1. The present generation is perceived to be more interested in a stop gap engineering followed by another stop gap MBA leading to a job with a start of 30 thousand per month. When it touches 40 grand you get married, have kids and live happily ever after. Someone getting into an IIT, NIT or DCE stands a better chance at IIMs FMS et all gets a start of 1 lakh, if lucky gets 10 lakhs worth foreign placement and when it touches 2/15 lakh per month, you get married, have kids and live really happy ever after.
2. Lack of experimental facilities and good laboratories means that undergrads here are devoid of training on basic scientific instruments like Oscilloscope, signal generator, Labview and other stuff. They are left with option of study based research and theoretical simulations. Most of our fulltime PhDs do the same is a different thing altogether.
3. Parental and peer pressure: Believe me, most of the parents do not want their children to do a PhD. An MS maybe but never a PhD. They rather see you a happily married MBA than a doctorate scrapping his living like a Lab rat. Your girlfriend would also want same out of you (unless she herself wants to do a PhD which makes you the luckiest bastard alive on this planet).
I will also briefly dwell here on whether this scenario will change in India before getting down to the real stuff. Well guys to this there is both good and bad news. You all must have read about supply and demand. Good faculty for any engineering college is very short in supply these days even in places such as IIT and NIT. The reason being mass exodus towards MBA and little towards interdisciplinary research incorporating Engineering and Applied sciences, the kind of thing that holds promise for the future. This crunch however means by the principle stated above that demand will rise. According to me it will take another 20 years for our babus to realize that for their grand children to be good engineers, they need good teachers. That's when government's emphasis will shift to experimental R&D at university level and indigenous product development.
Every year government is taking steps in this direction but they are too few and too far between. That's why I foresee a period of 20 years before they all accrue up to something meaningful.
Q1 Who should do research?
Well there are three answers to that question and that varies from person to person.
1....) There is a category of people who are skill less in the ways of world. They are ignorant of the ways of the world and conveniently choose to remain so. For them research is shield against their artlessness.
2....)The second is the type who has the ability to think out of the box. They have the ability to decipher the toughest of problems and present the simplest of solutions. They are naturals.
3.....) The third is the one who are simply passionate about whatever they do.
Q2 Why research (Research Vs MBA)?
Enough has been said on this topic in numerous threads on edulix. I will however very briefly give some conclusive comments on this topic. If you are interested in making a lot of money then please do not go in for PhD. Let me substantiate this with some economic facts. If you are lucky to get a fully funded PhD program in a reputed university in US, you will be getting a complete tution waiver along with a stipend of $18000-30000 tops. After completion of your PhD you will have the option of going to the industry or continue somewhere as a PDF(Post Doctoral Fellow). As a PDF you will get somewhere around $3000-$5000 tops per month. By this time you will turn 30 and earning $60,000 per annum. On the other your good friend who gave his GMAT after working for two years and got into a Kellogg, a Wharton, a Yale or an HBS would get a start of $100,000 per annum at a ripe age of 25-27 while you still will be writing your PhD. By 30 he would have touched $150,000 happily married, great wife and a couple of rugrats. So money wise a career in research and development pales in front of an MBA. However if you take a holistic view of things then you will realize that an MBA pales in front of a PhD. To evolve as a human being, it is important to develop an inquisitive attitude and acquire the ability to perform and understand new things. These capabilities can only be acquired during the course of doctoral studies.
I would like to conclude by saying that in our scriptures, it has been mentioned that the two main objectives of a human life are to assimilate and disseminate knowledge and to contribute to continuation of our race.
Chasing Maya(or money) is the karma(action) of Demons.
After reading all this, if you are still interested in research, then research it is for you. Congratulations on your decision. Now read on to know how to go about it. Now there a few more limitations of mine that needs to be understood. Since i am from an EE background. So whatever I type here will draw examples and instances from EE,. People from other branches are free to read for their benefit but information will be more specific and useful for the people from above mentioned branches.
Q3 How do I start?
Now this is a question many people ask from me. I believe this is not the right question to ask. Research is not a cranked up train or a heated up engine for which there are procedures to start (Mechanical guys would know about it!!!!!). Research is something in which either you have natural interest or you acquire interest over a period of time while reading into the subject.
Now in the first year of engineering, it is belief that a student should concentrate on his academics and hone their skills in physics and mathematics. The reason I am saying this is because these are the the foundation stones on which stellar research careers are built. Once you understand your Newton laws, Fermats Principle, Snells Law, Huygens theory, integration and differentiation and their applications you will be greatly aided in any advanced study that you conduct.
In the second year of engineering you should start looking the area in which you want to do research. Typically, it is determined by the area in which your HOD or a renowned Prof of your college is working. In my case the best Prof in my college was working in neural networks. So under his guidance I acquired and developed an interest in Neural Networks. See the point is that in second year you have an impressionist mind. Whatever is taught to you, you try to grasp it firmly. So as early as second year you can work on basically anything. It is when you go into the end phase of your second year, you develop some likes or dislikes and get so decided on your major
Q4 What if I have no guidance from a prof?
