India will need high number of well trained, qualified engineering graduates: IIIT B Director

Prof Debabrata Das, Director, Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-Bangalore) in a freewheeling conversation with Shiksha.com talks about emerging engineering domains and how role of engineering institutions are getting redefined with new National Education Policy recommending multidisciplinary approach to education besides other issues.

Q. Do you think that emerging engineering disciplines are eclipsing traditional branches?

A. On a broader outlook, engineering is a versatile discipline and the impact it has on our day-to-day life is profound. The ever-changing needs of humankind and the ecosystem have allowed engineering education to go through an evolutionary process. Both traditional and emerging disciplines are getting overhauled constantly. Even with the introduction of new disciplines such as robotics, biomedical and data science engineering, traditional courses continue to attract students.

One of the major core branches like civil and mechanical engineering has evolved with the adoption of the latest technologies. We see a lot of modernization in overall infrastructure including roads, bridges, apart from mega-projects like housing and building of townships. Any new introduction of a discipline in engineering will not overshadow the already established engineering spheres and practices.

Even in computer science engineering, evolution is happening in a swift manner.

In retrospect, in the last few decades, the ubiquity of computer science engineering is best expressed in several areas now and the key factors reside in the relentless pace of change inherent in information technology. It has led to the emergence of data science, cyber security, machine learning, and robotics, etc.

Q. The NEP talks of a multidisciplinary approach. Is an interdisciplinary curriculum the way forward? How do you see this?

A. The emphasis on making the curriculum flexible through an interdisciplinary approach is a welcome development by NEP. The requirement of users is becoming more holistic, multidisciplinary, and broad-based, like health, education, agriculture, and so on. For example, in health-related instrument research and development, one needs to understand the physiology of humans and electronics with embedded systems. Therefore, working together to solve a problem or handle an interdisciplinary situation requires knowledge and skills from multiple disciplines, which is a revolutionary approach in the present business world.

From a student’s perspective, the new policy is learner-friendly and affords a student to shift disciplines or streams according to his changing interest or latent potentials identified by himself or the system. A student will be able to do this shift by safeguarding the credits earned for whatever he has accomplished or studied at that point in time. A student’s self-esteem and motivation are thus not only intact but also gets bolstered with a new discipline of his or her interest.

The implementation of interdisciplinary education is challenging as the curriculum design in every domain has its own methodology. This can be eased out by designing each curriculum integrating from fundamentals to research and innovation level. The faculty development programmes envisioned towards the latest NEP should have interdisciplinary teaching curriculum methodologies too.

Q. The past one and half years have seen a lot of changes in the education sector. What changes are needed in the engineering curriculum?

A. It is a known fact that engineering graduates have a strategic and long-term impact on a country's productivity growth in industry and service sectors. To produce sophisticated industrial products and services that are competitive in the global market and to realize the ‘Make in India’ initiative, India will need a really high number of well trained and extremely qualified engineering graduates.

In such a scenario, it is imperative to design an engineering curriculum that lays the foundation for a student to easily modulate him/herself with respect to changing scenarios for the next 30-40 years. One of the foremost challenges engineering space is encountering is product obsolescence in a very short period of time. That is, about 20-30 percent new value additions in applications and designs take place every six months after a release of a product. An engineer has to understand and solve unforeseen problems and the only way to tread this path successfully is through rapid research and innovation. An engineering programme should have a blend of a strong foothold in fundamentals of curriculum that develops logical and analytical brains of graduates.

Q. You have recently joined as the Director of IIIT-B. What is your vision for the Institute and future roadmap?

A. IIIT Bangalore stands on translational research, world-class academic programmes and strong collaborations with the industry as well as government to solve the citizen-centric issues. The time has arrived to translate the research conducted by academia to a product with a proof of concept to solve the issues. The research work, papers and patents by professors can encourage and promote multidisciplinary collaboration among academia and industry. We need to remain alongside the ever-changing trends in the technology arena, to achieve that it is mandatory to have world-class programmes. We strongly believe in offering electives that are more precise and specialized for a student’s domain of interest along with the core courses. We encourage the association between faculty and the students to collaborate as a team.

IIIT Bangalore has always been the engine room for innovation, the start-up ecosystem at the Institute helps in the deployment or transfer of the technology developed by faculty and the students. Thirdly, we continue to focus on conceptual teaching in classrooms followed by assignments to understand the theory and labs for hands-on experiences. Such collaborations help the students to have hands-on experience on the societal challenges, eventually inspiring them to come up with innovative solutions. Lastly, restructuring some parts of the curriculum and IIITB Innovation Centre to kindle interested young students’ minds to be entrepreneurs. The biggest vision is to contribute significantly to information technology for transforming the lives of individuals and society through continuous innovative ways of teaching, research and entrepreneurship.

Q. Kindly give us an overview of the interesting courses offered and other initiatives at IIIT Bangalore?

A. IIIT Bangalore's three pillars of IT education are software, hardware and society. All our courses include a healthy mix of these three to give a rich multi-disciplinary exposure combined depth and rigour to our students.

Our specialized MTech, iMTech, MSc Digital Society, MS by Research and PhD provide students sufficient knowledge and skills that they would be required to channelize their learning to tackle the unforeseen challenges of the future. The MTech programmes in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) and Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE). The five-year iMTech programme has a holistic approach of encompassing fundamentals to cutting edge technology in CSE and ECE. The MSc Digital Society is a unique programme to train students with an undergraduate background in any discipline to work at the intersection of the humanities, the social sciences and information technology. This first-of-its-kind program in the country is designed to create professionals who will conceptualize and design digital technologies for diverse social groups; provide and manage solutions that address persistent developmental challenges in domains such as education, governance, and health; and engage in policymaking and advocacy for deploying digital technologies.

We have a Master of Science by Research intended for working professionals who wish to learn and conduct research in an academic environment. The Doctor of Philosophy is the terminal research degree in a chosen field, to prepare students for research, teaching, and scholarly careers in academia or research laboratories.

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