siliconindia | | July 20188RESEARCH IN INDIAN ACADEMIA: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR INDUSTRYBy Neeraj Goel, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT RoparIndian Institute of Technology, Ropar provides state-of-the-art technical education in a variety of fields and also facilitates transmission of knowledge in keeping with latest developments in pedagogy. It offers B.Tech, M.Tech, M.Sc, M.S(R) and Doctoral programmes. IN MY OPINIONResearch drives the indus-try, takes an organization to the next level, and an essential ingredient to beat the competition. Research is re-quired to design new products, to find new solutions, to find new processes, and to find new markets. However, research is costly and its outcome is unpredictable. Usually requirements are vague and change with time and the methods are unknown. Therefore, a typical research requires much itera-tion just to make a prototype and fur-ther iterations for final product. Many dimensions of research and its cost make it almost impossible for small organization to do it on their own. Therefore, research remains the forte of larger organizations. Most of the small-er organizations either follow what larger organizations are doing, or use the non-optimal solutions. It may be a viable option for them to outsource their research problems, if the cost is affordable. On the other hand, academic insti-tutes like IITs, NITs, and some of the private universities have transformed them from teaching institutes to re-search institutes. Most of the faculty in these institutes are trained researchers, with PhD from best universities in the world. These institutes have infrastruc-ture and resources to perform world class research. However, sometime, in the absence of industry connection and collaboration, academic institutes end- up doing research that is not valuable or directly usable by industry. Essentially, industry require somebody whom they can outsource their problems with min-imum expenditure and academia re-quire interesting and relevant problems to be solved. If they help each other, this could be a perfect solution.Opportunities for IndustryThe possibilities for industry to tap research potential of academ-ia are immense. A few points are enumerated below.Joint or Sponsored ProjectsAs the degree requirement, each engi-neering student is supposed to do a six months or a year long project. Usually this project is supervised by their aca-demic supervisor. The problem state-ment of these projects could be driven
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