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)