Talent is clearly the most valuable output of universities. This is true in India, and around the world. Smart, educated people form the lifeblood of industry, and competitive companies in growth environments will compete vigorously for students. Fortunately, India is in an era of competitive and growth industries. The most elementary aspects have to do with hiring: placement centers, access to industry for interviews, publicity for job openings, advising students, student recommendations, etc. Nothing very exciting or new, except that digital technology like social networking, blogging, even simple web sites could help within universities, and where "best practices" could be shared, of course via social networking, blogging and web sites.

But, we need to move beyond just hiring. For example, industry in India often bemoans the fact that they have to re-educate students on the basics, particularly those from 2nd tier universities. Here's a sample set of possible initiative, not meant to be exhaustive,

• Industry and the top universities can help with continued curriculum development.
• Accreditation - this is particularly important for the 2^nd tier universities
• Compilation of university rankings to encourage competition amongst universities for education and research. There are a few such lists in the US, e.g. the US News and World ranking, the Taulbee surveys, etc. It should be noted that parents will pay handsomely for tuition if job prospects are improved as a result of higher ranking for an institution; and at the higher levels like the IITs where money is not the object, prestige and competition does matter.
• Continuing-education programs for industry personnel who have been at work for many years.
• E-learning courseware and delivery.

And now that India is rising in its research and startup capabilities, universities have a strong role to play in partnering with industry on many fronts, such as

• Industrial parks for R&D, and startup activities, with VC and related infrastructure. IITM represents a great example, along with other IITs and IISc.
• Industry researchers taking sabbaticals at universities - this is starting to become possible, now that several companies have research labs in India (like IBM, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and others). This can help universities with faculty and research connections, and also companies because they can teach adapt the courseware to be more relevant, they get closer ties with the best students, and can build ties for ongoing research.
• Industry researchers advising students. This is a critical need at the research level today in view of the shortage to top research faculty.
• Co-op programs where students can spend summers or semesters at industry, and may earn college credit. They may even do research projects as part of their degree requirements.
• Research grants to universities, setting up centers at universities, affiliates programs, etc. There are many models for these in the US, like the Stanford Forum, but they need to be adapted to the Indian environment, and key industries like IT, KPO, BPO, manufacturing, infrastructure, health, etc. Furthermore, government funding for such activities can encourage or require industry connections, in order to facilitate ties.

In summary, these are exciting times as India is going through the process of becoming a major player in the world. Effective academic-industry cooperation can play a key role in this quest, and a healthy exchange of ideas at he PanIIT conference, and effective implementation thereafter can certainly help.

He currently serves as the Frank A. Fletcher Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. He has served in many administrative capacities at Drexel including being the Interim Dean of College of Engineering (1997-2000). He led an Engineering Curriculum Innovation Program - a seven university coalition on engineering education - at Drexel funded by the National Foundation of Science during 1995-2004.

He is a Fellow of American Institute of Chemical Engineers (2000) and a Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2006). He serves on the Editorial Board of Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology, a Springer journal.

His research interests are in biosensors and process biotechnology. He has published extensively in the areas of biosensors, bioreactors and materials processing. He has directed 25 PhD and 47 MS students.

At Drexel, Raj directs research on cantilever, fiber optic and magneto-elastic sensors for detecting pathogens, proteins and DNA. His biosensors research is funded by the NSF, USDA, EPA, Pennsylvania Department of Health, and by the Department of Transportation/ Department of Homeland Security.

Mutharasan's inventions have lead to several patents - in the area of aluminum processing and biosensors. The biosensor patents were licensed by two start-up companies. He will share his experience on the changing role of university researchers and on various aspects of commercializing university-based research.

In her previous assignment in the industry, Sandhya was a Director with Gartner Inc. She set up the consulting practice of Gartner in India and was the competency lead in Enterprise Solutions for the Asia Pacific region. Earlier she has held positions as Chief Technology Officer of BconnectB.com, a B2B solution provider, Head of Knowledge Management Research in Aptech Ltd., and Group Consultant in NIIT Ltd. Her key focus areas have been IT driven Business Strategy, Enterprise Solutions, Software Engineering, E-learning and Knowledge Management.

She was given the Excellence Award while at Gartner and has also been given outstanding achievement awards at Aptech and NIIT. She has co-authored a book, 'Knowledge Management - Enabling Business Growth', published by Tata McGraw Hill with the international edition being published by McGraw Hill, USA. This was the first Indian book on KM and was launched at the KM World Conference at Santa Clara and is currently in its third print. She has presented papers in national and international forums and conferences such as IS OneWorld Conference (Las Vegas), KM World Conference, BITKOM (the nodal IT association in Germany), CII, Nasscom etc. Her papers have been published in several leading international journals.

He has Engineering and Management degrees from IIT, Madras; and a Doctorate from the School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University in 1977 specializing in Operations Research .

He is the recipient of Government of India Scholarships during entire 12 years of College study in India and USA.

He has been recognized as an Outstanding Industrial Engineering Alumnus by Purdue University in March 2001; Fellow at Infosys Technologies Limited in 2002 and made a Honorary Fellow of the Indian Institute of Materials Management in 2005

He has funded the Young Faculty Recognition Award at IITM, set up an undergraduate scholarship program at Purdue University and has sponsored an ongoing program to nurture young talent in classical music at Rama Seva Mandali, Bangalore.

He has been with the software industry from 1979. As the Head of Quantitative Methods Group at TCS, Bombay (1979-1982) pioneered the use of large scale O.R. applications in Indian industry.

was in Charge of Management Services at MRF Ltd (1982-1986) Implemented first generation PC based commercial applications in India.

was the CEO of Cholamandalam Software in Chennai (1986-1989) and Hitek Software Engineers Ltd in Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies (1989-1992) was Senior Vice President at Infosys technologies Ltd (1995-2004)

Was a Director of Jasdic Park in Tokyo, Japan as Infosys nominee Founded Theme Work Analytics in 2005

Over the years, he has sustained considerable interest in academics and executive training. He set up the Greater Bombay Chapter of ORSI in 1980.He is currently active in the Bangalore Chapter.

He has taught at the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad; Tata Management Training Center,Pune; Nuclear Fuel Complex training Facility,Hyderabad; Bharath Petroleum Training Center, Bombay; SPIC Management Development Center, Chennai etal. He was also an adjunct Professor at the University of West Indies from 1993 to 1994

He has been an invited speaker in numerous Seminars and Conferences in USA and India in Supply Chain Management, Information Technology, Insurance Systems, Operations Research and Leadership Development.

Has contributed Systems and O.R. applications chapters in The Hand Books of Operations Research (2007) and Automation (2008, to be published)

Previously, Sudip was the President of the Technology Media and Telecom business unit at Wipro, overseeing more than 18,000 people and a revenue run rate of US $1.3 billion per annum. He held a number of positions including Chief Strategy Officer, globally responsible for the successful completion of nine merger and acquisitions, and joint venture transactions over a two year period. In addition Sudip headed up the Wipro European Sales and Operations, growing development centers in the United Kingdom and Sweden. Prior to that, Sudip was Vice president of product development and marketing at a Silicon Valley semiconductor start-up, which was folded into Wipro.

Sudip holds a Bachelors Degree in Physics with Honors from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and another one in Electrical Technology and Electronics from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. He also has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. Sudip has been an active member of the Institute of Directors, and is an active participant in the Global Executive Forum of the Economist Intelligence Unit.

As an academician, Professor Acharya has the distinction of supervising more than thirty Ph.D. students, and publishing more than 85 papers in journals of repute. He is a consultant to many world-class companies, such as Tata Steel, General Motors, Hindustan Lever, and Tata Chemicals, and handled projects worth more than Rs.15 crore.

His areas of interest and research include operation research, production planning and control, supply chain, and maintenance management. He is a fellow of both Indian National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences (India), and a member of several professional bodies, such as ORSI, IE(India), and IIIE.

Dr. Saxena took over as the Director, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee on June 01, 2006. He has more than 35 years of rich experience as an academician, researcher and administrator of repute. After serving for 29 years at IIT Roorkee, Dr. Saxena has served as the Director, Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology (TIET) - a Deemed University (now Thapar University), Patiala from June 4, 2002 to May 31, 2006 and also the Director, Thapar Centre for Industrial Research & Development (TCIRD), Patiala from January 1, 2004 to May 31, 2006. As an additional responsibility, Dr. Saxena has also been appointed the Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Himachal Pradesh, the new IIT established by the Government of India (GOI) for which IIT Roorkee is the Mentor IIT.

