gifts? Do I not deserve to take credit for my diligence? Besides the fact that many others who worked no less hard didn’t make it, I must consider the countless factors beyond my choosing that shaped my ambition and drive—my family’s work ethic, my childhood experiences, subconscious insecurities, social milieu, career fads, role models, parental and peer pressure, available life paths, lucky breaks, and other contingent factors. I had not even thought much about the career path I stumbled upon. Given all this, it seems reasonable to ask: Did I, or did my socially conditioned ambition and drive get in to the IIT?

But perhaps this is how the system works. It selects us, like selecting actors for roles in a stage play, except we are given the illusion that we fully author the scripts for the parts we play. I realize now that to see through this is to abandon some of the ways in which we mark ourselves apart from our fellow humans, and open ourselves to other stages, other scripts, and other parts we can choose to play.

More from the author at www.shunya.net. Shunya’s Notes is a liberal-progressive blog visited by hundreds of discerning people each day. The founder of this blog, Namit Arora, an IIT Kharagpur alumnus has contributed this piece for The Scholars’ Avenue.

All one needs to become a writer, in my opinion, is a strong point of view on one’s subject (whether it is cricket, politics, or the novel), a love of language and of reading, and a willingness to constantly learn and improve.

In the past, it was sometimes difficult to get enough good reading material because of a paucity of bookshops and libraries. With the arrival of the internet, these can no longer be issues. Many of the world’s best literary magazines and journals are now available on the internet for free. One of the websites that contributed tremendously to my development as a writer was the filter blog Arts & Letters Daily (www.aldaily.com), which links everyday to some of the best pieces about literature, history, politics and ideas being published in magazines around the world.

Writing and reading are closely linked activities. You will only be as a good a writer as you are a reader. I think the mistake that young people without a degree in literature most commonly make is not reading enough in the form in which they want to write.

To become a better reader, it is necessary to devote yourself to reading that challenges you instead of just books which you can deal with in your comfort zone. Make an investment of an hour in good-quality reading as a matter of daily discipline every day, and in five years (yes, there are no short cuts to excellence in this field!) you will find yourself a better reader and writer than 95% of people around you.

Remember, merely to become a top-notch reader is itself a rare and unusual achievement. Some of the happiest and fulfilled people I know are people who love reading, and can hear all the different notes and layers of good books. I have never seen such people bored, or short of ideas.Keep a notebook where you copy out sentences or passages from books that strike you as particularly well-written. Just like one can find out all the secrets of a human body by dissecting it, so too one can learn all the secrets of writing good, powerful sentences by copying them out and studying their architecture.

To be a writer, one also needs to have an original view of oneself and the society in which one lives. There are things about the world that you have to love intensely and hate intensely, and you can only find these things out by constantly talking to different kinds of people, reading interesting books (not just novels but also history, biography, books on religion and politics), and travelling. The beauty of being a writer is that everything one does feeds into one’s work — one doesn’t switch on and off as in most other professions. Sometimes (although not too often) you can even sleep for two hours in the middle of the day and call it research!

Some books by Indian writers that I would recommend as excellent models for learning how to write better are Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi (which will show you how to condense a huge amount of information into a few pages through careful selection of details) and The States of Indian Cricket, Mukul Kesavan’s The Ugliness of The Indian Male, MG Vassanji’s The Place Within (one of the best travel books written about India), Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games. You should also deliberately read some poetry, as this helps one learn how to say complex things in as few words as possible, and to hear and make use of the innate rhythms of language. I’d recommend you read the recent collection of Tamil Sangam poetry Love Stands Alone or Vinay Dharwadker’s translation of the poems of Kabir.

Also read a good book-review supplement every week, such as the Guardian Review, or the New York Times Book Review, to keep in touch with the latest books in different disciplines. If you have difficulty early on getting your work published, you could start a blog where you could continuously put up new work. Always try and make your pieces as carefully written and edited as possible, though, so that the reader knows that his or her investment in your work is being respected.

Indian writing in English has progressed by leaps and bounds in the last decade, and the market for books by Indian writers has grown enormously. There are also many more opportunities for well-paid journalistic work commissioned by newspapers and magazines. I’ve been working as an independent, self-employed writer for nearly six years now, and I wouldn’t give up the freedom and independence of my life for even the most lucrative job. So if you’d like to be a writer (or just a better reader), there’s really nothing to stop you — go for it!

