Dream big, aim high

Hyderabad: President Ram Nath Kovind has emphasized on sharing and interchange of knowledge and ideas among the prestigious national institutes, universities and research laboratories.

Addressing the seventh convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad at Kandi on the city outskirts on Sunday, Kovind noted that Hyderabad has 19 research facilities and laboratories of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Biotechnology, the Department of Atomic Energy, the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the Indian Space Research Organisation.

“Individually, many of these entities are doing excellent work. The point is: Are they pulling their collective weight? Is there adequate cross-pollination?" the President asked.

The President said the IIT-Hyderabad was not envisaged as just an add-on to this ecosystem. Rather, it needs to be the hub of this ecosystem and must be the connecting tissue and the catalyst for a greater synergy. He urged the IIT Hyderabad to break out of silos and to encourage others in this direction.

“IIT Hyderabad should go for greater engagement with schools like the Indian School of Business and the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research. It would be extremely valuable if technology practitioners played a great role in these domains, rather than left it to non-specialists," Kovind felt.

He said the true measure of the IIT-Hyderabad cannot be restricted to grade point averages, campus placements and number of published papers. “No doubt, all of those are important but please don’t limit your ambitions. India will judge your success by the vitality and the output you can ensure for not just yourself but for the entire Hyderabad knowledge ecosystem," he told the big gathering of faculty and students of IIT-Hyderabad.

The President pointed out that the IIT-Hyderabad has been set up in a city and in a metropolitan area where several elements for such an ecosystem already exist. IIT-Hyderabad, in a sense, is the element that completes the picture, he said. “Hyderabad has a long tradition of scientific discovery and application.

In the 19th century, Ronald Ross, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for identifying the mosquito that transmitted malaria, did pioneering work here. After Independence, Hyderabad became a location of industrial manufacture. It saw vigorous and farsighted investments by the public sector and then the private sector. Gradually the city’s reputation grew as a research centre," he stressed.

The President said as a second generation IIT it is important that IIT-Hyderabad borrows from as well as learn from the models of the past. Conditions are different from the 1950s and 1960s and India also changed, he opined.

The President was happy to note that a start has been made by setting up a network of centres for research and promotion of entrepreneurship at this Institute. In his 10-minute speech, the President said the best scientific universities and institutions of learning are not just teaching shops or degree factories.

Increasingly they are sources of innovation and incubators of technology and technology-driven start-ups, he stated “The knowledge ecosystem of public investments in science, academic institutions and universities, research laboratories, commercial applications and private enterprise has an almost magical potential. Its best example is, of course, Silicon Valley in the United States.

At the core of Silicon Valley are basic science and technology campuses and their talented faculty and students," Kovind said. He urged graduating students to dream big and aim high and take risks as it was the right time. “There is so much you can do, and so much you can achieve-for yourselves, for your families, for society at large, particularly for those less fortunate than you," the President said.