Edu-leaders

EDU: How did the idea of IIT B Monash come about?
MOHAN KRISHNAMOORTHY: About four years ago, Tam Sridhar, the dean of engineering at Monash was asked to develop an India strategy, and he zeroed in on research. It had to be not for profit, in collaboration with an existing institution, and in research. IIT Bombay was also looking at ways to collaborate in powerful partnerships. When Monash came up with this idea of partnership, it struck the right chords. This partnership was real, concrete, substantial and sustainable over a long period of time, which will have benefits for both Australia as well as India.

Q. What are IIT B’s and Monash’s roles?
A. The students in research programmes receive a degree from IIT as well as the Monash University, and have one supervisor each from IIT and Monash. Once the supervisors have discussed their research interests, and the problems that they would like to be solved for instance in energy climate or water we search for the best student that fits that projects needs. Monash is investing about 10 million dollars into the venture. IIT B is providing the land and the building for the academy.

The building will be completed by March 2012, within the IIT campus. In a sense, an equal contribution is being made by IIT B and Monash in terms of supervision, in terms of the contribution into the venture; and going forward, securing funding for sustainability will also be equal because both are joint venture partners and both want to see that the venture is a success. We also hope that it will be an example for other institutions and other collaborations to start up in India. The future will tell us whether that aspiration is correct or not. I personally would like to see many other institutions come to India in a similar model because we’ll prove over a period of two and a half years that it can work.

Q. You are also promoting inter-disciplinary research. Why?
A. The whole world is moving towards a recognition that in the next millennium, some discoveries are going to happen at the interface of disciplines, but our traditional structures are quite discipline focused. That may be okay from a training perspective, but not for research.

The problem with India is that we have separate institutions for research and teaching, whereas university is the place where research should also happen simultaneously. A university or a research institution like the IIT B Monash Research Academy has to have all elements in it. Because this is located within the campus, it has the feel of the students and professors and then the industry comes in. It gives a different perspective to the students. This is what is called the innovation ecosystem.

We wanted to invite people from a variety of disciplines to come together and train a new breed of researcher who think outside the boundary of mechanical engineering or mathematics or biology. We have researchers in the academy who are working on a chemical engineering-type problem but they’re actually using biology to solve fundamental questions in chemical engineering. Rather than focusing on disciplines and departments, we thought of focusing on goals driven by industrial, government or public needs.