Very often, as academicians, we come across these questions:

“Are your students, industry ready ?”
“How well are they trained to take up careers in industry ?”
“What additional skill sets did they acquire during their undergraduate years ?”
“Can they work on live projects ?”
“What makes them different from graduates from other institutions?”
“What is the Unique Selling Point (USP) of your institute ?”

While the answers to these questions can’t be generalized, it is imperative to understand the need of the hour and the perspectives of both the Industry and Academia.

One thing is irrefutable, competition is tough and the industry seeks out ONLY the best talent. And what can we as academicians do to nurture the talents of our students to make them worthy of the industry? How can we bridge the knowledge gap between academia and industry? On one hand, academicians could purport that their role is to teach and train students by providing them with basics and foundational knowledge of their domain, while also incorporating niche technologies into the curricula and designing a syllabus that is in tandem with industry development.  Simultaneously, the industry raises red flags that question the quality of teaching and learning, qualifications of tutors, their exposure and domain knowledge, industry experience and the buck keeps passing around. In the meanwhile, it is the students who have to face the effects of this disparity.

From an academic point of view, the success of an institute is based on numerous factors such as placements, average package, inclination towards higher education, highly qualified teaching faculty, pass percentage, quality infrastructure, and so on. On the other hand, large companies do have their own Learning and Development (L&D) centers to train and equip freshers as per the project requirements. In fact, a highly organized and well-structured hierarchical approach is taken. For instance, a global lead/head sitting in the US of a particular IT specialization may be performing business development, bringing business to his/ her firm, generating revenues, and producing profits. In turn, at a regional level (say in Asia pacific) another executive/lead will prioritize the strategy, training, and staff development based on the acquisitions made by the global head. The delivery head (at the country level)  will ensure that all operations such as manpower recruitment, training and development, enlistment of credible trainers, associates, and consultants who are subject matter experts to be part of the L&D so that they can drive freshers and equip them with required skills to handle the projects. Effectually, a project is declared successful, if it’s completed in time, with allocated resources, within proposed budgets, and delivering good profit margins.

Presently these are two distinct entities.  Now, imagine a scenario wherein L&D centres are branched out to and managed by academic institutes. As Principal Investigators (PI), faculty members bring in projects from clients, hire and train other team members to be equipped with required skills and provide internships to students while adhering to execution practices, processes, technology stack, and functionalities and methods that are at part with industry standards. In the end,  projects are delivered successfully to the clients with a nominal profit margin.

This could be a win-win situation wherein companies don’t have to invest in and maintain L&Ds and academicians and students alike get the opportunity to hone skills that can add value to their careers.

By
Dr. Rajesh Chowdhary

The author is an Associate Professor at the International Institute of Information Technology and the head of the Pralhad P Chhabria Center at Hinjawadi Pune. (www.isquareit.edu.in) (www.ppcrc.isquareit.edu.in)

As a child, we all asked a million questions about everything – Why is the sky black?  How do we not fall from the earth?  Why 2 and 2 equals 4?  Why are apples red? How babies are born? Where does the sun go at night? We all had a barrage of questions for our parents and grandparents.

Then school happened and we fell into the straight-jacketed education system that rarely encourages thinking and questioning beyond the syllabi. And eventually, after 16 years of passing through meticulously planned studies, most graduates lose their innate ability to ask WHY and HOW.  Sad as it may seem, it certainly is not a scientific apocalypse; one needs to just stroke the ember of curiosity that is there deep down in everyone.  We all have curiosity.  It is part of nature and one’s survival instinct.  This curiosity helps us grow, become knowledgeable, develop, invent, innovate, and create; not just for ourselves; but pave the path for others too.

That’s what Research does – stoke the fire of curiosity in us.

Research is a journey that begins with observing and learning information from the outside world to the inside assimilation of that information and vice versa. In fact, research is happening unnoticed simultaneously in every moment of our life. Many of us may think Research is a tough career to pursue, but the truth is research is fun and it drives one of our basic instinct – to wonder and imagine, a power that is unseen among all other animals. And research is what makes us superior and has brought us to the top of the survival chart.

Take cell phones as an example. Martin Cooper, the engineer from Motorola, developed the first hand-held phone that could connect over Bell’s AMPS. Motorola launched DynaTAC in 1984. It weighed over a kilogram and was affectionately known as The Brick. Till date, we have witnessed the mega evolution in mobile technologies ranging from keypad based to touch screen, bulky to lightweight foldable mobiles, 56 kbps to 1 gbps data speed, text to voice to video to live streaming, 192 MB to 18 GB RAM, 8 MB to 1 TB storage, almost a microcomputer in our hands. No need to say how much this research outcome has impacted the common man sitting in a remote corner of the rural world.