Chandrahas Choudhury is the author of the novel Arzee the Dwarf, which was recently selected as one of the “60 Essential Works of Modern Indian Literature in English” by World Literature Today. He also writes the literary blog The Middle Stage (http://middlestage.blogspot.com/). His new book is called India: A Traveller’s Literary Companion (HarperCollins, January 2011)

It was on one such dreary weekend that I decided to visit an old and little known fort, some 30 km from the campus – Fort Kurumbhera. The joy about travelling lies not in the distance covered, but in one’s experiences while covering that distance. Nothing beats the mental camera which absorbs every image through the lens of the eye. I decided to explore the place on my sturdy ‘milkman’ cycle. Of course for a trip like this, few would be willing. I played down the distance a little (20km) to convince a few friends to come along. Three agreed. Two came.

We started our journey around 7 in the morning and figured that we would reach the place in a little over two hours. Thankfully, Bengal is flat and we had no problems cycling all the way. We bowed to the wind to keep our tires intact and headed southwards. To reach this place one has to leave campus via the Prem Bazar gate and go straight through Salua all the way to Keshiary. Keshiary is a small town around 22 km south of the campus. From Keshiary we shifted onto the Belda road toward Kukai village. At Kukai we took the mud road leading to the village of Gaganeshwar in which the fort is situated.

Fort Kurumbhera, as it is known, is not really a fort. In fact its origins are unknown to the local villagers. Speak to some of them and they will tell you that the structure was built in a single day. Legend has it that Hanuman, on one of his visits, inscribed the name of Rama on a stone and tossed it in the area and the next day this structure magically appeared. After satisfying our respective curiosities and tossing around our theories about the origins and the possible uses of the edifice, we went into the village to learn more.

Some extensive research on the internet revealed some interesting but little known facts about the place. The fort we visited was actually an ancient Siva temple. It was built by Sena rulers when the Suvarnarekha river flowed there. There were two temples, one of which was washed away by the river. There used to be a Sivalinga installed within the temple which is not seen now. Moreover, historical records show that a mosque was built within the temple area. There is supposed to be an inscription in Persian that records this event. I was not able to locate the inscription on this visit. However, I was able to locate some other inscriptions in Oriya. Most of it is worn out but still visible on the southern walls of the fort.

Our tour of the fort ended fort ended with an interesting chat on the banks of an isolated lake somewhere deep within the village. We concluded the visit, dining on biscuits and bananas and listening to an opera featuring a number of colourful birds. The memories of this trip will remain with me for a long time, and lest I forget, my aching bottom is sure to remind me.

This Guest Article has been contributed by one of our readers. Readers are encouraged to submit quality content for publication.

I am an alumnus of the Class of 1995 of the Department of Architecture. The friendly folks at IIT KGP’s campus newspaper asked me to pen my thoughts on being an entrepreneur, so here goes:

I started off on the path to be the next Howard Roark of The Fountainhead fame after IIT, but then the IT buzz happened. I jumped ship, in search of unknown lands, unperturbed by the wry remarks of my peers and the disappointment of my mother, who says I gave up on my creativity to follow a ‘dumb’ career. Well, after 12 years, I realized that moms are always right – in hindsight though.

Rising up the career ladder, I hit a road bump two years ago.  IT wasn’t exciting any more – the fun in learning and doing was replaced with ‘head hunting’, ‘managing egos’,’adhering to norms’ & ‘cc-ing emails to 100 people every day’. I felt I was ‘rusting’, though technically I should have been happy – with a green card in process and the American dream half fulfilled. Suddenly I felt I had achieved everything but was left with nothing! I packed up and returned to India. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I definitely knew what I was not – being an ‘outsourced coolie’ to foreigners.

It was then that I discovered true opportunities as an entrepreneur within India. I picked the ailing agriculture sector as it was getting the least attention. Working with farmers, agricultural professionals, customers and traders, we realized the real reasons of the farmers’ crisis lie not in cultivation but in the Supply Chain. The age-old mandi system is not managed professionally and hence the huge fluctuations in availability and prices each day.