Dr. Saxena has been appointed non-official part-time Director on the Board of Tehri Hydro Development Corporation (THDC) for a period of three years w.e.f. May 2008 by the GOI and also a member of the Audit Committee of the THDC. Dr. Saxena has been nominated on the Executive Committee of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Chairman of Northern Regional Committee of AICTE for a period of three years w.e.f. May, 2008. Dr. Saxena is the Chairman of Water for Welfare Virtual Centre, Govt. of Uttarakhand; Chairman of Governing Body, Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Park (STEP), Roorkee; President, Indian Society for Continuing Engineering Education; Vice-Chairman of National Institute of Hydrology Society, Roorkee.

He is Member of Governing Body of National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee; Member of Board of Governors (BOG) of Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur; Member of BOG of Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar; Member of the Executive Committee and the Finance Committee of the Uttarakhand Technical University; Member Governing Council (GC) of Krishna Institute of Engineering and Technology, Ghaziabad; Member GC of G.B. Pant Engg. College, Pauri, Garhwal; Member GC of Kamla Nehru Institute of Technology, Sultanpur; Member GC of M.M.M. Engineering College, Gorakhpur; Member Executive Committee (EC) of Dean Bandhu Chhotu Ram University of Science and Technology, Sonepat; Member Academic Council of Guru Jambheshwar University, Hisar; Member of Board of U.P. Technical University, Lucknow; Member of All India Board of Under Graduate Studies, AICE New Delhi; Member of National Institute of Disaster Mitigation; Member of R.D.S.O. Research Board, Lucknow and Member of Army Technology Board, Secunderabad.

Dr. Saxena is a fellow of The Institution of Engineers (India) {IE(I)}, fellow of Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE), and life member of Biomedical Engineering Society of India (BMESI), National Institution for Quality & Reliability (NIQR), Indian Society for Technical Education (ISTE) and Indian Society for Continuing Engineering Education (ISCEE).

Dr. Saxena has guided 24 PhDs and guiding 03 PhDs; guided 75 ME and more than 100 undergraduate students for their theses and projects. He has published over 200 research papers in national and international journals and conferences; written six monographs, organized/ mentored 28 conferences; and edited 05 conference proceedings, organized 27 specialized courses for industry and handled 10 sponsored research schemes. His areas of specialization are Electrical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Instrumentation.

He has received 14 awards/ honours including Khosla Gold Medal and cash award (two times), President of India's Prize, Jawaharlal Memorial Award, K.F. Antia Memorial Prize, Sir Thomas Ward Memorial Prize, K.S. Krishnan Memorial Award; honoured in October 2006 as "Outstanding Technologist" for the year 2006 by Punjab Technical University for outstanding contributions to technical education; honoured by "Pride of Uttaranchal" award on 25th November 2006 by Dehradun Citizen's Council and by "Uttarakhand Rattan" award on 20th April 2008 by All India Conference of Intellectuals.

He played a key role in transforming the environment of TIET, Patiala to make it an Institute of Excellence in Teaching and Research. He had been responsible for a major growth and development phase of TIET during his tenure as its Director. Besides creating a lot of new infrastructure in academic, hostels and sports areas, he had been responsible in introducing a number of undergraduate, postgraduate and research programmes and also in establishment of a number of new laboratories in frontier areas of technology. It was during his tenure that TIET was ranked 9th Best Technical School in the country by NASSCON-IDC-Data quest survey in the year 2005 and 15th Best Technical Institution in the country by India Today Survey in the year 2006.

He was the Vice-President of Biomedical Engineering Society of India, Council Member of the IE(I), Chairman, Roorkee local center of the IE(I) and earlier its Honorary Secretary; Vice-President, Indian Society for Continuing Engineering Education (ISCEE); Member, Management Committee of UP State Centre of the IE(I); Chairman, ISTE Chapter at Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee; Vice-Chairman, NIQR Chapter of Roorkee; and Chairman, Consultants Committee of Roorkee School of the Deaf, Chairman STEP-TIET Patiala, Vice-Chairman, TP, Patiala, Member of the Council of Thapar University (TIET), Patiala; President, Patiala Management Association; Member of Expert Panel on Manufacturing Technology of CII-NR-Chandigarh; Executive Member of BOG of Punjab Council for Technical Education & Entrepreneurship Development; Member of Academic Council of University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun; Member of BOG of NITTTR Chandigarh, Member of Governing Body of Moradabad Institute of Technology and member Engg. College Society of Bhatinda of Giani Zial Singh College of Engg. & Technology, Punjab.

He has worked on a number of Expert Committees as Chairman/ Member of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), National Board of Accreditation (NBA), and University Grants Commission (UGC). He has wide experience of many years of industrial consultancy and testing. Dr. Saxena is a trained Motivation Trainer from NIMID Mumbai and NIESBUD, New Delhi. He made two educational films under UGC program. Dr. Saxena served as an expert at Military Technical College, Baghdad, Iraq during 1983-86, and as an Advisor in AICTE, New Delhi in the year 1994. He is widely traveled and has visited a large number of Universities in different countries in almost all parts of the world.

A successful entrepreneur and founding member of Band of Angels India, Alok also seeks to foster the development of new global technologies in India. He led the technology practice at Baring Private Equity Partners, India, where he focused on IT products and services, BPO, Internet and Telecom. Prior to Baring, Alok was Co-founder of JobsAhead.com, a leading web-based recruitment business. Alok was instrumental in the acquisition of JobsAhead by Monster.com, the global leader in online recruitment. He also brings strong Telecom experience to Canaan having worked for Hughes Software Systems, the premium provider of telecom software services and systems in India. He serves on the Board of Directors of Bharat Matrimony, iYogi and Cellcast. He holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and a Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

His personal research career spans many areas in Computer Science where he has made seminal contributions spanning over 60 published papers, including the invention of Alternation (in complexity theory), Computable Queries and Conjunctive Queries (in database research), self-testing chips that check themselves, the use of symbolic execution to find design flaws in processor designs, and more. Ashok is an IEEE fellow. He founded the Bay Area Research Directors council (BARD) of CTOs and Research Directors of top Silicon Valley companies. He served as chairman of numerous IEEE and ACM conferences, and founded the IEEE LICS conference. And, he was influential in setting up IBM's Research Center at IIT Delhi in 1998. More recently, he has founded ICORE to help raise the level of research in India. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University, an MS from U.C. Berkeley, and a B. Tech. from IIT Kanpur in India, where he was awarded the prestigious President's Gold Medal, and subsequently, the Distinguished Alumni Award.

He has a wife and two children, enjoys skiing, hiking, playing bridge, and visiting new places.

Ananth is currently the Chief Technology Officer of TCS and chairs of TCS's Corporate Technology Board. He was named in Computerworld's Premier 100 IT Leaders for 2007, and one of Infoworld's Top 25 CTOs for 2007. He is a member of the TCS Corporate Think-Tank since 1999, and has led several strategic initiatives.

He has been a Principal Architect and Lead Consultant in the Architecture and Technology Consulting Practice, and earlier the head of the TCS Systems Management and the Systems Software Group.

He was an invitee to the quarterly management review with the TCS Board (the executive committee of Tata Sons Limited) from April 2000 to March 2004. He has also been an invitee to the board meetings of Jataayu Software, a TCS invested company, from December 2000 to April 2005. He is on the Customer Advisory Boards of several organizations including Symantec and IBM-Rational.

Ananth is married, with two children and lives in Chennai. He has formally retired from a successful career in Trivia and Quizzing (which includes the 'Brain of IIT' individual title and two 'Cranium Cup' titles at IIT and several years on the IIT Quiz team), public speaking, crossword puzzle solving and cricket. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a member of the Computer Society of India, and is an invited faculty in the Department of Management Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Dr. Poosala received his B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Madras, India, in '92, M.S and Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in '97. He has been with Bell Labs and Alcatel Lucent Ventures in different roles - researcher, technical manager, CTO, and now the Head of Bell Labs - India. He was also an Adjunct Professor at New York University.

