S.M.U.T. is famous academics giving you ten minute talks that will alter your perspective on the direction of the universe. Subversive talks bring for dangerous ideas. (Technology is as technology does.) Talks will be interspersed with technology installation pieces (did we say robots?), blooper research video reels, and art displays from local artists.

Here is my take on it: S.M.U.T. is an effort to bring technology to people (and get people to understand and accept it) before technology gets (in the sense of trickery) to people. Yesterday was the second edition of S.M.U.T. at Stafford Main and much like the first, it was very interesting and fairly successful. You don’t have to take my word for it, check out the buzz about S.M.U.T. on twitter.

There were talks on green technology, and how its much more than just windmills and solar panels; robots as truth seeking devices; the nature of privacy online; and the talks, although interesting on their own merit, were punctuated and complemented by some impressive slam poetry.

The first edition had talks on how every time there is a new communication/storage technology, satan and aliens seem to start communicating with us using that technology; experience report by a researcher who worked with Mars rovers; and many more.

I personally enjoyed it, and I think its a great initiative among many to bring an understanding and appreciation of science and technology to everyone. If you are in the Bryan/College Station area, and you are an artist, a designer, a researcher, an entrepreneur, or something who has something interesting, creative, and subversive to share, please contact Tracey Hammond and/or Cody Marx Bailey to be a speaker/presenter at a future S.M.U.T.

If you are not in the Bryan/College Station area, then consider starting one in your own community. I think it’s a much needed effort if we as a society are to learn to use our ever-advancing technology as an agent for progress.

Here is the first video of the 12 [link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY

• You (the aspiring student) have decided to go for a PhD in your respective discipline.
• You have some idea of what your field of research is going to be
• Based on your own guidelines you have come up with a list of 15-20 schools that you could potentially apply to.
  • If you need help is coming up with this initial list of schools, http://graduate-school.phds.org/ is a great resource for that.
• You are looking to narrow this number down to handful/manageable list such that upon being accepted at one of these schools, you will be able to actually do research in the area of your choice and will actually enjoy it.

I am very aware that every discipline is unique in many ways and what applies to one may not apply to another. Given that my ‘expertise’ is in only one field, namely computer science (simply because that is my area of research), this guide  reads more like a fictional case study.

Like I said before, you have a list of schools (in the US) that you might considering applying to for your PhD, but which ones are right for you? For that, first you have to know the kind of faculty you work well with. Here are a few questions you have to ask yourself to be able to determine that:

1. How narrow/specific is your field of interest? Do you already have your dissertation problem picked out?
   • If are in a very narrow field (with potentially a problem already picked out), then the odds are that there are very few faculty working in this field. Contact them individually and not all at once, until one of them agrees to be your advisor. If no one agrees to it, then pick a different (less narrow) field and read on.
2. How independent is your work style? Do you work efficiently on your own and need an advisor only if you happen to be “stuck”, or do you need a moderate supervisor with weekly status meetings so that the advisor can ensure that you are on track, or are you a complete flake and need constant supervision and micromanagement to get things done?
   • The answer to this question will determine the kind of advisor who works for you, and by extension you should consider applying to the institutions that employ such faculty members.So if you work well will minimal supervision, then you might want to consider working with tenured faculty members who have a relatively large group of students working for them. The larger the group, the less is the amount of time the faculty member can devote to each student. Often, such groups also have a hierarchical structure with post-doctoral researchers having a great amount of interaction with the primary faculty member, and post-docs mentoring senior graduate students, and senior graduate students mentoring the rest.On the other hand, if you work well with moderate supervision, then consider working with a (preferably) tenured faculty member with a moderate size group.If you think you need constant supervision, but are willing to work hard, then consider working with tenure-track faculty members. Tenure-track faculty members are under a constant pressure to publish (or perish) until they get tenure. So they have a lot at stake if you do not publish, so they will ensure that you will be sufficiently motivated, managed, and worked so as to publish research.
3. What kind of a research career are you looking for? Would you publish quickly and publish a lot, or would you rather publish at a pace comfortable to you, but publish really high-quality research? Note that the two choices are often in competition (very few like Erdos managed to do both).
   • This goes to the heart of the kind of faculty you should work with. If you are looking for a lot of publications, then look at tenure/tenure-track faculty who publish in the double digits each year (more on how to determine that coming up). Otherwise, look to tenured faculty whose publication list is not 20 pages long, but their work has been cited time and again (more on how to determine this is coming up as well).