We set our aim to apply sound and economical technology solutions to solve immediate, critical problems in our own country and created revenue through economies of scale. The early sprint and agility to change course at will gives a huge advantage to a startup over entrenched competition.

eFarm, the venture we started, ties in farmers, intermediaries, logistics providers, distributors, small time retailers, all the way up to your local road side vendor into a single chain backed by the best information systems to deliver fresh, clean, low priced farm produce. It is part ebay, part dabbawala, part Amul, and part HLL, all banded into a ‘jugaadu solution’ to kick-start the agricultural supply chain.

‘So what is the crisis in the agriculture sector? My observations for two years suggest one most fundamental reason – you, the educated, elite, gen-X person with a devil-may-care attitude. No graduate today wants to do anything related to agriculture (in KGP lingo- ‘ghaasi’) as it is seen low tech. I know of several regional collectors who are former IITians and want youngsters to come in to rural India to help revive it- but there are no takers. After making it through JEE, somehow the philosophy seems to be ‘ride the wave’ rather than ‘continue to swim harder’. The contest only seems to revolve mainly around how to get jobs. Well, I don’t blame you; it took me 35 years to realize what I should have been doing all along is to sell sabzee.

In conclusion, it is not what you do that matters; it is how you do it.

V. Ramgopal Rao and J. Vasi

Microelectronics has, for many years, been a major area of research at IIT Bombay.  In the year 2006, the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology launched a major initiative in the country to set up two Centres of Excellence in Nanoelectronics. IIT Bombay and IISc Bangalore, identified as having the two leading research groups in this area, were chosen as the sites for these centres.  These centres undertake state-of-the-art research in nanoelectronics, train manpower in this emerging area, interact with industry and research laboratories, and have created facilities which will be used by nanoelectronics researchers all over the country.  Though both the centres have some areas in common, by and large the team at IISc focuses more on the materials aspects of nanoelectronic devices, and the team at IITB focuses more on the devices and circuits aspects of nanoelectronics.  This is consistent with the expertise available at the two places, and the broad thrust of the two Institutes.  The total funding from the Government is Rs. 99.8 crores spread over 5 years, shared equally by the two Institutes.  Importantly, the two Centres were created via a single project, emphasizing the need for the two Centres to collaborate intensively with each other.

This major initiative from the Government has, during the past year, created tremendous interest from industry, as well as generated significant support from the Institute itself.  The Centre therefore represents a classic example of a successful government-industry-academia collaboration at a time when the semiconductor fabrication industry in India is ready to take off.

Much of the funding from the DIT project is targeted towards acquiring processing equipment aimed at creating a fully functional nanoelectronics laboratory.  Many equipments have already been installed and are in use.  One of the important pieces of equipment is an electron-beam lithography unit capable of writing 20 nm lines on a silicon wafer, with which nanoscale devices can be readily made.

The major industry supporter has been Applied Materials, Inc., the world’s leading semiconductor equipment manufacturer.  Applied Materials has endowed the “Applied Materials Nanomanufacturing Laboratory” by donating 3 major high-end semiconductor processing equipment valued at over $ 7.5 million.  These are the gate stack cluster tool capable of depositing the various layers (including high-k dielectrics) for a state-of-the-art CMOS structure, the PVD deposition cluster tool and the etch tool.  All of these are capable of handling 200 mm wafers.  Besides equipment donation, Applied Materials has sponsored several research projects, and has participated in a very successful student and faculty / engineer exchange program.  The Applied Materials Nanomanufacturing Laboratory was inaugurated in November 2007 by the President and CEO of Applied Materials, Mr. Mike Splinter, in an event which attracted significant local and global publicity. Besides Applied Materials, several other global industries, including Intel, Infineon, Renesas, and IBM are partnering with the nanoelectronics faculty for cutting edge research.

The Institute itself has generously provided funding, exceeding Rs. 12 crore, for the new Nanoelectronics building which is coming up, as well as for clean rooms, facilities, infrastructure, spares and maintenance.

The Centre for Excellence in Nanoelectronics at IIT Bombay has a major focus on multi-disciplinary research with a clear emphasis on product development meeting societal needs.  The centre facilities are currently being used by over 25 faculty members and their students from 9 different departments and schools at IIT Bombay. The centre is fast emerging as a hub for inter-departmental interactions at IIT Bombay. A few of the major research projects and initiatives currently underway at the IIT Bombay’s Centre for Excellence in Nanoelectronics involving faculty members from multiple departments and schools are summarized below.