Professor Bordia received his undergraduate degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur(B.Tech, Mechanical Engineering in 1979) and his M.S. (1981) and Ph.D. (1986) from Cornell University, Ithaca, USA in Materials Science and Engineering. He worked as a Research Scientist in the Central Research and Development of DuPont Co. from 1986 to 1991. Since 1991, he has been a faculty member in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA where he is currently a professor. From 1998 to 2005, he was the Chairman of his Department. During 2007-08, he had a series of Visiting Professor appointments at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and the Friedrich-Alexander Universität, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.

His research is at the intersection of materials and mechanics and is focused on fundamental and applied studies in the processing and properties of complex material systems for energy, environmental and medical applications. Current emphasis is on ceramics, composites, multilayered and porous materials. He was a key and pioneering contributor in the development of a new continuum mechanics based approach for the constrained sintering of ceramics. Recent work has focused on materials for solid oxide fuel cells. He has also worked on the processing and mechanical properties of porous materials. Finally, his group has worked polymer-derived composite ceramics. He has authored or co-authored over 90 peer-reviewed technical publications and has presented over 180 invited lectures and seminars in Asia, Europe, Africa and North America.

In 2002, Prof. Bordia was elected as the Fellow of the American Ceramic Society. His research contributions and accomplishments have been recognized by various other prestigious awards including: National Young Investigator award (NSF) (1992-1997); DuPont Young Professor award (E. I. duPont Co.) (1993-1996); International Expert award from Technical Univ. Hamburg-Harburg, Germany (1996, 2001 and 2002); and the Humboldt Research award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany (2007). He is a dedicated teacher and mentor. He has been selected as the Teacher of the Year by students in the Department (1994, 1995, 1996, 2000 and 2006); and was the sole recipient of the Marsha Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor award from the University of Washington (2007).

Prof. Bordia is an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society (1988-Present); Editor of the Journal of Ceramic Processing Research (1999-Present); Member of the External Review Team for the Center for Advanced Materials Research at Oregon State University (1999). He was the Chair of the Basic Science Division of the American Ceramic Society (2004-05) and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the American Ceramic Society(2008-2010). He was a member of the Peer Review Team for the Energy Science and Technology Division of the PNNL (2001). He has also served as technical advisor to two startup companies in the USA in the area of energy.

Prior to joining TCS in 1998, Dr. Shroff had been on the faculty of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA, after which he joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India. Dr. Shroff graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, in 1985 and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY, USA, in 1990.

Some of the key topics that will be discussed include:

• An analysis of current research activities at IITs, and recommendations from Directors at IITs towards enhancing the same. Funding constraints and requirements is one of the key areas, as also the need to set the virtuous cycle of research talent into motion. Equally important is the need to align research activities not just to the needs of the industry, but also to the social context at large. It is interesting to note that some of the commercial research activities in India have started to orient themselves towards services businesses (50% of GDP), as well as towards the large rural population.
• Perspectives from panelists of how research has been made more effective in other parts of the world. This would include the model of industry-research interaction that has worked in other parts of the world.
• A glimpse of where the industry is headed in terms of its needs on the research front, and its expectations from academia and researchers. Perspectives on what has worked best and what hasn’t worked well in their attempts to work with Research, and what changes can be made to make it more effective.
• Tie the different perspectives listed above into a cohesive agenda, and how the Research Park initiative at IIT Chennai looks to integrate various elements of the ecosystem.

The session will be interactive and will solicit participation from the audience as much as from the panelists.

Panelists include Dr Chidambaram, PSA, Govt. of India, Directors from IITs, professionals with experience in research ecosystems globally, industry practitioners in India, and faculty from enabling initiatives to widen the research ecosystem at IITs.

Over the last fifty years the IITs have built up the engineering education and research system in India and brought it to levels that are now recognized worldwide. In spite of its proven track record, IITs need to do much more to take firm leadership in research excellence. The problem is not really in intent or effort. The problem today is deeper and will have serious ramifications unless addressed seriously. A quick analysis will reveal that sub-criticality is the fundamental malaise that prevents the IIT research ecosystem to flower to its next level. If we look at all the IITs together, we will see that their size is similar to that of a single large international university or institution of repute. Therefore each institution is relatively small and tries to perform the task of a single large institution. This sub-criticality is at all levels. There is a shortage of high-quality people including faculty and doctoral / post-doctoral students. Research tends to be individually driven and single thesis oriented. It ends up with few faculty members and students working on many research areas, each over short periods of time, producing incremental results in many cases with innovative ideas left incompletely addressed. Funding for research projects is increasing, but research resources are still sub-optimal. Most of the research is government funded which is naturally meant for capacity building. Target oriented funding from non-governmental sources is relatively low. Experimental and directed research is receiving less focus. The available linkages with industries or other such organizations are still at much lower levels than what will bring about the resonating synergy. These are only a few systemic issues that straightjacket the research environment at IITs to a large extent and the results produced in spite of this are quite commendable.

However, the issue needs to be addressed in keeping in mind that many of the constraints are not going to go away in a short period. Certain changes in the system are essential to move forward fast. The overall scale of operation needs to be increased rapidly in a practical manner. While all areas will be given importance in generic teaching, each institution must try to identify a few focus areas with adequate long-term commitment to sustenance of critical mass in terms of resources, both human and otherwise. The areas have be carefully selected keeping in mind both national and international needs and available talent. Individual IITs may target complementary areas of focus and while one may take the lead in one area, others may support that area. While open ended research will be definitely encouraged in general, 'relevant directed research', both basic and applied, should be given importance. Since IITs are home to many disciplines, it is felt that new multidisciplinary research areas are domains where the faculty and students can work together in groups and produce tangible new breakthroughs in shorter periods. Industry driven research focus has also to be consolidated into larger activities. Large research projects and sustained research supported by a consortium of industries has been found to be very effective in identifying important problems, obtaining domain knowledge and converting the ideas to reality. Attracting bright people to the faculty and research is absolutely vital for success. For this the rewards system needs to be adequately redefined. Other than attractive financial compensation and research funding, the issues of recognition in various forms and freedom of work within the system while maintaining the overall institutional focus are vital elements for the ecosystem. This has to become one of the most attractive and respected professions in the country for the young minds interested in science and technology. Students and faculty have to be more avenues for pursuing innovation and enterprise.

The IITs have themselves have to graduate from being only known as institutes which produce the world best undergraduates to more completely structured sustaining pyramids of excellence where we have the most talented undergraduates leading to even better graduate students from the cream of undergraduates to a select group of highly motivated bright researchers whom the undergraduates and graduates will look forward to for ideas and thoughts and finally at the top, the finest faculty groups who will lead, inspire and work with the research teams. The problem is not insurmountable. But it is not merely a physical change, it is 'spiritual' as well. It is not a change which two administrators can sign off on. It is something that needs the support of many including the large IIT fraternity.

Open innovation, learning to share to gain, collaborative research with networked institutions and industries hold key to producing breakthrough products / processes. Such value creation through a flat and networked world calls for our relooking into the entire paradigm of engineering education and research. IITs have to take lead in creating and sustaining such a Research Ecosystem that will naturally change the entire paradigm of engineering education.

About twelve years back, when AMADA was looking to set its foot in the fast growing INDIA, it had several software companies in India offering to collaborate on software development projects. Rather, AMADA decided to harness the potential of the Indian universities by starting its own center here with the guidance of a Lab in the IITM and taking in a group of graduates from that Lab. It was the Manufacturing Engineering Lab in the Mechanical Engineering Department of the IITM.

We, in Japanese industry, think that though the research quality conducted in Japanese universities is good, the power of Japan lies in the strength of its industries. Likewise, for US the strength lies mainly in its industries. Therefore, Japanese industry tends to collaborate with US industries to maintain their competitive edge in the market. Similarly, if one looks at China, the government there is the source of strength whether as a prime mover or enabler of all things. AMADA has a strong relationship with government in China enabling it to have a very good presence there. Coming to India, the thinking goes that it has a lot of potential in its universities.

During my visit to IITM and IISC twelve years back, I was astonished to see how advanced were the fields of research they're working. The environment of various Labs, and the level of the presentations by various Professors I met and their aspirations have made me realize the potential the IITs offer for the industry like ours.

Before going into the details of AMADA's interaction with IITM, I suppose it will not be out of place to touch upon the issue of how innovation made the Company AMADA as it stands now.

