Statement of Prof. David Gross, Nobel Laureate 2004, at the recently concluded Quantum India Bengaluru 2025. This one sentence sums up the conference for me.
Arindam Ghosh
1,971 posts
Arindam Ghosh
@ArindamPhysics
Physicist, researcher and teacher...at Indian Institute of Science. Views are my own. RTs are not necessarily endorsement.
- The best advice I got when I started over 15 years ago as an Asst. Prof. You must complain at every difficulty you face, but you must perform inspite of those difficulties. Because unless you complain system will not improve, and unless you perform, no one will listen to you.
- India's national quantum mission is causing insecurities in the neighbourhood.
- Once again today, I received a call from parents of a child in class 7, on how to get enrolled in IISc. Parents, please let your child play and have fun, and enjoy their education. You are destroying their childhood by trying to prepare them for a PhD when they 12 years old !!
- Attended a faculty recruitment meeting where several of the women candidates were asked about family constraints in moving, but none if the male candidates were asked that question. Need a change in mindset.
- Question is whether he would have even got tenured today...
- Beautiful letter by Richard Feynman to Koichi Mano, his grad student: Importance of your research problem is determined solely by you. If you can solve or contribute to solve the problem, then it is important. Even better if you can come up with such a solvable problem yourself.
- In mid 2000, when I became an assistant professor, I used to get research request from prospective PhD students and masters projects, Then started bachelors thesis and summer projects. Now i am getting such requests from class 10 students. Wondering what to expect next!!
- If you really want to help the research in India, please scrap PMRF. It is creating inequality in the labs for the same work. Even trained postdocs are earning less than the PMRFs, who are untrained student... how can this be justified!!
- We must teach students at all levels (from school to PhDs) benefits of 'discussing' with their peers, and how to do so without feeling inadequate or threatened. Our exam-oriented system makes students mug up text books, but they don't know when and how to engage in a discussion.
- This article in @Nature reinforced my long-held belief that when it comes to supervising PhD students, we in India need to deviate from our traditional approach to education and knowledge transfer. Supervising is not teaching. PhD students need to be treated as colleagues and
- The name of the journal is Scientific Reports. Not Nature Scientific Reports or Scientific Reports (Nature). Adding the word Nature doesn't really help the CV.
- If you are looking for a postdoc position, my usual advise is to go for groups that work on topics as far away from your PhD topic as realistically feasible. This may be the last opportunity for you to learn something completely new while getting paid to do so.
- The PMRF fellowships are creating random differences among the PhD students. The methodology needs to be more transparent on how are the fellowships being awarded.