Well jiska ka koi nahi hota uska upar waala hota hai. Well in this case you may not be aided by any upar waala but defo http://www.google.com will help you. Please develop the habit of asking questions from internet and develop the knack of getting the right answers in right time. Without this knack, you will be in a deep soup. See you can read science magazines, digit and chip for CS guys and electronics for you for ECE guys. These magazines have truckload of articles on assorted topics. Read those topics and get some info on those topics from http://www.google.com. You can also use wikepedia as a starting reference point on any topic. Once you know which area to work on, download papers from online libraries such as http://www.ieee.org, http://www.springer-link.com, http://www.sciencedirect.com et all. Most institutions have subscription to these libraries. Once you read these papers, organize them so that you can see what is the latest research in your area? Once you know that, you can do three things
1. Do something entirely new in the area of your choice.
2. Do some extention work, i.e. add on something to what already has been done
3. Conduct intensive literature survey, drawing conclusion and hypothyze something that can be done
See doing point one requires guidance. Without prof you cannot do it. So in case you donot have any guidance, I suggest you concentrate on second and third. Now the third point sometimes proves a very valuable contribution to research community and is highly favored (it sometimes translates into journal publication). However, it has to be truly extensive for it to demand any merit. Extension work well and truly deserves a conference publication. If your extension is just a minor addition like a new graph or some new analytical or mathematical result then it will result into publication in a national conference. However, if you extend your work to something new then you merit a publication in an international conference. Extension work is increasingly finding favour in journals of lower impact parameter(which are those I will not name here to avert controversy) however, an IEEE journal publication means good work and a PRL (Physical Review Letter) publication means high quality of work. A PRL publication guarantees a seat in top 10 US University whatever your acads maybe. Again it is EE Specific example. People from other branches need to check out on this. Below are most of the journals I know of. Search for them using google.
1. IEEE (http://www.ieee.org)
2. SPIE(http://www.spie.org)
3. OSA (http://www.opticsexpress.org)
4. Springer (http://www.springer-link.com)
5. Science Direct
6. PRL Physical Review Letters
Write a good paper and try submitting. Who knows your work may actually get appreciated and get published. See the idea is to work not for publication but for learning. Those who do vice versa can do neither.
Q5 Conferences and Techfest demystified.
Well I have been browsing through many edulix forums for quite some time now. I have seen people posting their profiles and saying one paper in National Level Technical Symposium or Two papers presented at IIT Delhi. Friends paper in techfest or prize awarding national symposiums organized by some university department which are not peer reviewed papers hold little merit. Try and get your paper published in an international conference. Now how to find a good international conference? Go to the website http://www.ieee.org, http://www.spie.org, http://www.osa.org . IEEE annually organizes more than 100 conferences in a broad spectrum of specializations Also periodically perform google search for conferences in India. TCI organizes most of good conferences in India and you can check out their listings for good conferences being organized in India.
Indian journals are a bit suspect so do not waste your good work by getting published here. An IETE tech review or Pramana are no good in front of an IEEE conference. This is because an American prof would not be regularly referring to it.
Also somewhere, I had read that people apply this rule of thumb to select conferences that a 31st conference in something is better than 2nd conference in something. I beg to differ here. See the thing is that research trends are constantly evolving, so a 41st conferences in optics may not be relevant as compared to 2nd conference in nanophotonics. Though the latter has evolved out of the former, future is in latter and more of contemporary work is going on in the area of latter. Optics conference could well be a meeting place of puritan opticians still working on fundamentals. Though more fundamental research is being presented in optics conference, a undergrad student would be more accepted in nanophotonics than optics. So my friends please do not follow any thumb rules here. Go where you want to do
Q6 How many papers does a man/woman need?
Good question with not so good answer. See number of publications is not that important. The quality of work is. So please do not blindly go on a publishing spree in techfests and national symposiums. Win first prizes in these. That adds to your co curricular. For serious research experience, do some good work in your area. Study, learn latest from google, download papers, read them, see what extension you can do, learn matlab, FEM, FDTD etc (basically some design or simulation software relevant to your area), use it, get some graphs or do something analytical, get it in paper format, search for conferences and or journals and try to get your work published. This could be taken as my algorithm for publishing a paper
Puttting it in numbers
1. MS applicant: Tech fest papers sufficient for an admit, for an RA atleast one national symposium or international conference in India or abroad.
2. PhD applicant (Post bachelors): Continuity of research is a must, some networking is also useful, atleast two papers in international conferences abroad or a journal paper
3. PhD applicant (Post masters): Excellent Masters thesis, relevant to your area of study, atleast one peer review paper in a journal of mid to high impact parameter(IEEE would DO) and also a couple of conference publications and association with some research group as an RA.