From its humble beginnings in the post war Japan, AMADA has grown to its present status of the world's preeminent manufacturer of metalworking machinery mainly because of Creativity, Innovation and Quality in its products. AMADA's products and business philosophy have resulted in immensely helping its customers' businesses and bringing about the Company's motto of 'Growing with the Customers'.

The first major innovation from our Company was the NC turret punch press (NCT) developed by the US Amada in 1971. Meeting the ever increasing requirements for precision and greater efficiency in punching operations, it was indeed a great step forward for the sheet metal processing industry world wide. AMADA continued its innovative trends in all the other products such as, Band Saws, Stamping Presses, Sheet Metal Processing Machines, and Factory Automation Software becoming the world's major player in the metal working industry.

As one can say that beauty, creativity, performance, etc are interlinked and coexist, in our own world, our ultimate zeal for creativity makes us to think our machines as art and architectural forms in their own way. Our interpretation of beauty is based on the minimalist design and superior functioning. For us, superior functioning is a result of inherent beauty of the form; and superior technique is an expression of beauty. This concept of beauty led us to a strong belief in promoting the harmony with the environment. We're a very environmentally conscious Company promoting clean and green ways in all our products and processes.

As innovation is the key word in the AMADA's life from the beginning it has had many a rewarding venture with centers of learning around the world resulting in cutting edge technological solutions for the benefit of the industry. At present, AMADA is having collaborative relationship with several of world's top universities in Japan, USA and Europe. For instance, AMADA is having collaboration with CMU in USA for more than fifteen years and in Italy AMADA is operating its own Robotics Research Center.

In INDIA, starting from the inception of the Amada Soft India (ASI), we've had a strong relationship with the IITM. We have several employees who were the graduates from the IITs. Besides visiting the Institute every year for the recruitment, ASI has initiated a relationship with the faculty working with them on some of its development projects. This relationship has now blossomed into a full fledged R&D projects division in ASI encompassing many strategic products of the AMADA. Deepening this relationship, now ASI will be shifting to IITM Research Park which would, also, enable us to interact more freely with the Institute and its faculty.

As AMADA continuously strives to be the world's foremost innovator and leader in sheet metal industry offering intelligent and automated "total process" solutions, we consider IITM as our Innovation Partner. AMADA would like to take advantage of the research atmosphere and initiatives of the Institute and the Government facilitating fundamental research in manufacturing and process automation technologies. AMADA would like to collaborate with IITM on many practical problems having both high level research value and business value. In this connection, recently AMADA has worked with IITM in establishing the Sheet Metal Research Center in the IITM campus by donating two networking sheet metal fabrication machines along with high value software. The Center would engage in fundamental R&D issues as well as high level engineering problems in the sheet metal fabrication domain catering not only to the interests of AMADA, but also to the sheet metal fabrication community at large. Besides, the facility can serve as a good continuum education center to create skilled man power and we hope that the Indian metal working industry and the society in general would get benefited from this Research Center.

I heard that our engineers often roam inside the IITM campus and I hope our presence in the IITM would satiate this longing and provide them avenues to interact with bright and energetic minds of the Institute in solving challenging technological problems for the mutual benefit. We believe our presence in IITM Research Park would work as an antenna for us to gather the latest trends and technologies to poise ourselves to the higher levels of competency.

Finally, I am very pleased to participate in this IIT alumni forum and I thank Pan IIT organizers and Chairman of this session for the opportunity to speak on the important subject of research eco systems. Thank you very much!

After completing his Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Electro Communications, TOKYO, in the year 1977, Mr. Takagi joined AMADA and served as a Manager in AMADA Technology Services Co. Ltd. From 1983 to 2000 he worked in AMADA METRECS Co. Ltd., an AMADA Group Company, beginning with the position of a Manager to the final position of Executive Director General. After AMADA METRECS merged with AMADA Co., in April 2000 he took charge as Director General, AMADA Co. Ltd. In June 2003 he became Executive Director General and in June 2006 he became the Managing Director and COO holding the responsibilities for Sales & Service Divisions, and Overseas Operations.

Apart from the above he holds additional responsibilities in the other AMADA GROUP companies as: President, AMADA AI-LINK SERVICES CO. Ltd., Japan, President, AMADA SYSTEMS CO. Ltd., Japan, Director, Cable Software Co. Ltd., Japan, Chairman, Board of Directors, AMADA EUROPE SOFTWARE CENTER, Chairman, Board of Directors, AMADA INDIA Pvt. Ltd., and Chairman, Board of Directors, AMADA SOFT INDIA Pvt. Ltd.

Mr. Takagi has co-authored several patents and technical papers published in international journals and symposiums. He has delivered key note addresses in several international conferences.

1.	Most of the qualified students (IIT, NIT) go to other “more lucrative” opportunities.
Bell Labs: This is not that different from how the silicon valley startups lure employees away from Research Labs. So, what are we doing about it? We highlight our USP: Quality of work. We also work to keep the renumeration on par (taking risks into account). And, especially in Bell Labs in the last few years, we have also created "Research and Startups in One Place" via an internal ventures arm. Lesson for IITs: 1) Increase the stipends to a comfortable range, like what universities in the USA have done (at least it felt comfortable in '92 getting that first 500$ monthly stipend from UW-Madison J 2) Highlight through PR and college visits and educating IIT Ugs in their final years about the Quality of Research Work and how it prepares one to be apply the research skills throughout their lives in whatever career they may choose. It is a "one-time" investment that is best done now rather than after 10 yrs of industry. Actively pursue endowments from the industry to sponsor students, visiting employees, faculty, labs. To be frank, I would love to do something for the IITs in my current role (it also helps Bell Labs) but so far have not seen any form of request come my way. Ok, I can be proactive and reach out, but life gets busy and things drop out of mind. I suggest IITs also make a proactive reach out to industries thorugh Alumni associations and emails.
2.	Students that join do not have adequate domain knowledge and training
This has hardly been a problem at Bell Labs or UW Madison due to the sufficient supply and rigorous interview process Lesson for IITs: 1) Do not compromise on entrance requirements just to increase supply, 2) Encourage the students to take some of the advanced UG courses (even in the same classes as the UG-s) as a training program
3.	Hope for more students to stay back due to US recession
Seems true in the short term with one caveat: the top students still get their dream jobs within India, and the top quality we need for Research programs is not necessarily in the pool of students who can not get jobs in this market.
Outputs:
1.	Slow processes
Large companies also have lot of processes slowing things down. The solution has been to streamline these processes using various management and organizational tools. We can not fix Indian govt. bureaucracy here, but does it make sense to highlight this problem to the higher up stakeholders ("Ministry of Higher Education / Science" etc.) and ask them to appoint a separate, simplified process for Research institutions?
2.	Costly infrastructure
Solution: Sponsorships from private individuals and industry
3.	Research "itself"
Create some buzz in the country about the exciting research programs and how they are impacting the society, or leading to profitable ventures. Set up "incubator" like divisions to help researchers turn some of the ideas into ventures and money. Publish a press report now and then about top quality research papers and students working on them.
4.	Like Ananth mentioned below, let's borrow from the best practices in the industry: Good PR machinery is a must these days for IITs. Presentation / marketing matters.

Quality of PhD Students

Very few IIT UGs join as PhD students and hardly any join as M.Tech students. Most of them are lured away by the job market, primarily the IT market. The number of IIT UGs going for further studies (even in the US and Europe) is declining percentage wise, and maybe even in absolute terms. Even the number of students from NITs to the PhD and M.Tech programmes are limited. The reasons are the same. Essentially, students from top UG institutions are not joining the PhD streams in IITs in sufficient numbers. The students in the M.Tech programmes come from private institutions,a nd are mostly interested in joining the job market after getting a degree from an IIT. The economic background of the students are not very strong, and so there is a strong attraction towards the jobs on offer. Students joining the PhD programmes do not have adequate domain knowledge and need training. Unfortunately, time pressures and resource limitations do not permit us to make these students go through a large number of courses so that their background is strengthened. They are therefore not able to spend enough time before starting their research work. There is a shortage of eligible candidates in the Engineering programmes. The shortage is severe in Computer Science and Engineering.

