IIT Madras Director Kamakoti Veezhinathan: ‘There is rapid growth in industry technology, but college syllabus cannot change at the same pace’

See, I said something in the context of a discussion on science and cow, or rather science and cattle. The discussion included many other things, like gobar (cow dung) gas, organic farming and cattle by-products. There was also something about research having been done on gau-mutra (cow urine). There are some articles that have been published on this. I also mentioned an anecdote that my father had told me, about his personal experience.

My interest in all this was that research on Indian schools of medicine should thrive. People should pursue this line of research, things like naturopathy or other Indian schools of medicine. Frankly, I did not foresee this kind of reaction, but the positive from this is that a lot of people seem to be interested. I am getting a lot of emails, and hopefully this will lead to some positive outcomes.

Amitabh Sinha: You are heading an institution which consistently gets top rankings among Indian institutions. What is IIT Madras doing differently, which needs to be emulated by other institutions.

It’s a combination of several things. We have a strategic plan. We have a peer review committee that evaluates every department. We have a plan for every faculty and a vision. Though we are all working on diverse areas, there is a way by which we align and have a common focus. That focus has really helped us.

Then, we have been looking at national priorities. There is a gap between industry and academia. We now call the industry and say, give me the course content, you conduct an examination, but it will be a proctored examination in my centre, and the university will be willing to grant credits.

One interesting thing about IIT Madras is that it was set up in collaboration with the Germans. The Germans brought in the culture of industry to every course. That is the reason we have innovation and entrepreneurship in our spine. Last year, we had 365-plus patents. This year (2024) we have already filed 400 and we will be crossing 380-390 (granted) between April 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025.

Director of IIT Madras V Kamakoti

Amitabh Sinha: You mentioned national priorities. I wonder where you stand on this debate on science for its own sake and science directed towards a particular objective.

Science for its own sake is necessary for science to solve national problems. We need to have a mix of both, a healthy balance. When we recruit faculty, we look at their track record on fundamental research. Everybody can’t be doing translational research.

Science for national priority is applying ourselves to problems that require solving today. For example, sustainability is a national priority. Skilling is a national priority. One of our incubated companies has developed a septic tank cleaner. Supreme Court said there should be no manual scavenging. The problem is very easily defined, but you need a lot of research for this. This is research for national priority.

On science and national priorities | Science for its own sake is necessary for science to solve national problems… When we recruit faculty, we also look at fundamental research. Everybody can’t be doing translational research

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What is science for the sake of science? Recently, in his Mann ki Baat, the Prime Minister mentioned about extra-terrestrial manufacturing. In my opinion, this is science for the sake of science. We are sending humans to the moon. They have to go and make some settlement there. Suppose they have to build a house there. Where’s the concrete going to come from? The first problem is, can I have very less water or zero water concrete? At IIT Madras, we have made some positive impact in the last two years (on zero-water concrete). If it succeeds, why moon, I will do it on earth as well. But this is science for science. When it succeeds, it becomes science for national priority.

Amitabh Sinha: We are supposed to be at the cusp of a new age in which technology is going to dominate. Technologies like AI or quantum are supposed to completely transform our lives, and also decide the fate of countries in a new world order. Is India in the race for mastering these technologies?

Data is going to be the deciding factor in a lot of these. As they say, data is the new oil. And you can see where your brightest talents are going. We run one of the world’s largest data science programmes, with 36,000 students enrolled.

What these technologies are going to do is to help us solve problems that we could not in the past. I am a computer scientist. There are certain problems that are not solvable in a reasonable amount of time. We call them NP (not in polynomial time) problems. But quantum computing can solve it in polynomial time, a reasonable amount of time. Tasks that take months or years can be done in minutes or even less.

You ask, are we in the race? Yes, we are. Quantum technologies are very important. We now have a National Quantum Mission, in which lots of top institutions, IIT Madras, IISc and others are working. We also have an AI Mission, a semiconductor mission. Are we there? Yes. Do we need to do more? Yes.

Amitabh Sinha: Where are we in our quest to become a world-class chip processor?

We have made good progress thanks to the semiconductor mission. For example, we have Tatas investing in the sector in a big way. Very soon, I hope to make some good announcement from IIT Madras, something that will make us feel good.

There are three aspects — design, fabrication and assembly and testing. Today, we are doing excellent on the design side. We have the best designers in the world. My own students, hundreds of them, have worked for Intel, AMD, Nvidia and others. Packaging is a low-hanging fruit. Today we already have packaging houses in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Assam, and I am sure within the next two-three years we will have several more.

On fabrication side, we are making efforts. Design is intellect, fabrication is the resource. We have the intellect, we will have to find the resource. Once the two come together, we will be able to accelerate. With the investments from Tatas and others, I’m sure we will have two or three fabs (fabrication units) soon.

On industry-Academia gap | There is a gap. We now call the industry and say, give me the course content, you conduct an examination, but it will be a proctored examination in my centre, and the university will grant credits

Ritu Sarin: You are a member of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB). How does that dovetail with your work at IIT Madras?

NSAB gives us an opportunity to understand things beyond technology. It gives a very broad perspective because we have access to a lot of information. We have access to think tanks, to the industry and others. That essentially means that we can start looking at some very good national priorities.

For example, we started the Bharat database programme. We believe that databases for the country need multilingual interface and it needs to work across a set of devices. We also worked very closely on ideas like the 5G. Today, a country can become a superpower only if it owns the technology.

