Prof. Desai takes us 40 years back
25 May 2021 | Pratyush Ragini, E Abhishek
Introduction
Professor Madhav P Desai is an alumnus of IITB [Batch 1984]. Prof. Desai has received his PhD and M.S in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) in 1991 and 1986 respectively. During the period 1992-1996, he worked in the Semiconductor Engineering Group at the Digital Equipment Corporation in Hudson, MA, where he was a Principal Engineer. After this brief period in the industry, Prof. Desai joined IIT Bombay as a professor. Through this article, Prof. Desai takes us 40 years back into the glorious past of IIT Bombay and tells us about the hostel and academic culture that existed when he was a student. He also explains to us about his research works and his motivation to come back to IIT Bombay.
40 years Back
Life was very different in the institute back when I was a student at IIT Bombay.
We were a batch of just 60 students in the 5-year BTech program. The longer period gave us a lot of opportunities to explore the department. BTech projects were taken quite seriously, and due to the small class size, every student got attention from the teachers. The professors were more focused on teaching as the quantity of research was relatively lesser in those days. The coursework was very fundamentals-oriented, and exams became a secondary thing, unlike what we were used to in our junior colleges. But it was during those school days itself when I found my interest inclination towards circuits and semiconductors. Not having much knowledge about other engineering disciplines, I ended up latching on to this interest and chose to pursue Electrical Engineering.
I loved half of the courses I took at IITB, mostly in the machines and semiconductor field. At that time, we did not even have breadboards for labs. Prof. Vasi, who taught one of the semiconductor courses, took the lead and got us breadboards to work with. Apart from core courses I also enjoyed some of the maths courses like the linear algebra one.
Hostels were one of the most active places on the campus. We built some strong bonds with hostel mates during sports events. I was more into literary competitions and quizzes. The lake was a popular spot back then too, especially for wildlife enthusiasts. The wildlife and boat clubs were very active. There even were trips to the Himalayas every year. And in Mumbai, one had to travel all the way to South Bombay to dine out or watch a movie. I remember I had my first pizza in Bandra which was the only place in the whole of Mumbai that made them. Times have changed so much. Now you get your pizzas at your doorstep.
While passing out, we had very limited options. Half of the students went for higher studies and the other half went for either an MBA or a job. After my B Tech in IIT Bombay, I had three choices: IISc, ISRO and Illinois. I chose to pursue my Masters in the University of Illinois, wherein I continued with my PhD as well. It felt like an adventure and my parents and peer group were quite supportive of it too. Post my PhD, I took up an industrial job in the USA. The work was great, but the memories of home called me back to India.
I chose academia over the industry because here in IITs there is no interference and one can teach and carry out research freely. Many of my batchmates, like Prof. Preeti Rao, Prof. Mahesh Patil and Prof. Mukul Chandorkar, too are back here as professors. Unlike foreign universities where work is more of an incremental nature, here we have to build things from scratch. And most companies prefer to import rather than develop technologies in India. We overcame this challenge by working on a completely Made in India microprocessor, AJIT. It had to work in a competitive manner and be reusable. To me, this was a perfect combination of research and development. The research was more about the way to build a microprocessor from scratch rather than the microprocessor itself.
When I look at the current times I find that the undergrads are under a lot of pressure. There are various opportunities to choose from. Students just don’t get to relax now. Summers are spent in internships which was not a thing back in our day. We had only practical training in our fourth-year summer and the rest of them were completely free. But today, students are always doing something or the other, and this has become a necessity too given the number of options they’re presented with. In the end, exploration is what drives choices.