Quality and Quantitiy of Faculty

The quality of PhD students has a direct impact on the quality of aspiring faculty from Institutes in India. Opportunities for research careers in certain disciplines in India is creating competition. Many multi-nationals in IT and Electronics have set up R&D centres. While some multi-national manufacturing firms have also set up R&D units, Indian manufacturers are also expanding their R&D activities. Even though this should make doing a PhD more attractive, the salary differentials vis-à-vis B.Techs are still not high enough (due to a limited market, and due to issues of quality). "Metro" IITs are able to attract more aspirants due to advantages of location, particularly due to greater opportunities for employment of spouses. The rapid expansion in higher education is going to create further strain in faculty availability. The new IITs will be affected more severely than the established ones, and if "poaching" by metro IITs takes on significant proportions (due to lack of sufficient aspirants to meet their requirements of expansion), the system can become unstable. Dependence on faculty candidates from the US and other developed countries is not a healthy long-term trend. We hope for recession (nay, depression!) in the US to save us! Happy days are here, looks like! This dependence reduces emphasis on strengthening the PhD programmes in India. It makes it difficult to plan expansions as availability is dependent on economic conditions elsewhere.

Outputs:

Infrastucture: Infrastructure has been one of the main bottlenecks in providing an environment for research. Many of the "necessities" have been viewed as luxuries in this poor country. Fortunately, the recent rapid growth in our economy has eased things a lot. It is no longer "bad" to have an air-conditioned work environment. Challenges still remain though. Support utilities such as electric supply and telecommunications have still not reached levels of reliability where they are taken for granted. With out-sourcing of services being encouraged, the limited market for such services, in cities other than the metros, is a maor contstraint. The biggest hurdle is the lack of flexibility in government procedures (even though purchase procedures have been liberalised to a great extent). This is expanded in the next section. Hurdles due to Government Procedures and Other Regulatory Systems: The complex procedures for acquisition of equipment and in allotting construction contracts are major hindrances in expanding and improving facilities. The watchdog systems such as the Central Vigilance Organisation, the central Audit, and even the Right to Information Act (RTI), are most of the time fetters rather than serving their intended purposes. The legal system is also another issue. Many a times, "stay orders" are issued without adequate opportunity for Insitutes to respond. The RTI act is used by many disgruntled employees with axes to grind, resulting in tremendous waste of time in preparing replies. "IIT Bashing": With IITs in the limelight due to their successes, has also come the phenomenon of "IIT Bashing". TV channels and newspapers find that "sensational" news on IITs sell. As a result, the IITs are not left in peace to do their job of teaching and research. Small issues are given prominence on national TV at prime time. IITs are ill equipped in PR systems to respond adequately. As a result of this exposure, Govt. officials, regulatory bodies, the legal system, all are reluctant to follow their natural responses to events and instead "harass" the IITs to respond to and explain even frivolous complaints. This was not the case, say, ten years ago. Decrying IITs lack of Research achievement: The IITs are under fire for not publishing "enough". Many senior scientists in mulitnationals and working abroad, categorise IITs as UG institutions. One senior Professor from Carnegie Mellon stated in a PanIIT meet that IITs are at the level of US State Colleges as far as research is concerned. We now hear senior Govt. officials chiding the IITs for not doing well in International rankings, be it the "Shanghai rankings" or the "Cambridge rankings" or some other ranking vogue at the time. Comparisons with China are invariably made. Citation indices, publication in "International" journals with high "impact factors" are the phrases to beat down the IITs. This frenzy of quantifying quality of research is frightening. It can lead to major distortions in ways research is conducted by faculty in India. If publications in "quality" journals is the main criteria, why should I worry about solving problems of my environment? Why should I aspire to become an expert in a certain field of my interest? I will rather become an expert in manipulation of mathematical systems and I will apply this expertise in any field that can use my mathematics. I will then have hundreds of quality publications, but I will not know how to advise anyone on even basic issues. All of this is a major hurdle in achieving quality output. Readiness of Industry Of course the quality and quantity of output is dependent on the quality of the input, and the challenges there have already been highlighted.

Comments from Bordia

The directors have provided a thoughtful and insightful framework for the discussion of this important topic. My comments are biased by three roles that I have played in this arena. First, I have been a faculty member at the University of Washington for 16 years, nine of which were as the Chair of the Department. In addition, I have been very active in our universities global programs. During this time, have talked to, recruited and worked with several students (both from the US and elsewhere). Second, during this time, at least in the last ten years, I have been an external examiner for about a dozen PhDs from various institutions in India (mostly IITs and IISc). Finally, I was in India on a six month sabbatical last year. The majority of time was spent in IITK and IISc. During this time, I supervised the research of PhD students, talked to many UG students and had several meaningful conversations with faculty colleagues and Institute leadership.

Input

Quality of the PhD Student

I completely agree with the assessment of the situation that the Directors have made. We have seen a marked decrease in the number of students applying to our PhD programs from IITs and I did not meet a single PhD student at IITK who had their UG degree from IIT.

Although the causes are many, I think the primary reason is the big difference in the salaries. During the time, I was at IIT (on my sabbatical), I talked to over 50 third and fourth year students about their experience at IIT, future plans and career aspirations. Most of these were from Mechanical, Materials, Chemical and Electrical Engineering. I used to end each conversation with one question: "How many of you want to be faculty members at IIT". I was shocked to learn that not even one student aspired to this career objective. I also asked them for the reason and they all mentioned that it was the salaries. They told me that they are confident that they will make more money as a BTech (either right away or in a few years) than their full Professors make at retirement. They also know that with an MBA, the sky is the limit to what they can earn (a slight exaggeration). They are generally aware of the better quality of life that they could have with a PhD but the big difference in salaries in front and center. I also held two group sessions for students to come and discuss with me career options in research. Only one UG student showed up in the two sessions combined (out of a total of about forty five students).

This is in marked contrast to the time when I was an UG student (74-79). In my batch, I am confident that at least 15% of us aspired to be faculty members at IITK. This is also in marked contrast to the best engineering institutions in the US where approximately 10 to 25% of the students go on to higher engineering studies (MS and/or PhD). In both cases, once again, it is clear that the difference between the earning potential is not as great. When I was an UG, I do not think any B.Tech student could imagine earning more than their Professors. Similarly, in the US, the financial penalty of getting a PhD is rather small.

I think the situation will only turn around if there are good, high paying job prospects for PhDs (in private sector, in private universities or at IITs) As a side note, the government research labs (e.g. CSIR) are held in very low esteem by even the PhD students as potential places to work.

Some other potential solutions are (I know they do not get to the core of the problem so their impact will be small):

IITs should recruit and admit non Indians to their PhD program. The high reputation of the Institutes could be used to attract high quality research institutes from other countries of the world. Joint and collaborative PhD programs with other countries (student spends part of the time at IIT and part at another institution). Engage UG students in research. Provide an option of getting credits for conducting research with faculty. Provide other opportunities for UG students to work closely with and be mentored by faculty members (e.g. summer internship) in order to give them a true sense of the professional life of a faculty member.

Quality and Quantity of Faculty

Once again, I agree with the summary provided by the Directors. I think the game is lost at the UG level. If we cannot attract the best and brightest in the country to pursue a PhD, we have lost the game.

In my opinion, the competition from the private sector for PhD will have a negative impact in the short term but may help in the long term by attracting more students to do a PhD. This would be especially true if the Institutes are able to significantly change the salary structure.

Why is it that IITs have very high standards for their students and faculty (I would argue significantly higher than other engineering institutions) but same salary structure as other institutions?

A few other specific suggestions:

IITs, specially, non Metro IITs must aggressively pursue and support dual career. They must find creative ways to employ spouses. In maybe useful to create a new track of research faculty in which people can be hired on research money. This can be used to expand the research portfolio of the Institutes, find temporary employment for qualified people until appropriate faculty positions open up and may also be useful in spousal hires. Proactively recruit abroad and at IISc.

Output

I was quite impressed with the significant improvement in the infra structure in the past few years. Some of the active and better funded programs at IIT now have better facilities than many of the best programs in the US. Unfortunately, this word has not gotten out. When I talk to my students (convincing them to explore academic opportunities at IIT), they are shocked to see the quality of the facilities (I show them pictures of labs and facilities in IIT in our field). Problems still exist with the support services. IITs must do a better job of publishing their research accomplishments and the economic impact of their research. The best voices for this are external constituencies (e.g industry). I completely agree that IITs must resist the relentless pressure to "quantify research" by externally imposed metrics. IITs must take the proactive lead in defining metrics by which its research output and scholarship should be measured. IITs must build a very vocal and influential group of external supporters who help them develop these metrics and then are willing to promote and champion them at all levels (including public arena). The vital challenges that a fast developing economy and society provide a unique opportunity to develop these. In my opinion, the IITs have are in a unique position to define and tackle the "grand engineering challenges" that India, and other countries in similar situation, face. PR at all levels is critical. The best spokespersons are alumni and users of IITs output (industry who employ IIT graduates and industries that benefit from IIT research). However, a team of professionals is needed at IITs to ensure that a coherent and targeted message is being conveyed.