Based on the answer to the above questions you should get have an idea of what kind of faculty you want to work with. Now keep that in mind when browsing through the list of faculty at each school on your list.

The next step is look at each school on your list and determine whether or not the school is worth considering for a PhD application. Here is where the process for each discipline varies. I will proceed ahead like this is a (fictional) case study for the discipline of Computer Science. Say, the field of research interest is Theoretical Computer Science, and the school I am looking at is Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Note that you will have to repeat the following process for each school on that list.

First, open up with department website to get to the list of faculty who are working in your field of research interest. In the specific example of Theoretical Computer Science at MIT, it is http://theory.csail.mit.edu/people.html. Note that in some (smaller) schools/departments they simply have a list of faculty for the entire department and you will have to scour through the research interests of each faulty member before you can figure out what is you pool of potential advisors.

Now begins the painful task of actually, reviewing each individual faculty member to see whether or not they are the right one for you. First, separate the list of faculty into tenure-track faculty and tenured faculty. Typically, assistant professors are tenure-track faculty, and associate professors and professors are tenured faculty. Go to the personal website for each faculty and see if you can find information on the following:

1. The list of students currently in their research group
2. The list of publications from the past five years (don’t go beyond five; faculty research interests tend to migrate). If you cannot find their list of publications on their website then look for this information in other publication aggregation and indexing  sites (like DBLP for publications in Computer Science and Engineering). For instance, the list of publications by Prof. Rivest (of the RSA fame) is http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/r/Rivest:Ronald_L=.html
   In order to determine if the research that the faculty does is of high quality, an imperfect test is to figure out how much their work is cited. On way to do it is to see the venues (journals) where the faculty has published, and what the impact factor of that journal is. For instance, Prof. Rivest’s paper “Translucent Cryptography—An Alternative to Key Escrow, and Its Implementation via Fractional Oblivious Transfer” is published in the Journal of Cryptography whose impact factor (According to http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/impact.html) is 1.97 (top 3.03%). This suggests that the his work is of greater impact than most.

Depending on the answers to the questions asked earlier and the information gained from the faculty website and the internet, shrink the faculty pool to the list of 3 or so faculty that you would consider to be your advisor.

Now repeat this process for each university on your list and then sort your list based the number of eligible faculty per school and the ranking of the school/program itself (The ranking can be obtained from either the department website, wikipedia, or an internet search).

Now divide the list into three categories: top 1/3rd, middle 1/3rd, and bottom 1/3rd in the sorted list. Apply to at least one school in each category to maximize your chances of an acceptance.

I hope this helps some in making the rather opaque job to selecting a school for your PhD easier.

Abhinav Bindra has been conferred with an honorary doctorate from SRM University in Chennai. Honest! I am not making this up! Ask Times of India and NDTV!

What amazed me was that very few were outraged by it, well except for Mekhala. She makes a good point in her blog post when she asks, “…[sic] but doesn’t a doctorate demand academic scholarship?” That’s a very good question. But, before I move forward I must add the disclaimer that I am awfully proud of Abhinav Bindra, and I am not undervaluing what he has achieved. It is a great accomplishment for both the nation, and him personally. However, I do believe that giving away doctorates to people who have not demonstrated academic excellence, and who have not made original contributions to their field only serves to devalue the degree. But what is the value of a PhD degree anyway? One way to ascertain that is to see what it takes to get a PhD (full merit, non-reservation style).

