US woos Bangalore skill for Buffalo jobs

The 102-year-old IISc,undoubtedly India’s biggest repository of pure sciences talent,has 2,400 students pursuing Masters and doctoral programmes in a variety of cutting edge engineering and science frontiers. The institute has 1,500 Ph.D. students alone,the largest such pool of all institutions in India.

“Skills are only one half of the equation,” Locke said in a town hall meeting held outdoors in the institute’s lush campus where students,faculty and US officials mingled freely. A Vinod Dham (inventor of the Pentium chip) or a Vinod Khosla (founder of Sun Microsystems) could not have been successful but for America’s intellectual property rights,its ecosystem supporting innovation and the market for the products,Locke said.

“Somewhere in this gathering is the Vinod Khosla of clean energy or the Vinod Khosla of medical innovation,” Locke told the meeting. Both innovation and research are the keys to American success. “We are counting on you,” he said.

In the US,the slowing rate of innovation has become a matter of grave concern. Analysts fear that the lack of talent will be the downfall of the mighty American innovation economy. Students from Bangalore’s IISc and a few top Indian institutions are increasingly sought after by American defence institutions as well as corporations to plug the innovation gaps.

“Today,there appears to be a great demand in the West for our students — they want our students to come there,study and continue to live and work there,” said Padmanabhan Balaram,director of the institute. He said IBM chairman Samuel J Palmisano was due to address students just hours after Locke’s town hall meeting.

American corporations such as Intel,General Electric and Lockheed Martin are scouring for the institute’s science and engineering talent and hiring bigger numbers each year during placement season.

At the Locke meeting,Sarada Prasad,25,a doctoral student in electrical and communications engineering was in the audience. Prasad said he was not contemplating going to the US after his Ph.D. because he was already at the “best school in India where only brilliant students can get in”.

Also in the audience was Anurag Mishra,32,a doctoral student in Physics. Mishra,whose thesis is on macromolecular crystallography,said he would head to the US after his Ph.D. That was where most of his academic peers and even his professors had headed,he said.

But Mishra was worried about the radio-tagging and treatment of Indian students of a dubious university in California. He said he had come to the meeting to see what Locke had to say on that touchy subject.

Locke,sensing the mood at the meeting,said the authorities were dealing with the Indian students with the utmost sensitivity and speed. “But please don’t only look at that one incident. Also consider the positive experiences of the 100,000 Indians currently studying in the US.”