A Point-of Care System for Cardiac Diagnostics:

According to some recent estimates, by 2010, over 60 % of the world’s cardiac patients will be in India. However, cardiac related care is almost non-existent in the smaller hospitals and primary healthcare centres, and this project is expected to fulfil this need. The idea is to develop low-cost diagnostic aids for cardiac dysfunctions. As part of this vision, there is an ongoing effort in the centre to develop an integrated system to provide point-of-care diagnostic support for cardiovascular diseases. The system under development monitors the molecular markers to detect cardiac attacks, especially the incipient cardiac attacks that go undetected before major/fatal attacks occur. The system comprises of “infarcSens” or “iSens”, which is a cantilever- and molecular FET-based affinity biosensor array for sensing myocardial infarction and subsequent cardiac status prognosis, using a suite of molecular markers. A low cost polymeric cantilever technology with embedded electrical readout schemes has been recently demonstrated in the group with electrical sensitivities in the range of a few ppm per nanometer of deflection, suitable for cardiac marker sensing. The sensing electronics is already in place while the associated data management software for tracking the markers with time, required for creating an epidemiological database, is currently being developed. A  multidisciplinary team consisting of Prof. V.Ramgopal Rao (EE), Prof. S.Mukherji (Bio-Dept), Prof. A.Q.Contractor (Chemistry), Prof. R.Lal, Prof. P.R.Apte, Prof. R.Pinto (all EE), and  Prof. Prasanna Gandhi (Mechanical Engg) and their students have been working on this project.

A Cantilever based Electronic Nose for Explosive Detection:

At IIT Bombay, in the Centre for Excellence in Nanoelectronics, explosive detection down to the parts-per-billion level of sensitivity for RDX and TNT has been demonstrated using an extremely sensitive and low cost piezo-resistive polymer cantilever structures. These detectors are meant for vapour phase detection of explosive molecules and come with an integrated wireless transmission capability. The surface stress which causes the deflection of the cantilever is generated from a selective chemical reaction on the surface of the cantilever. The cantilever surface can be regenerated after detection for subsequent measurements. The technologies are particularly suitable for wireless sensing networks and are extremely low cost. Further efforts are currently underway to improve on the selectivity aspect in order to make them useful for deployment in public places. The work is being carried out by Prof. V.Ramgopal Rao (EE), Prof. Soumyo Mukherji (Bio-Dept), Prof. Anilkumar (Chemistry), and Prof. Dinesh Sharma (EE) and his students.

Silicon Locket:

For mobile monitoring of ECG, a small toffee-sized low-cost locket has recently been developed in the centre by integrating a low power microcomputer with an indigenously developed operating system, analog front-end electronics and a re-chargeable battery with an in-built charger. The system is optimized to acquire a three lead simultaneous electrocardiogram (ECG), reconfigurable up to 12-leads, and can correct for motion artefacts arising out of the physical activity of the patient. The ECG data can be either stored in the Micro SD card memory, or transmitted through a phone modem or GPRS network. An arrhythmia event can be detected in real-time using the built-in algorithms and the system is configured to automatically inform a medical practitioner through SMS in the event of an arrhythmia. The system also allows the doctor to remotely login to the locket to view patient’s ECG in real time or download the data using a graphical user interface.  The locket is equipped with USB, IrDA and RS232 ports for seamless integration with public networks, mobile phones, and personal computers. An ultra low power custom made analog integrated circuit (IC) is designed and tested which performs all the data acquisition & signal conditioning. A low cost polymeric accelerometer technology developed in the centre is integrated into the electrodes to detect and remove motion artifacts in ambulatory subjects. A pluggable ultra-small PSTN modem is constructed to transfer data to a remote computer or medical database. A 32-bit system-on-chip based base-station is also developed as an accessory for the Silicon Locket. The base station is a handheld system with a higher processing power and a color TFT LCD panel. The base unit primarily has advanced in-built data management and analysis software for ECG analysis. The silicon locket, developed in cooperation with the Tata Consultancy Services, is the smallest wearable ECG recorder in the world, for its features. The technology is currently being transferred to an industry.  The contributors to this work have been Prof. D.K.Sharma, Prof. R.Lal, Dr. M.Shojaei (all EE), and Prof. S.Mukherji (Bio-Dept) and their students.