Most universities follows a format similar to what I am about to describe. They may skip some steps, or combine them with others, but by-and-large, this is the procedure. First, there is the whole selection process which serves to filter out the people who just aren’t the doctorate type. Second, depending on which university you go to, there are courses you have to take and maintain a GPR of at least 3.0. Third, you have to take what are called ‘qualifiers’ in which you take tests in your area of specialization for 9 hours (that’s right, 9 hours) within a day and a half. Forth, you have your preliminaries in which each member of your doctoral advisory committee (your Guides/Advisors) will each give you either an open problem (i.e. a problem whioch hasn’t been solved yet), or ask you to appraise current research in your area. After you have answered these questions to they satisfaction you go ahead with your proposal. Fifth, is your disseration proposal. In your proposal you clearly outline what you intend to achieve for your PhD and argue why the problem you have chosen to tackle is unsolved, novel, interesting, and how it will benefit your community, and above all argue that the problem is difficult enough to merit a PhD. And then begins the actual research which often yields peer-reviewed publications in internationally renouned venues like conferences and journals. This is how you demonstrate that your research is novel, interesting, and tackles unsolved problems. And finally, you write your dissertation, and then defend that dissertation to your adviosry committee’s satisfaction, following which you are deemed worthy of a PhD.

Now, one might argue that the rigor, training, and dedication that fetch Bindra an olympic gold is comparable to the rigors of a PhD program. However, there is a universally singular critical element to a PhD effort which Bindra does not meet: original contribution to the field. If Abhinav Bindra had come up with a novel technique for shooting, or had contributed something new to shooting that was the first of its kind — it could be anything from new benchmarking tools to better cross-wires — then I would be more sympathetic to him being conferred a doctorate (I guess that makes a good case for Ajantha Mendis for his carrom ball). However, Abhinav hasn’t done anything of that nature.

Here’s an analogy that might make things clearer: You cannot get a PhD for being the best Java programmer in the world, but you can make a case for something who invents a new programming language that sets a new standard. The same is true here with Bindra. He may be the best shooter in the world, but that does not qualify him for a PhD.

I have no objections to giving him a Khel Ratna, but a PhD? No! There is certain snactity associated with PhD. It says that this person has proved him/herself by going through the process and contributing something new and worth to the community; this person is capable of independent research, and is primed to serve the community by expanding our collective knowledge. By giving away PhDs to people who do not meet such criterion, you have effectively devalued the PhDs of all the people who do.

I guess when I graduate with my PhD, I’d have to insist that I not be called ‘Doctor’, as Robert Heinlein put it best in Stranger in a Strange Land:

I don’t like to be called ‘Doctor’… When they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk-dancing and advanced fly fishing, I became too stinkin’ proud to use the title. I won’t touch watered whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees.

Last month, we lost 6 Aggies. The second Tuesday of this month, they will be honored in the ceremony of the Silver Taps (a solemn ritual that is to be experienced, not explained). This is the first Silver Taps of the year.

The Aggie college newspaper, The Battalion, decided to run an article paying their tribute to the six deceased Aggies. They talked to the students’ friends, family, and compiled a eulogy of all the six students; or did they? The oddest thing was that each student’s eulogy ran from anywhere between 25 lines to 50 lines, except one. Olanrewaju (Lanre) Olusola Sanu’s eulogy was 2 lines long and it read [link]:

The senior chemical engineering major from Houston died on Aug. 2. The Battalion was unable to reach his family for information to compile a story.

Really?!? You couldn’t find out anything about Lanre. Nothing from friends, nothing from Facebook, nothing from his lecturers and professors? Nothing at all? Not even a photograph! Everyone else had their photographs in the article, except Lanre.

This enraged quite a few Aggies. Some of them complained about this on the comments section of the article on the Battalion website. In response to that, the Editors simple disabled comments on the post. Check it out for yourselves, all other articles on www.thebatt.com have comments enabled except for this one!

I wonder why? Does it have anything to do with the fact that he happens to be the only person of color among the six and has an African sounding name? Maybe its ok not to try too hard to find out more about Lanre, and simply ignore when people protest. Maybe this is what politically-correct racism looks like.

For all of you who think I may be over-reacting to the whole thing, Texas A&M (and the surrounding areas) have history of racism. In the past people have attacked international students, charged higher cover charge for non-whites in bars, and made racist videos and posted them online. In fact, multiple assessments have concluded that Texas A&M practices institutional racism [link1, link2].

The world may be changing, but Aggie Racism marches on!

Fact: India is fast becoming the global epicenter for AIDS. Fact: HIV is sexually transmitted. Fact: India has a population exceeding 1 Billion. Fact: The rise is India’s population is due to lack to awareness about sex and family planning.