This 5G-I is a very interesting story. In developed countries, what is the definition of rural connectivity? That, if I go some 250 km outside the city, my 5G connection should not drop. But what do we need in rural India? I want to sit at my home and with low latency I should be able to switch my motor on and off, or control my drone to spray bio-fertilisers. I can’t put one mobile tower per field because I will not have that much money. To run a tower, you need to spend lakhs every month and I need to have lakhs of calls there to make it viable. I can’t have that many calls, so I can’t have large number of towers. Instead, I need large coverage from one tower. So I want low mobility, meaning I don’t want a very fast connection, but I want large coverage. So this LMLC (Low Mobility Large Coverage) became India’s need.

We pushed that, and of course it was a battle, but we got it. So the coming 5G release will be harmonised with this. LMLC is India’s standard essential patent. This is the first time we have got something in 5G.

Many ideas come when we start interacting with think tanks and others. It essentially helps us to have a broader understanding of issues.

Director of IIT Madras V Kamakoti

Manas Srivastava: We often hear about problems in work-life balance among engineers. Do IITs prepare students for these kind of challenges?

I took over as director in January 2022. From September 2022 to April 2023, there were five suicides on campus. We couldn’t figure out why. One of the things we did was conduct blood tests and found that some of the students did not have vitamin D at all. They didn’t see the sun because they were always into studies.

Last year, we opened up sports excellence admission. You win some competition at national level or international event, you are given a score, and then based on that, you could get into the top courses at IIT. We have 34 seats — 17 gender neutral and 17 for women. This year, we got five national champions.

My message is go and play, and you will still have a chance to get into IIT Madras. We have had no suicides after that. Playing is very important. What does sports tell you? Instantaneous success, instantaneous failure. That brings maturity, and physical fitness.

This year, I’ve also introduced Fine Arts and Culture Excellence (FACE). We believe that people must have other things in life and that will basically make them more focused. I think industry must also look at work-life balance because productivity comes only if you have a break. A good productive work environment addresses work-life balance.

On data shaping the future | Data is the new oil. You can see where your brightest talents are going. We run one of the world’s largest data science programmes, with 36,000 students

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Kaushik Dasgupta: What do we need to do to address the issue of skill deficit?

There is rapid growth in industry technology, while college syllabus cannot change at the same pace. An autonomous institution like IIT can still do that but a large state university, with 250-odd colleges, cannot. Syllabus evolves at one pace, technology evolves much faster, and these are orders of magnitude apart.

But technology is also an enabler. Today, lakhs of students are part of SWAYAM Plus (online teaching portal). We have brought industry onboard, and they are teaching some courses.

Manufacturing is going to be the most important thing for our multi-trillion dollar economy. But manufacturing can’t be done online. Under the Malaviya Mission Teacher Training Programme, we are going to experiment on smart manufacturing. We will develop a set of courses. Some parts can be online, others would be offline. We will get one bill of material for a lab infrastructure. Whichever institution wants to participate, we will give this bill of materials to them. They will invest and set up a lab. We now have a model by which we can train two lakh people over the next 10 years in advanced manufacturing.

Uma Vishnu: There’s been another suicide at Kota recently. How much pressure is the IIT entrance putting on students?

There is a more fundamental problem here. If one is not interested in engineering, you should not be forced into it. There are kids from rural India who have no coaching and still make it to IITs.

Please ask the kid what he or she wants to do. Don’t decide for the kid. This is one major request I will make to the parents. You cannot eliminate competition. It will be there. If I have 1.5 million students aspiring for IIT, and I can select only 20,000, I need to conduct an examination. But children should not be forced into this.

Amitabh Sinha: Does the Kota syndrome bother the IITs? It might not be a problem created by IITs, but still linked to them.

Of course, it bothers us. You know, I watched Kota Factory (web series) and was very troubled. In fact, the idea for this sports excellence and FACE came after that. Of course, this is not the full solution, but we wanted to make a beginning. It (Kota Factory) gave me sleepless nights.

Vidheesha Kuntamalla: The placement percentages of first generation IITs seem to have fallen post Covid. In 2022, there was an all-time spike but in 2023 the hiring was very conservative. Is it a temporary dip?

The 2022 spike was a temporary spike. They did not hire during Covid, so in 2022 they hired more. In 2023, it started normalising. I cannot give out this year’s placement. In 2023, we were touching around 90 per cent in terms of B.Tech. M.Tech was also very good.

Some students take up other options, like they want to do civil services or explore a start-up. One guy said I want to tour India. I’m sure within six to eight months after graduation all these fellows will also get a job.

Ritika Chopra: As the head of an institution, what do you think of the impact of the ranking ecosystem on the academic culture?

As far as the Indian ranking system goes, it’s very transparent. All data is made available to all stakeholders. When we are at 70, to improve to 80, I can do some macro-level change. When from 80 I want to go to 85, a little medium level. But when I want to go from 85 to 85.5, I have to do a lot of micro-level changes. Those changes essentially meant knowing what should I do in the institute to improve my rank. That gave us a lot of insight into the way we are running the institution.

For example, how many economically-weaker students are we supporting? We can’t offer a scholarship to every student but we have to find a way to support as many as we can. We are now running the Vidya Lakshmi Scheme, where we are supporting eligible students across all IITs.

Amitabh Sinha: How do the IITs see global rankings?

There are 45 marks (in those rankings) that are out of syllabus for us because it’s all perception. But there are some good things about QS (World University rankings), like sustainability scores.

QS ranking motivates us to do these types of things. Our rank was 600, next time we became 270 or something. These types of international rankings actually give us a lot more insights.