Disposable Organic Sensors with on-chip Electronics:

There is significant amount of activity in the centre for developing sensors using organic materials for a variety of applications, for sensing of biological reactions to physical measurands. A group of faculty members from the Chemistry Department (Prof. Anil Kumar, Prof. A.Q.Contractor), Bio-Dept (Prof. S.Mukherji) and EE Department (Prof. V.Ramgopal Rao), and their students are working closely in the Centre in synthesizing & engineering various organic molecules for specific sensing applications. Using solution processed organic materials, various organic circuits have also been recently demonstrated in the group. By integrating a high-k gate dielectric, low-voltage operation of these sensor circuits is demonstrated using solution processed organic materials. Currently a variety of projects are underway based on this approach.

Bottom-Up approaches for CMOS Scaling:

Porphyrin and metallo-porphyrin systems are excellent materials for molecular electronics, due to their diverse structural motifs and associated electrical, optical and chemical properties. The porphyrin SAMs engineered for specific applications are currently being explored in the centre as Cu diffusion barriers and for gate work-function engineering in CMOS. An inter-disciplinary team in the Nanoelectronics Centre has also been exploring the porphyrin SAMs for molecular electronics applications as well as for intercalation with DNA to realize a molecular switch with DNA acting as an interconnect. It has also been recently demonstrated that presence of aromatic rings in a porphyrin core would sterically hinder the Cu diffusion between molecules through the SAM layer, making it suitable as a barrier layer for Cu interconnects in ULSI CMOS technologies.  This work is being done by Prof. V.Ramgopal Rao, EE Department, Prof. M.Ravi Kanth and Prof. Anil Kumar, Chemistry and Prof. S.Mukherji, Bio-Dept and their students.

Future Generation Charge Trap Flash Memories:

The ever increasing demand for data storage is propelling a strong growth in NAND type Nonvolatile Flash memories. Unlike hard disk drives that store data on rotating magnetic disks, NAND Flash memories store data as electronic charges in memory transistors.  The scaling of NAND Flash to smaller cell sizes is a crucial aspect in meeting the high bit storage demand.  The currently used “floating-gate” memory cells are unlikely to respond to scaling, and are likely to be replaced by different types of cells.  One of these is the SONOS flash cell, and the other is the nanocrystal flash cell.   The Center for Excellence in Nanoelectronics, together with Applied Materials, USA, is engaged in materials innovation to tackle some of the issues observed in these types of cells.  Silicon Nitride (SiN), an insulator, is used as a charge storage element, and separated from the gate and substrate by oxide layers (hence the name SONOS).  Recently, the Centre and Applied Materials, in a project supported by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), have created an engineered trap layer, i.e., a sandwiched structure consisting of two SiN layers having dissimilar composition (Si:N ratio) with a Silicon Oxynitride barrier layer. This new memory cell has shown much improved memory performance, and this ground-breaking work has recently received significant international publicity (seehttp://www.semiconductor.net/article/CA6562699.html).  Efforts are also underway to use semiconductor and metal Nano Crystals (NC’s) as the charge storage medium. In these memory cells, an insulating layer containing the nanocrystals (which trap charge) replaces the SiN layer in SONOS.  Though easy to fabricate, the finite density of states of semiconductor (silicon or germanium) NC’s limits the number of electrons that can be stored in semiconductor NC based storage (due to Quantum Confinement or QC effect) and hence the resultant memory window between high and low. Once again, IIT Bombay and Applied Materials are working together to develop both single and bi-layer metal NC based charge storage. Metal NC’s do not suffer from QC effect and offer extremely large memory window suitable for NAND applications. Efforts are underway to optimize the performance and reliability (cycling endurance) of metal NC systems.   The work on flash memories is being done by Prof. S. Mahapatra, Prof. J. Vasi (both EE) and Prof. G. Mukhopadhyay (Physics), and their students.

The facilities created in the Centres for Excellence in Nanoelectronics both at IIT Bombay and IISc Bangalore are being made available to students, researchers, scientists, and engineers from other organizations, including academia, industry and government through the ambitious separately-funded “Indian Nanoelectronics Users Program” (INUP).  The centres strongly encourage use of these facilities by all nanoelectronics researchers in the country.