This simply means that an effective sex education component is essential to any solution that attempts to address the issue of population and the AIDS epidemic. But this component has now been rendered ineffective due to the dilution of the content in the proposed sex education manual.
For instance, they “deleted all images and learning modules that states had found too explicit and too graphic”, use of the phrase “sexual intercourse” has been drastically reduced, the flip charts used to explain about HIV/AIDS has been omitted because it was found to be culturally insensitive, and so on.

What surprises me is that no one bothered to ask the question: “What will this manual achieve?” One of biggest reasons for spread of HIV/AIDS is unprotected sex. If there is no focus on sex itself, then what good is this manual? Of course, lets not even talk about homosexuality. The manual cannot contain anything about homosexuality because Indians can never be gay. So much for trying to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS! Whether you like it or not, there is an increasing trend of younger people experimenting with sex, and even being promiscuous. This is trend is not going to change by simply wishing it. The effort has to be to educate the younger crowd about it. Bring the issue out in the open, and teach them to be responsible about it. But, of course, it is culturally insensitive to talk about sex. And so, what we have is a ticking time bomb in our hands.

There are many reasons why India needs an effective sex education programme. Yes, it will mean breaking tradition, it will mean forcing people out of their comfort zone, it will mean confronting some less than desirable truths about your children and your society. But if we do not do it now, we may never be able to! It has taken a lot of lobbying and effort to get the green signal for an sex ed. program. We now have a great opportunity at getting it right the first time. Making amendments later will be very difficult. I am afraid, that by the time the society realizes its folly, it may be too late.

While I agree with all of the points and suggestions in the original post, I think we are missing some important points. Looking at it as a problem in economics, the effort is to create a market for PhD programs in India. Like with many products, the PhD Program in India needs market makers, quality product, and a demand for the product. Lets looks at each aspect more closely:

Market Makers:

In order to get students in pursue PhD, you need to create a market for PhDs. Currently, there is very little market for PhDs in India. There are a select few openings in academic institutes of repute, and that’s about it when it comes to a real market in India. Granted that more and more industries are looking for PhDs, but are very picky about their recruitment (and rightly so). Additionally, once you get a PhD you become overqualified for most of the jobs in the market, and so you job prospects actually diminish with a PhD. This trend needs to be reversed. Only if PhD is made an attractive prospect will students pursue it.

Quality Product

Even if there is a market, if the product offered is not of quality, then you cant sell the product. The same is true for PhD programs. How many PhD programs in India are actually of international merit? Very very few! I know of people who have graduate with a PhD from Indian universities without a single publication at an international venue! If no result of this person’s work was deemed original and significant by his/her professional community, then how can the entire dissertation be deemed worthy of a PhD by the university? Furthermore, if that is the quality of the PhD, who job prospect can the person expect after graduating?

But in order to produce quality PhDs, you need to recruit quality PhDs to begin with. Its not easy, its expensive, but its got to be done. There are so many Indians with PhDs abroad who want to return to India. All you need to do is provide them with a venue for research, with good funding and competitive pay and you can get them. But a sincere effort needs to be made to recruit and retain such researchers.

There needs to be a quality control mechanism within the PhD program and the local professional community to ensure that PhD students do produce quality results. It could be anything from mandating publications in international venues, to holding conferences and symposiums on high-quality research being done nationally/locally.

There needs to be encouragement for research through independence, autonomy, authority, and responsibility.

Demand for the product

You have a market for PhD programs, you have quality programs in place. You still need a demand for these programs. Here’s where marketing, prospecting comes in. It is very important the students are educated about higher degrees, their requirements, benefits, and future prospects. There needs to be massive talent scouting with pin pointed, personal hard-sell efforts by each educational institution to recruit select PhD candidates in each program who can help establish and flourish the institutes’ reputation, profile, and research potential.

Recruitment alone is not sufficient, retention is equally important. Given that the program is already of high quality, the best way to retain good PhD students is best described in Abi’s original post.

Until we have these basics taken care of, no amount of effort on funding, industry participation, etc. is going to help us get more PhDs of decent quality.