Khagol Bulletin # 135 (Jan 2025) - ENG

The 36th Foundation Day Lecture was delivered on December 29, 2024, by Prof. V. Ramgopal Rao, Group Vice-Chancellor for the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani campuses located in Pilani, Hyderabad, Goa, Dubai and Mumbai. Prof. Rao's talk was titled Unleashing India's Scientific Potential: Breaking Barriers and Igniting Innovation. An electrical engineer, Prof. Rao, served as the Director of IIT Delhi for 6 years from 2016 to 2021 and as a Chair Professor for Nanoelectronics at IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi before joining the BITS Group in 2023. An internationally acclaimed Nanoelectronics researcher, he has authored over 500 research papers and over 50 patents, w h i c h i n c l u d e 2 0 i s s u e d U S patents.Besides his education and research activities, Prof. Rao is well-known for establishing major Nanoelectronics Programmes in India. For his research accomplishments, Prof. Rao was elected a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), the Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc), the National Academy of Sciences (NASI) & the Indian National Science Academy (INSA). Fifty-two PhD students have graduated under his supervision and work in leading academic institutions and semiconductor industriesworldwide, including India. Prof. Rao expressed his happiness at the opportunity to deliver the 36th Foundation Day lecture at IUCAA. Thanking the Director of IUCAA, he remarked that although it was his first visit to IUCAA, he appreciated the work done at IUCAA, such as its involvement in LIGO and other national missions. He was particularly impressed with IUCAA's Science Outreach program, which reaches out to a large number of schools to ignite an interest in science. Prof. Rao began his talk by discussing India's scientific potential and the need for innovation. He highlighted India's global ranking in terms of the number of educational institutions in the country, students' enrollment numbers, research publications, citations, patent filings, and innovation. Ranked no. 1 in theworld for the number of institutions, Prof. Rao observed that India had a complex and diverse higher education system, which included state, private, and deemed universities, with many more being added. He said that India ranked second in the number of enrolled students. Regarding the research output, Prof. Rao said there was a significant output of research and publications from India, ranking it third or fourth globally. However, Prof. Rao voiced concern about the pressure to publish for institutional rankings. He further said that India ranked 6th worldwide in patent filings, adding that India has experienced double-digit growth in patent filings over the last five years, showcasing an increasing emphasis on innovation and intellectual property. While these metrics are satisfactory, Prof. Rao observed that India has struggled significantly with innovation and industry collaboration and is ranked 39th for innovation worldwide. India's low i nnova t i on rank i ng r e f l ec t s poor translation of research into public good, impacting job creation and wealth generation. The collaboration between academia and industry in India is weak, where India ranks 66thworldwide. This lack of partnership limits the potential for technological advancements and new product development. Touching upon the quality of education in India, Prof. Rao informed the audience that, as per the statistics, in 2023, over 900,000 students left abroad for higher education. By 2025, it was estimated that Indian households will spend 75 billion to educate their children abroad. Prof. Rao observed that with growing income, an increasing number of households were sending their children to study overseas, primarily due to the lack of quality education in India. Prof. Rao strongly expressed the need to grant Regarding the number of Ph.D. students in India, Prof. Rao said that although the number of Ph.D. students in India is growing, India has only 300 scientists per million compared to the US, which has 4500 scientists per million. Prof. Rao remarked that every second faculty at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Bengaluru was either a Bhatnagar awardee or a fellowship holder. However, the presence of such eminent scientists is insufficient to compete internationally, and the government should consider scaling up good institutions such as JNCASR and IUCAA. As regards the possible solutions for societal challenges in India, Prof. Rao said that it was imperative to integrate education, innovation, and research, which requires collaboration between academic institutions, industry, and government to drive impactful projects. He strongly felt that the overlap between education, innovation, and research could enhance the problem-solving capabilities in society. Regarding the financial sustainability of educational institutions, Prof. Rao said that they increasingly rely on tuition fees, government grants, and alternative funding sources, which influence their operational capacity and educational quality over time. He said government Regarding breaking barriers to ignite innovation, Prof. Rao said this will require national, institutional, and individual action. In this regard, Prof. Rao strongly felt that the National Education Policy (NEP) could be a transformative movement for India's higher education landscape, emphasising the need for effective implementation for real change. He commented that the research done in India often mirrors the problems from North America and Europe, which can deter original innovation. What is required is a s h i f t t o l o c a l p r o b l em- s o l v i n g . Commenting on the disparity in patenting between India and the US, he called for better support for innovation, highlighting the importance of intellectual property for startups and funding. autonomy to institutions. He explained that, except for the top-level institutions in India, the quality of education elsewhere is dismal. He said that, in contrast, in the West, the quality of the faculty at MIT, Stanford, and second-tier universities for undergraduate education remains almost the same. Summing up, Prof. Rao expressed a critical need for better financial and governance models in universities to support research and sustain quality education, which is currently lacking in India. Regarding India's startup story, Prof. Rao commented that the absence of deep-tech product developments from academic institutions is evident, as most Indian unicorns are based on business model innovations rather than research-driven products. | 02 | KHAG L | No. 135 - JANUARY 2025