In summary, the Centre for Excellence in Nanoelectronics at IIT Bombay (initiated as a joint project between IIT-B and IISc) is making rapid strides and making significant contributions to the society and the country in developing the much needed expertise in nanoelectronics in India.

For more information on the Centre for Excellence in Nanoelectronics at IIT Bombay, please visit: http://www.ee.iitb.ac.in/~nanoe.

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What is Quantitative Economics?

Quantitative economics is a field of study where mathematics, in particular optimization, statistics, algorithms and complexity theory is used as a tool for analyzing and designing economic systems.

Quantitative economics is used in auctions to maximize bidders’ payoffs. Banking policies are based on fundamentals of quantitative economics and are covered systematically in macroeconomics and finance. Econometrics, which involves collecting appropriate economic data and analyzing it statistically, is a major component of quantitative economics because of its widespread applicability in government policies.

MSQE at ISI Delhi – Course Structure

ISI Delhi offers one of the best graduate programs in quantitative economics in India. The MSQE program is offered by the ‘Planning Unit’ department of ISI Delhi (http://www.isid.ac.in/~pu). Some features of this program are:

Curriculum: Courses are taught in microeconomics, macroeconomics, econometrics, game theory, finance, development economics, social choice and welfare, and many other advanced topics. A unique feature of all our courses is the focus on mathematical reasoning and analysis.

Small batch size: The batches in the MSQE program are only 15 strong. This ensures an excellent student to faculty ratio. Students from all backgrounds (pure science, engineering, economics and statistics etc) are encouraged to apply.

Excellent placement: Campus placements are close to 95%. Employers typically include banks and financial institutions. One of the main attractions of the MSQE program is the opportunity to pursue further studies. Usually, half of the students in the course pursue doctoral studies at top universities like Columbia, New York University (NYU), CalTech among other US and European Universities.

How to Get There

An entrance test for the MSQE program is usually held in May every year. The entrance test is a one-day event with two papers. The first paper is on JEE-level Mathematics and the second paper on UG level Economics. Sample questions are available on the ISI website. A round of interviews follows for students selected on the basis of Entrance Test marks. For students who do not have a background of economics, scores in the Mathematics paper are emphasized.

Quantitative economics is an interdisciplinary field, linking economics with mathematics, statistics, and computer science. The analytical nature of this field makes it a worthy candidate for IIT undergraduates to consider it for higher studies. This opens up many career doors – in banking and finance, government policy, academics, consulting etc and hence makes for an interesting and rewarding experience on the road less taken.

Krishna Mehra: Thanks for the chance to interact with people through The Scholars’ Avenue. It really feels privileged, especially since The Scholars’ Avenue was actually started right in front of our eyes, and it’s great to see it moulding public opinion in the institute.

To give some info about our company, Capillary focuses on leveraging this dizzying growth to enable retail and consumer-focused businesses to identify, understand, attract, and interact with customers with a next generation CRM tool that is more functional, cost-effective, with higher resolution in consumer targeting, enables instant-gratification and micro-level alliances to drive revenue and profit growth. We are 3 promotors – Aneesh Reddy (ME 2006), Ajay Modani (IEM 2007) and Krishna Mehra (CSE 2006).

TSA:  When did you start your company? Was it immediately after college or after some job experience? Would you advise your juniors to start-up immediately after college or after ample job-experience?

KM: Going back a few years, Aneesh and I were wingies in RKCTM, and Ajay was a year junior (from RK as well). We had always been interested in entrepreneurship and had in fact started the Entrepreneurship Cell under the guidance of SRIC/TIETS in our final year. I had also worked in a startup (Minekey Inc.) in my final year which went on to raise $3m from NEA. However, both of us went into a job – I joined Microsoft Research but the itch to start up was there, esp. due to the wonderful experience I had in my final year. At the same time, Aneesh worked in ITC Ltd. We started after about 2 years of job experience each, and Ajay joined us from Danieli soon after, racked our brains around, did a fair bit of mindless running around in front of clients before we got out first break.

I would strongly suggest some work experience, since it really prepares you for a different kind of life, and makes you take life and work much more seriously. In Kharagpur, it’s all “peace” as we all like to say, but once you step out, you suddenly need to do a lot of learning, and a couple of years of job experience is an important stepping stone in this regard. It also depends on the kind of company you wish to create. In our company, we need to do a lot of institutional sales, and work experience helps understand the organizational structures, vicariously understanding client requirements better, and gives a better network to start off with. At the same time, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook were all created without any work experience!
TSA: How did you develop the technology that you are currently employing in your venture? How much of it was during your Kharagpur days? How effective is the form of marketing that you are doing? How much of a customer base does it have in India?