The need for creating research ecosystems stems from the simultaneous need of both the academia and industry to meet some immediate imperatives.

Some key concerns regarding IITs and premier academic institutions in India are:

• How can IITs (and similar institutions) make a quantum jump from being suppliers of some of the best manpower to the world, to becoming global hubs of high-impact research?
• If key ingredients to this are the faculty members, how does one attract and retain good quality faculty?
• How should the industry interface be strengthened to achieve this?

On the other hand, industry is grappling with issues that include:

• How do companies increase the probability of successful innovation to give themselves a sustainable competitive advantage?
• How do they leverage the enormous knowledge pool at IITs well beyond merely recruiting their students?

Neither an insular corporate model nor an academic institution working in isolation can adequately address the aforementioned issues. Therefore the need for creating enabling ecosystems like Research Parks becomes very obvious. Well planned Research Parks customized to the Indian context seem to hold some very crucial answers to both sets of problems. Almost every large university in developed countries has an affiliated research park and many of these have been catalysts for tremendous innovation and development. A significant fraction of the innovation in research parks in the US especially in Stanford and MIT have come from IIT graduates. It is time India leverages the creativity of its own talent pool for creating similar ecosystems in the country.

In the Indian context research and innovation have largely been within the confines of an organization or an academic institution. Research Parks will bring in a paradigm shift in terms of collaborative research and innovation by getting entities with complementary capabilities to work with each other, these being industry personnel, faculty and students. Such ecosystems will be hugely beneficial to the industry because there is sufficient evidence to show that they increase the probability of successful innovation manifold even in well-established large corporates. In the context of IITs, companies can have access to the vast domain expertise of faculty members across multiple departments and simultaneously tap the creativity of the brightest young minds in the country. Smaller start-ups and incubatees will undoubtedly stand to benefit tremendously through a supportive ecosystem and world-class infrastructure at subsidized rates.

For academic institutions in general and IITs in particular, the potential advantages are numerous. By providing greater opportunities for research funding and consulting projects for faculty members, the presence of collocated research parks will result in attracting the best minds to the teaching fraternity. A sustained level of engagement with the companies in the ecosystem enabled through their proximity will ensure generation of research which that is relevant and significant in the global context. Both the quantum and quality of masters and doctoral research will improve through part-time enrollments of industry personnel as well as joint guidance by senior executives. Targeted strategic research in identified areas with active industry support can result not just in a huge increase in generating IP but in global recognition that could enable significant participation in international standard bodies.

The IIT Madras Research Park is one such effort. While it is modeled along the lines of successful research parks elsewhere in the world, it has a larger agenda that focuses not just on incubation efforts but also on propelling successful innovation in established R&D focused companies. It is designed as a point of synergy for technological creativity and commercialization for incubates and new ventures even whilst being a point of confluence for innovative enterprises. The need of the hour is for all entities to work together to make this initiative a success so that the model can be replicated many times over. A well-designed Research Park is the best way to enable successful innovation in enterprises and propel IITs to leapfrog into research institutions of international standing. India will need at least 50 such Parks by 2020 to emerge as a global R&D hub.

Just so people understand where I come from and to put things in perspective, here is some background on myself. After finishing my B.Tech. (ChemE) in IITM in 1977, I did my PhD in Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. Since graduating in December 1981, I have been with IBM Research in San Jose as a pure techie (an IBM Fellow since 1997). I have never been a manager in my entire career but still, thanks to IBM valuing technologists a lot, I am a fairly senior IBM executive whose 2nd line manager is the CEO of IBM! In spite of having lived in Silicon Valley for 27 years, I have also resisted the temptations around me to become an entrepreneur or join startups to try to become an overnight millionaire! For the last 2.5 years, I have been in India on an assignment as the first-ever IBM India Chief Scientist. Since I have always been very passionate with respect to talking about and hearing about deeply technical work, I have visited quite regularly numerous institutions across the globe for talks, discussions and conferences. As a result, I am fairly well informed about how various institutions work in different countries. While I have visited India quite regularly from 1977 to 2006 and given talks in various educational/ commercial/ professional organizations, coming to India on my assignment has given me even more opportunities to travel the length and breadth of the country for seminars and panels in small and big organizations, and events. My assignment mission, in addition to being a technical advisor and an evangelist for IBM technologies and IBM India, has been to serve as a role model for techies across India, independent of organizational affiliations, and to instill in them a sense of pride in taking up technical careers. My home page (http://www.almaden.ibm.com/u/mohan/) lists most of the activities that I have taken part in within and outside IBM.

Issues:

I am concerned about not just the research environment in India (more generally than just in the IITs) but also the deep technical areas in general, including product development and innovative high-end architecture and design work. While pockets of excellent work have gone on in different organizations, it is the scale of that sort of work that needs to be improved dramatically for the size of the technical population in India. The 2 IIT directors on this panel and my other co-panelists have pointed out some of the issues relating to the Pan IIT research ecosystem. Without restricting myself to just the IIT research ecosystem, I will add some more points and elaborate on some of the points covered by the others.

In my opinion, it is the whole ecosystem for high-end technical work in India that needs to be transformed. It is not just the faculty, management/ administrators in different institutions (universities and commercial/ government organizations) and students but also society at large that needs to be made to think differently. Whether it is in manufacturing, design or implementation, more high end work with lot more innovation potential needs to be focussed on by moving up the value chain. This needs to be taken up in a mission mode by all concerned entities. Piecemeal addressing of the issues is not going to be sufficient. The PanIIT alumni organization can play a leading role here.

Suggestions:

During their undergraduate days itself, students should be given a taste of research/ high-end technical work and given enough exposure to people who have chosen to follow long-term technical careers and who could serve as role models to them. In this regard, the pioneering steps taken at IIIT-H by its director Prof. Rajeev Sanghal and his colleagues are worth emulating. In addition to giving their undergraduates opportunities to work on projects early on in their studies, they are also hosting an annual 2-days event (http://www.iiit.net/exor/exorindex.html) called the Workshop on Excitement of Research (ExOR) to which they are inviting 3rd year undergraduate students from across India. Similar activities should be undertaken all across India not just in colleges but also in high schools. In addition to the IITs, the PanIIT alumni organization should also focus on this as an on-going activity. Forums like the annual technical festivals that many colleges across India, not just IITs and NITs, are organizing should be used effectively to show case high end technical work and high profile technical role models from within and outside India. Such scientists and technologists should be asked to present not only their technical work but also to discuss the career choices they made and their advise to the impressionable minds in the audience. In their coverage of events and personalities, all media outlets, including popular press and trade press people in India, should be urged to constantly portray not only the management executives and the rich entrepreneurs but also people with deep technical accomplishments - scientists/ researchers as well as top technologists. Corporate communications people in commercial organizations also have to focus on this. This will have an impact on not only what the impressionable minds get focussed on and aspire for but also on the rest of society which plays a serious role in what the youngsters get goaded/ encouraged/ forced/ persuaded into doing. This will have a major impact on the value systems that are fostered across the length and breadth of India. The notion that if a professional hasn't become a manager in his/ her organization that person hasn't been successful in his/ her career needs to be dispelled. Also, evaluating people's importance based purely on how many people they manage and/ or what budget they control or the money they make should be discouraged so that other metrics like their scientific/ technical/ research contributions and corresponding awards and honors are also appreciated. I have heard about professors like Deepak Phatak, Pankaj Jalote and Dheeraj Sanghi having visited large numbers of institutions across India highlighting higher education and research careers and urging more people to get passionate about them. I have done my bit also, especially in the last 2.5 years, as mentioned in the background section above. We need lot more people who would do similar things on a regular basis with missionary zeal! In highly publicized events, not only professors but also senior technical people from other organizations should be provided the platforms to discuss their careers with a view to encouraging/ persuading others to follow suit. Even in forums like the Nasscom annual conference when innovation panels are held the above sorts of people have not been asked to participate in any serious way. Entrepreneurs, rather than serious innovators, dominate such platforms! In the past, even the PanIIT global alumni conference has been faulted on this count. In IBM India, we are encouraging more of our employees to get higher level degrees by doing part time studies and externally registering for higher degrees. We are also encouraging more of our highly qualified employees to get engaged with universities for joint research and knowledge upgrading of faculty and students on deeply technical topics. More such efforts need to be taken up by other organizations also. The Indo-US Collaboration on Engineering Education (IUCEE) spearheaded by Prof. Krishna Vedula and supported by Infosys has done some pioneering work in knowledge upgrading of engineering faculty through teach-the-teachers sessions. By holding IBM Technology Days in numerous educational institutions annually and by hosting the IBM University Relations Day in Bangalore annually with a large number of faculty and students participating, we in IBM have been doing some of the evangelizing of high end technical work and technical careers. Microsoft Research India's annual Tech Vista event also plays a similar role. Sometimes the faculty and student turn out in these events is not what it needs to be for them to be effective in fostering more industry - academia relationships and for the faculty and students to become more aware of real world scenarios and problems. Lot more systematic approaches need to be taken across multiple organizations to attract the best and brightest Indians in very good positions in the US in particular to move back to India, if not permanently, at least for a significantly long period of time. This should done with the same zeal with which government entities and various professional bodies go to various parts of the world trying to promote India as a destination for something or the other. Each IIT director doing some level of this sort of evangelizing of his IIT as a good place to teach and do research while doing faculty recruiting in the US is not good enough. We have to build a brand for India as a destination for high end work by highlighting the pockets of brilliance exhibited in India in industry and academia already, as mentioned before. In this context, a glossy booklet produced by IIT Bombay's dean of R&D Prof. Krithi Ramamritham and his team is a good start in highlighting some of the great work done in that campus. In general, all of our educational institutions have to become more savvy about marketing the good work that has been done and effectively leveraging the web for this purpose. In most institutions, the faculty are very reluctant to use the modern ways of communicating what has been done (home pages, project pages, blogs, Second Life, etc.). This has to change. Potential recruits abroad need to be convinced through such means about why it is good to move back to India. China has done a great job of leveraging the Chinese diaspora very effectively to change the academic landscape in that country. We ought to be able to do the same if we put our collective force behind it. If we do a better job of show casing the good work that has been done in some of our educational institutions so that at least our undergraduates get to appreciate them, then may be we will succeed in retaining some of them for higher studies instead of letting them go abroad for doing that. The IITs have to take this up very seriously. Mentor the high potential UGs and convince them to stay on. Lot more emphasis should be placed in our colleges and schools in improving the soft skills of our students. Some people have the wrong perception that if one isn't interested in a managerial career, it is okay not to have good soft skills. To be successful even in a purely technical career, soft skills have to be really good. The importance of this cannot be left to the students to realize much later in their careers. As I say often in my public talks, even good research work needs to be marketed for it to have the maximum impact. Sadly, lot of the IIT faculty also lack some of these basic soft skills to deal with the outside world, including industry and society at large. Just like I reach out to the universities all the time, I would like to see faculty also being eager to network, volunteer to visit and give talks, etc.

Some of the key topics that will be discussed include:

An analysis of current research activities at IITs, and recommendations from Directors at IITs towards enhancing the same. Funding constraints and requirements is one of the key areas, as also the need to set the virtuous cycle of research talent into motion. Equally important is the need to align research activities not just to the needs of the industry, but also to the social context at large. It is interesting to note that some of the commercial research activities in India have started to orient themselves towards services businesses (50% of GDP), as well as towards the large rural population. Perspectives from panelists of how research has been made more effective in other parts of the world. This would include the model of industry-research interaction that has worked in other parts of the world. A glimpse of where the industry is headed in terms of its needs on the research front, and its expectations from academia and researchers. Perspectives on what has worked best and what hasn't worked well in their attempts to work with Research, and what changes can be made to make it more effective. Tie the different perspectives listed above into a cohesive agenda, and how the Research Park initiative at IIT Chennai looks to integrate various elements of the ecosystem. The session will be interactive and will solicit participation from the audience as much as from the panelists. Panelists include Dr Chidambaram, PSA, Govt. of India, Directors from IITs, professionals with experience in research ecosystems globally, industry practitioners in India, and faculty from enabling initiatives to widen the research ecosystem at IITs.

The issue raised by the panel is how to improve the quality of the faculty and students that enter premier scientific institutions in India and how to improve the productivity and impact of their research. Certainly there are a variety of national stumbling blocks that do negatively impact the attractiveness of the IITs as scientific destinations, and these factors have been enumerated by the moderators. However, I would like to make the case that this is really the proverbial tip of the iceberg, and the more germane and urgent question to be asking is "How do the talented students and faculty that do join the IITs fare?". My point is - had most of these folks turned out to be success stories, then we would have seen a "domino effect" that would have automatically generated a rich stream of similar applicants - in fact, we wouldn't be having this panel discussion in the first place! In a nutshell, "institutional mechanisms must be consciously set up to mentor star faculty and students for visible success".

Unfortunately, the typical experience is otherwise. Specifically, we have had several cases of faculty with top-notch academic pedigrees who after returning to India have largely disappeared from the international research arena. For example, it would not be stretching the realms of credulity for a faculty to have produced more PhDs and publications in a few years as a junior faculty in a top US school as compared to a couple of decades spent at our institutions!

Similarly, we have also had several instances of our own best master's students who have subsequently gone on to join our Phd programs failing to either produce a thesis commensurate with their talents, or sometimes even to complete the program. In a recent instance, a star in-house student "timed-out" after spending no less than ten years in the PhD program!

The above anecdotal information serves only to highlight my point that stemming the perceived rot first requires introspection about the internal mechanisms of our institutions, before we start agonizing over the external interfaces. Specifically, what causes even highly talented individuals to unceremoniously fade away without giving full expression to their abilities?

My analysis is that the following reasons are primarily to blame for this unhappy state of affairs:

Firstly, the poor level of academic professionalism and administration. A typical situation faced by applicants is the wall of indifference with no response, either positive or otherwise, forthcoming to their applications for extended periods of time. Subsequently, their offices and accomodation are rarely set up adequately by the time they enter the academic portals. Then, during the initial years, they rarely get to meet with top administration officials and are often left to fend for themselves in figuring out the system. Overall, an atmosphere of benign indifference, often bordering on neglect, characterizes our treatment of new recruits.

Secondly, a particularly thorny issue that often plagues new researchers, while they still retain their idealism, is the institutional pressure to carry out "locally relevant" research, which is also highlighted in the panel agenda. While on the surface this would seem an unarguable objective, yet in practice it usually turns out to be the case that it merely provides a "holier-than-thou" fig leaf to justify poor quality research and third-rate publications. I would suggest that it would instead be far better for us to first attempt to keep our heads above water in international research, and if it coincidentally happens that the work is also of local relevance, so much the better. That is, the local relevance should be the icing on the cake, and not a moralistic justification for a moldy cake. Our first duty is to put India on a high pedestal in world research.

Further, the lip-service paid to locally relevant research is evident from the fact that most institutions talk only about the research objectives without using the same yardstick for the students or faculty performing the research. If one wants to be truly relevant to local society, there is a much simpler and immediate option - welcome the reserved category students and faculty with open arms, instead of the arms-length approach currently in vogue! That is, start with "locally relevant researchers" before we wax eloquent on the merits of locally relevant research.

Thirdly, the unwillingness to call a spade a spade when it comes to professional judgements of one's colleagues or their students. For fear of vitiating the collegial department atmosphere, we make the grave mistake of providing sugar-coated assessments and, in the long run, encourage researchers to fall prey to a false sense of accomplishment. Instead, we should clearly enunciate the performance metrics at the time of joining and, most importantly, stick with these metrics in the judgement process. At IISc now, quite a few departments, especially in the Electrical Sciences division, have authored documents outlining their expectations and modes of evaluation for both faculty and students. As a simple case in point, a recently implemented policy in the Computer Science department is that ME students can be considered for an S (outstanding) grade in their project work only if they have submitted a paper to a journal or conference that is internationally recognized to be of A+ or A calibre. While earlier about 60% of the students used to routinely obtain an S grade in the project, beginning last year, we have not only had the percentage come down steeply to around 20%, but more importantly, the departmental publications have shot up significantly. Further, grades are not only used as carrots but also as sticks. Last year, for the first time, a non-neglible number of students were forced to stay behind without graduating until they satisfied a baseline quality requirement. The basic point here is that once we enforce accountability criteria for both faculty and students, the genius of the Indian mind is such that it will automatically deliver!

