Computer Science engineering not the only field with opportunities, says former IIT Delhi Director

First, I want to make it clear that computer science is not the only field with opportunities. Take the example of biotechnology. India has made significant progress in biotechnology and vaccine manufacturing. Biotechnology is an area that has tremendous promise for start-ups and innovation, especially in the wake of the pandemic. There’s a global focus on biotechnology and pharmacy and yet our students don’t see the value in pursuing bioengineering and biotechnology.

The semiconductor mission that India has launched will require people with specialisation in diverse fields. A lot of chemistry goes into semiconductor processing. The semiconductor manufacturing tool building is all in the hands of mechanical and chemical engineers. Electronics and its allied disciplines are at the core of the semiconductor eco-system.

That apart, quantum technology is all physics driven. The future of computing is in the quantum domain and that will require a very deep understanding of physics. Similarly, all the micro-electro-mechanical sensors in mobile phones are all mechanical devices. The Internet-of-Things domain will require expertise from almost all branches of engineering. Aerospace engineering and space technologies are the next frontier. There will be a tremendous amount of innovation possible in these sectors. There will soon be space companies in the private sector competing with ISRO.

Nanotechnology has begun to impact sectors as diverse as textiles to healthcare. Feeding 1.3 billion people with nutritious food requires a tremendous amount of innovation in agriculture and food technologies. But strangely, even today, these sectors are not seen as attractive as computer science by our future engineers. This obsession with CSE is depriving other branches of talent and, eventually, innovation potential. Our over 100 Unicorns in India today are all in e-commerce and Fintech space, which are at most, can be categorised as business model innovations.

The bigger fallout of the obsession with CSE is that a significant chunk of the engineers start working immediately after BTech. Very few of them are pursuing higher studies. Among larger IITs, less than 10 per cent of BTech graduates go on to study engineering further. Most of the IITs aren’t able to even fill up the seats available in their PhD programmes. The candidates are there but even then the talent often is missing. Yes, it’s understandable if a student from an economically weaker section has to start working immediately after finishing his or her BTech degree. But we all know for a fact that many of our students who don’t necessarily have such financial constraints also start working immediately after BTech.

If we, as a nation, want to move towards the manufacturing-driven economy and if we want to develop more and more product-based unicorns in sectors such as Biotechnology, Nanotechnology or Quantum Technologies, then this approach of dropping out after BTech and going after computer science is not going to take us anywhere. We will always remain the back-end office for the world and will never be able to develop any deep technology in any of these advanced areas. Our top talent pursuing higher education and developing a deep knowledge in some of these newer areas is important. That’s where the future opportunities lie for the creation of disruptive products and technologies, and eventually unicorns. We need our youth to get into areas where there is a higher barrier for entry.

We need to debunk the myth in their minds that PhD is for becoming a professor. We need to teach them that PhD is for becoming ‘good’ at something, for them to use their knowledge to innovate new products, technologies, and to become job-providers. If you look at Intel, IBM, or any other deep technology related companies, you will find PhDs doing research on many of their future technologies and products. In the US, only about 1 in 4 engineering PhDs goes for tenure-track academic positions. The remaining work for industries or in start-ups. It takes about ten thousand hours of hard work to become good at something. For innovation in deep-technology areas, that kind of training is essential. With all our top brains stopping with a BTech degree and looking for professions that have a low barrier for entry, India will never achieve its true potential.

The government however needs to play a major role in building this eco-system for deep-technology innovation. First of all, make the PhD programmes attractive. Pay students well and fund research generously. Create facilities for high quality research which are geographically located and professionally administered for shared access. Reduce the bureaucracy in research administration. Secondly, create more avenues for funding deep-technology innovation. The angel and the VC community are primarily looking for areas where there are quick returns. Deep-technology start-ups often take longer to become profitable, and the success rates are also lower. Private players in India aren’t willing to take many risks.

Finally, reward institutions which are encouraging innovation and industry partnerships. In many deep-technology areas, we are not filing enough patents and protecting the IP enough. The ratio of research papers to patents is still very low in India. In the area of Nanotechnology, in 2019, the US filed 4666 patents for roughly 24000 papers written. In the same year, India filed 54 patents for over 15000 papers written from the country. Here lies the problem. From the current ‘Publish or Perish’ culture, we need to move to the Patent-Publish-Prosper culture. This requires awareness as we had demonstrated at IIT Delhi.

For example, IIT Delhi filed more patents during the last 5 years than it had done in the previous 55 years. Without patents, no deep-technology start-ups can emerge. In a large number of our public funded universities today, even the policies do not exist for faculty to turn into entrepreneurs. At IIT Delhi, we created multiple schemes for faculty led start-ups. Some of these schemes such as the Faculty Innovation & Research Driven Entrepreneurship (FIRE) can be replicated at the national level.

India has a huge untapped potential for deep-technology innovation. It’s time we take the right steps to unleash this potential for the benefit of the country.

(The writer is former director of IIT Delhi and currently the Pillay Chair Professor in electrical engineering at the institute)