All this hand-held luxury that we all enjoy now was made possible due to thousands of researchers working continuously across the globe to improvise and enhance the compatibility, usability, and user experience of mobiles and make them more efficient and effective. Each day a new future feature is being designed, tested, launched, and implemented. Researchers are already living and working in a future for the betterment and sustainable development of the lives on our planet.

Be it Space Science, Deep Ocean exploration, Oil &Gas, Cosmetics, Paints, Agriculture, Transportation, Atomic Energy, Defence, Medicine, Healthcare, IT, AI technologies… research is happening every day, hour, and second around us. The future that we all hope to live in will eventually be the outcome of present-day research, experiments, and development undertaken by young engineers who have the responsibility to create solutions.

Don’t misunderstand; doing research does not mean that we have to be locked up in a lab, looking all nerdy, and not getting paid well.  Let’s break that myth.

Today large corporations have their own research labs equipped with the latest equipment and funding so that they can claim a cutting edge over competitions.  The right way to build a career in research is to choose a domain one would want to contribute to and add value to that are aligned with one’s goals. Next would be to list out firms working on new innovations, the latest technologies, and products in that chosen domain and then bring out the learner, the adaptive, the collaborative, and the visionary self, and eventually one will understand how much one can propel the domain forward and even became a torchbearer to others.

You are born as a human,
You are here for a mission,
You are the future of the current,
You are the hope of a nation,
You are the breath of this globe,
You are the solace of war times,
You are ever youth and soldier,
You are the strength of humanity,
You are the trust of billions,
You are spiritual as a researcher.

By
Dr. Rajesh Chowdhary

The author is an Associate Professor at the International Institute of Information Technology and the head of the Pralhad P Chhabria Center at Hinjawadi Pune. (www.isquareit.edu.in) (www.ppcrc.isquareit.edu.in)

In India, the chasm between industry and academia has always been a bane and there have been little to no efforts to bridge this gap making both entities grow apart further.  The effect of this outcome often impacts students’ careers.

In March 2020, we at PPCRC tried something unique.

Our team comprising of faculty and students got a wonderful opportunity to develop an enterprise platform for ‘capital equipment planning and procurement of medical technologies’ through a healthcare consultancy firm.  What started as a team of 2 faculty members, 3 students ended up becoming a 15-member team including external consultants who were hired for a few specific tasks.  Over the 2 years, we have matured and become more confident with our processes, practices, and approach to managing such projects.  And today, we have clients approaching us to take on their projects.

But how exactly did we do this? How did we nurture industry-ready professionals through this venture?

Rinse & Repeat, as they say, will not only keep increasing the pool of resources, team size, HR benefits; but also increase the number of projects from clients.

With this experience in end-to-end IT product development and the intention of creating a conducive ecosystem for research and industry-ready professionals, we initiated the PPCRC Internship Programme in November 2021 and floated the idea among the then T.E. students.  Those who came on board were able to continue to work on the project till the completion of their degrees. Six groups were tasked with topics based on 1-on-1 discussions and each project group consists of  3-4 students along with a faculty mentor from their respective department.

Standard Operating Procedures for the PPCRC Internship Program

These are the various stages and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) that were strictly adhered and followed during the implementation of the projects:

This new initiative will bring about the design and development of multiple in-house products which will become live and will be utilized by our own institute at various functional departments.  Ensuring that this development experience, which will be at par with industry standards will give our students deeper insights to gain unparalleled exposure and knowledge to cope with their careers ahead.

From the industry perspective, they get to recruit trained and skilled professionals.

It will also facilitate developing joint research and development endeavors with academia by harnessing the mutual infrastructure and outsourcing live project development to research centers which will drastically reduce the actual cost of development at their end. Some of the other benefits that this model could bring about are

1. Nurturing Industry ready talent pool available at zero recruitment cost
2. Minimum training expenses, leading to early onboarding into live projects.
3. Training specialized modules of requirements through research centers in academic wings, through the train the trainer models.
4. Supporting such research centers with tools and software for learning and development
5. Making such centres an integral part of industry-sponsored research centers and mentoring at regular intervals
6. Engage with the research center as a startup wing of the industry to ease the processes of management, decision-making, and approvals.
7. Let such successful startups born out of research centers, grow high and create more employment opportunities in the country.

Success as they say can come from unexpected ventures.  And it is time that academicians and industry professionals find ways to work cohesively so that the next generation of professionals can thrive.

By
Dr. Rajesh Chowdhary

The author is an Associate Professor at the International Institute of Information Technology and the head of the Pralhad P Chhabria Center at Hinjawadi Pune. (www.isquareit.edu.in) (www.ppcrc.isquareit.edu.in)