Spreading the Culture of Science

Indian institutions churn out more than 500,000 science and engineering graduates every year. These and related statistics have been touted as signs of strength for the Indian educational system. However, we should pause here to make a distinction between those who are degree holders and others who actually have a complete education and ready for the workforce.   In the course of my travels I have talked to executives of several leading companies (both Indian and MNC) and a common denominator in these conversations is their need for well qualified new graduates because a significant of the fresh graduates have to be (re)trained to make them functional after they are hired.  This leads me to conclude that a large number of the fresh graduates produced every year are just degree holders.

Continue reading "Is India Making the Most of its Human Potential in Engineering?" »

Posted by Prof. Pradeep K. Khosla at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A country's true wealth is the intellectual capability of her people. Civilizations which have survived and grown through the millennia have demonstrated their ability to create knowledge, innovate and regenerate constantly led by the indomitable spirit of the human being. India has a very rich tradition of inquiry and knowledge creation. The first Universities in the world were founded in India and so, now in the 21st century, the country needs to leverage this innate curiosity and spirit of inquiry of her people to rediscover her standing in the world.

Continue reading "India's Scientific Roots Provide a Vision for the Future" »

Posted by T. V. Mohandas Pai at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Any researcher looking to make the most of the scientific process should ideally display two key traits: creativity and intelligence. Creativity involves an exploration of the unknown in order to come up with new dimensions of a problem or a new problem or a wholly new way of looking at a problem, while intelligence seeks to probe deeper into a usually established body of knowledge. Creativity often requires synthesis of ideas from apparently unrelated domains, whereas intelligence is often analysis-centric. Both the synthesis and analysis are critical to the scientific and engineering processes, but with our current emphasis on intelligence or vertical thinking in schools, we may be overlooking the creativity that is the cornerstone of scientific common sense.

Continue reading "Creativity, Lateral Thinking & Scientific Common Sense" »

Posted by Prof. Ashutosh Sharma at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)