In closing, I would like to reiterate my main point - echoing Cassius' injunction to Brutus, "the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves", I would say "the fault lies not in our inputs but in how our systems utilize these inputs".

a. Input quality of PhD students

There is a need to look at the systemic issues of what will attract a 21st century student into a research career.

• The Research mindset from the UG level, and certainly into the PG level must be identified (in say 20% of the students) and strengthened - the ability to tackle open ended problems, peer review, imagination and originality, perseverance.
• Strengthen the research component in UG and PG theses - don't know what the standard of these is right now - but the 20% of people with the right mindset, must work on really interesting areas.
• Set targets to get 25% of the target set of students at UG level (ie 5% of total UG intake) to register for PhDs eventually - keep track of this on a personal basis, assign mentors from 2nd year onwards etc.
• Re-look at the entry criteria for PhD students, like many MBA schools - mandate some work experience in the domain (preferably in R&D-friendly companies) before accepting a candidate for a PhD.

Then there are some tactical improvements which are needed to solve specific problems.

• PhD stipends to be much closer what an industry employee will earn, so that money is not a constraint (Faculty salaries / grants will need to increase as well).
• Industry committments to depute larger number of employees for PhDs (TCS Researcher model) or sponsor PhDs (TCS PPP model).
• Leverage modern technologies to allow greater interaction across researchers e.g. Web 2, video conferencing, unconferences.

b. Quality and Quantity of faculty

• Salary differentials for PhDs hired into Industry - TCS numbers are 3L-4L for BTechs vs around 8-15L for fresh PhDs - so the difference is pretty. clear, and matches what a high-performing UG will get after the same period.
• The issue of faculty salaries must be fixed - many ideas including the TCS faculty support program and others. We need to have systematic rotations of academic faculty into industry positions for both sides to benefit.
• Greater degree of sponsored research funding by corporates and government can always help.

c. Output

• Infrastructure and Government hurdles - IITs must look for an endowment-based model from Alumni and others - there is no other way.
• Suggest that the IITs become much more PR savvy and have a Dean-level position for media, industry, co-innovation and possibly IPR licensing.
• Re-look at today's methods of publications, conferences, fees, travel, Las Vegas.. is so 20th century, and actually restricts quality researchers to a few schools which have grants and money. You can bet that industry sponsorship for conferences and events will dry up in 2009! Can the IITs lead this.

Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala has been awarded Padma Shri in the year 2002. He has been awarded Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 1998, Dr.Vikram Sarabhai Research Award for the year 1997, Millennium Medal at Indian Science Congress in the year 2000 and H. K. Firodia for "Excellence in Science & Technology" for the year 2002, Shri Om Prakash Bhasin Foundation Award for Science & Technology for the year 2004, Awarded Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Lecture Award by INSA for the year 2006, IBM Innovation and Leadership Forum Award by IBM for the year 2006 and recently awarded Honorary Doctorate by the Institute of Blekinge Institute of Technology Sweden. He is a Fellow of World Wireless Research forum, IEEE and Indian academies including INAE, IAS, INSA and NAS.

Dr. Jhunjhunwala is a Director in the Board of State Bank of India, TTML, BEL, Polaris, 3i Infotech, Sasken, Tejas, IDRBT and Tata Communications. He is member of Prime Minister's Scientific Advisory Committee.

He taught and did research in combustion sciences for aerospace vehicles and missiles and other industrial combustion devices. He has written two books on understanding combustion and understanding aerospace propulsion.

Over the last 25 years he has provided leadership in the modern technologies of solid fuels including biofuels. The technology for converting the solid fuels into clean gaseous fuels for use in reciprocating engines as well as gas turbines has been researched, developed and systematically perfected. The applications include gasifier stoves for cooking and semi-industrial applications, thermal and electrical applications over a wide power range; these technologies have been licensed to manufacturers in India and overseas. The applications including rural energy supply, institutional and industrial electric and thermal needs and have global relevance and of immediate importance to all oil importing countries.

A fellow of Indian Academy Sciences, Indian National Academy of Engineering, and Aeronautical Society of India, he has received the Om Prakash Bhasin award for energy (1994), Excellence in Research in Engineering (1994) and Distinguished Alumnus award (2006) of Indian Institute of Science, the awards from Government of Karnataka, the Rajyotsava award (2005) and Visweswariah Science and Technology award (2007).

In an ever changing world, it is very important to position the national economy within its core strength to enable itself to sustain its own economy and possibly support others. In this context, the key feature of the entire package is in the use of land-water asset to create jobs of a wide range of skills of a stupendous magnitude (60+ million jobs on 33+ million hectares waste land with a possible output of 30 to 40 million tonnes of biodiesel, 60 - 90 million tonnes of solid wastes for distributed power) allowing the free enterprise of India - India, Inc to pursue various aspects of this "green fuel revolution" with only policy initiatives, regulatory measures and some possible tax sops by the Government.

Dr Ramasami has assumed the role of Secretary S&T in the Government of India since May 2006. He is currently engaged in the development of policies and programs for attraction of talents for study and careers with science, rejuvenation of research in universities, stepping up of international S&T cooperation, development of public-private partnerships in R&D sector and accountability of public funded research, development and demonstration. The Department of Science and Technology is aggressively engaged in the development of new models and mechanisms for enhancing the role of public funded institutions in innovations and research and development.

Dr Ramasami has a large number of publications in highly peer-valued journals and significant number of patents, which are under commercial exploitation. His research experience spans over several fields and areas in both basic and applied sciences. He has made some important contributions in the fields of inorganic chemistry as well as chemical and leather related technologies. His contributions to the understanding of the chemistry and applications of chromium as well as leather science and environment related technologies have earned him several professional recognitions in both India and abroad. These include Shanti Swrup Bhatnagar Prize for chemical sciences in 1993, election to all major science academies as a fellow as well the Third World Academy of Sciences and the National civilian award Padma Sri in 2001.

Indian education system has grown rapidly in the last three decades with about 10 million students and about 360 universities. It represents one of the largest education systems in the world. The challenges posed by this rapidly evolving system need to be understood. Necessary policies and action plans need to be developed so as to fulfill the objectives of the Higher Education.

The role of Technology in general and Information Communication Technology in particular has been found to be useful in delivering education to a large number of students even with inadequate number of teachers.

The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) was initiated by the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore in 1999. The core curriculum development was later approved under the NPTEL programme and funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in 2003 for a total budget of 205 million Indian Rupees for the creation of 120 web based courses, 120 video courses and encapsulation/ conversion of existing 110 video courses. The first phase of the project is completed and has ensured complete coverage of the first three years of undergraduate curriculum in five major engineering branches, namely, Civil, Computer science, Electrical, Electronics and Communication and Mechanical engineering. These were supplemented by the courses in the core science and management.

The success of NPTEL has initiated the thinking about the Virtual Technological University (Virtual Tech). The Virtual Tech is envisaged to have the five broad Schools covering different areas, such as Education, Engineering Sciences, Natural Sciences, Management Sciences and Humanities.

India is in the midst of this tremendous migration of global know-how. American and European companies are increasingly carrying out their design and manufacturing work in India. Technology and "Flat World" protocols are facilitating interdisciplinary, multinational, governmental, and institutional collaborations across boundaries. The universities across the countries share a fundamental focus on the future, - the development of intellectual human capital. Global cooperation between the partner Institutes across the countries, on the basis of complementing each other will enhance the strength and cover the weakness of the participating Institutes.

It has been understood that Inter-disciplinary and Multi-disciplinary courses have far more impact and value in Higher Education. Academic programme should develop boundary-less academic environment. The role of laboratory experimental work and research is also a crucial element of Higher Education. Providing such training when the system is very large, becomes difficult. It is conjectured that technologies of virtual laboratory and simulation may help in fulfilling the requirements of training for the students in laboratory work.