KM: We did it after we’d left our jobs with Microsoft Research and ITC. Initial development was all done ourselves, along with some very talented students from Kharagpur itself, who were kind enough to help and intern with us. Now, we have a small technology development team that’s taking care of product development.

We are into institutional sales – this requires a fair bit of business development. It’s not the traditional consumer-facing business, but rather B2B sales, for which a different sales strategy is required.

We are currently working with about 300 stores in more than 75 cities in India.

TSA: How much of a competition do you have in India? Can you narrate a bit more on your experiences in dealing with competition when you first jumped into this field?

KM: Our competitors include marketing services companies like SurfGoal, Wunderman, Accentive and IT vendors like Shawman and Pine Labs.

When we started we realized that many of the assumptions with which this industry worked had changed dramatically with the emergence of the ubiquitous mobile phone, and we decided to re-think the solution to be more effective and topical from ground up. We focussed on bigger bang for the buck for the retailers and giving them more RoI through simple and effective tools.

In the beginning, we couldn’t integrate with any software because IT vendors would not be willing to work with us. We had to take the battle into their territory by automatically integrating without their help using innovative means. The fact that we didn’t carry any baggage in terms of previous industry knowledge helped us think from first principles and come up with better answers to some of the problems and build a competitive advantage.
TSA: Is the Qualcomm B-Plan competition your first shot at VC money? When, according to you is the appropriate time for a young entrepreneur to think about VC funding in the course of his venture? Should it be just at the start when his idea is susceptible or after sometime when he has a decent foothold?

KM: Our first financing was from IIT Kharagpur, through TIETS, for which we will be forever grateful. It helped us start out and take small risks without which we wouldn’t have moved an inch. Qualcomm is the first private fund we are working with.

I personally believe, the right time is when you have a clear idea for a product and have validation through interested/paying customers. Everybody wants to see market traction before giving out money, and it’s important to be able to clearly demonstrate the traction and value proposition for your customer before you look at institutional capital. I would personally be against trying to raise money before you have a clear product with some traction, because a lot of time would be spent in chasing VCs/Angels which is better spent in trying to build the initial product.

Of course, there are always different ways to look at this – if you are trying to build a capital intensive business, you can’t do initial experiments on your own. It’s easier in technology businesses since if the founding team can build the technology themselves, there is very little cost of product development. It’s more difficult if your product requires manufacturing or a lot of sales expenditure for instance. Like many others, there’s no clear answer to this question – it highly depends on a case-to-case basis.

TSA: Each entrepreneur that I have come across has had his own story to tell, about the struggles that he faced on his way up? Do you have such a story?

KM: We had our share of despair when we were trying to figure out what the value proposition for our clients was. We were turned down by many parties because our value prop was too dilute, or because the problems we were trying to solve didn’t exist when we did a reconnaissance in the actual marketplace. Even after that, the period while the product was being developed, we had little to show for all the work we were doing, until the deployments started happening and we got real action.

I believe in the end, its 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration and some good luck that carries the day.

TSA: Where do you see your company in the next 5 years? Are you planning on branching out to anything new?

KM: We want to be the preferred customer engagement program in India – with a presence in tens of thousands of retail outlets. We want to make our product more sophisticated and effective. At the same time, we have some other ideas we would like to try in terms of product extensions.

TSA: Last, but not the least, what was your CG?

KM: 9.76 (!)

The Scholars’ Avenue wishes Capillary tons of success for the coming years.

Don’t let the IIT faculty strikes fool you. For the academically inclined, IIXs are still the best.

T. A. Abinandanan is a Professor in the Department of Materials Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He writes extensively on a wide range of topics concerning higher education in India, particularly the IITs, IIMs, IISc and such other institutes. His writings can be found at http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com .The Scholars’ Avenue thanks Dr.Abinandanan for contributing this article.

IIT faculty made history in September 2009 when they went on hunger strike — not just once, but twice! Their strikes were to press their demands for a better deal from the Sixth Pay Commission (SPC), and to protest against what they perceived as an “insult” and “a slap in our face.”

In spite of those anger-laden phrases and industrial protest actions, I am here to argue that the IIXs (where X = T, M, Sc, SER, ….) continue to be among the best — if not the best — places in India for the academically oriented among you. The protest by IIT faculty (cheered from the sidelines by others in IIXs) should not be allowed to block your view of arguably the brightest picture in Indian academy.

Before I get to that picture, let me first take care of a blot in it. Almost all IIXs suffer from not infrequent interruptions in flow of electrons, water, and data. One could add other problems such as poorly trained (and poorly paid) support staff. While IIXs will eventually find suitable long-term solutions, there certainly are work-arounds for each of these problems. Indeed, many scientists have overcome them to go on to run world class research groups.

With that out of the way, let’s now turn to what’s so great about a faculty job at an IIX, and why the academically inclined among you should consider such a job as a serious option.

You are probably interested in the first thing that everyone focuses on — the ‘pay package.’ Fortunately, it is also the easiest to address.

Here’s the bottomline: IIXs are among the best in the public sector. They beat private academic institutions handily. With job security, autonomy, sabbaticals and the summer months off, they are competitive with private industry as well. With the option to consult for industry, you’ll have to wonder if a non-IIX job is even worth considering!

Here are the details: Going by the present, post-SPC salaries, you’ll start as an assistant professor at Rs. 6 lakhs, at the end of your career, you’ll be at over 12 lakhs. Thus, you can expect to earn about Rs. 30 million — Rs. 3 crores — over a career spanning 30 years. Or, an average of about Rs. 10 lakhs per year.

But that’s just the salary, which does not include the ‘benefits’: allowances (house rent, transport, telephone and internet), social security contributions (pension or provident funds, career-end bonus, etc) and perks (medical insurance, leave travel concession, for example). The value of these benefits could easily exceed 50 percent of the salary.

And then there is consulting. It can give you the satisfaction of solving some real world problems. It can be a great source of ideas for long term research. Most importantly, it also has the highly desirable property of giving you some extra cash! Indeed, every IIX has quite a few superstars whose earnings through consulting dwarf their salaries.

In these days of economic slow-down, pay-cuts, and lay-offs, I’m sure it’s reassuring to know that your IIX salary is not only fully protected, it’ll also (a) keep up with inflation, (b) keep rising (through annual increments) and (c) see substantial jumps every decade or so. To sweeten things even more, IITs are planning to introduce incentives to reward extraordinary performance (and I’m sure other IIXs will follow suit).

Let me now turn to a few relevant comparisons.

As an IIX faculty member, you’ll enjoy a couple of features that are not available to engineers and managers in industry (in both public and public sectors): two (or even three) months off every summer and a one-year sabbatical leave every seven years.

As an IIX faculty member, you’ll enjoy an advantage over those in other academic institutions — public or private. Research funding, infrastructure, access to bright students, culture of nurturing research, travel grants — on every one of these parameters, IIXs offer you a better deal than any other university or research lab.

As an IIX faculty member — and this may come as a surprise to you — you’ll also enjoy certain advantages over faculty in US universities. First, you don’t have to pay your graduate students, the government pays them. More importantly, the same research idea has a far higher probability of getting funded in India than in the US. This means that you’ll spend more of your time on actually doing research, than on writing grant applications seeking that ever-elusive funding.

Finally, the autonomy, the choice and the flexibility. As an IIX faculty member, you’ll probably spend 30 to 40 percent of your time in teaching and related activities. The remaining time is yours, and yours alone — nobody tells you how to spend it. You could use it for research (for getting peer recognition), teaching (for your students’ adulation), and consulting (for money, and collaboration with industrial partners). There are other academic pursuits as well: writing books and popular science articles, teaching kids in local schools and colleges, learning about new and emerging fields, etc.

What you do depends only on what you think is right for you — that sweet spot in the multidimensional space of knowledge, scholarship, peer recognition, money, respect, fame. The IIXs offer you a variety of activities to choose from, and they do not impose any restriction on what you could or could not do.

At an IIX, you dance to your own tune, and not to some institutional music. And the Indian government, which is in a tremendous hurry to develop India’s scientific and technological capabilities, will help you make your tune and your dance better — with research money, with opportunities, with students.

I don’t think you can ask for more — except when the future Pay Commissions screw up!