Listen, Learn, Understand – My Passage Through India

I recently returned from an eight day trip to India that was unlike any other business trip I’ve ever taken.  That’s quite a statement since in the past 25 years, I’ve taken quite a few and to all parts of the world. This trip was intriguing for two reasons.  First, I have a personal connection to India. My father was raised there. As a result, I felt quite at home in a country that most Westerners find overwhelming or exotic. In fact, many of the people I met on this trip reminded me of my family members.

Second, this is a unique and pivotal moment for India.  Home to 1.1 billion people, this diverse and huge nation is on the verge of taking a front row position on the world stage. Virtually every area of this complex society is modernizing at a rapid pace, and no part so rapidly or comprehensively as its educational system.

For the past decade at least, India has been investing heavily in education.  It is building schools, investing in equipment, expanding and developing faculty.  This investment is being spearheaded not only at the government level, but by expatriate Indians who are returning to India to invest and modernize.

This intense focus on education seems to be reaching a tipping point, as two of the country’s biggest goals are to provide education for everyone at a young age, and to vastly improve the availability of a quality, high level technical education.  We believe Quanser can play an important role in achieving the latter goal.

Paul Gilbert of Quanser (right)  and members of the City of Markham, Ontario, Trade Mission meet with IIT-Madras  faculty members to develop a better understanding of the challenges facing engineering educators in India. 

An Immense Need for Quality Engineering Graduates

As in other countries, India’s engineering education occurs on many levels. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) specialize in high level engineering education, much like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) does in the United States.  Eight IITs exist at the moment, with another eight scheduled to come on stream by 2015.  Over 100 Tier 1 universities have engineering departments, while approximately another 3,500 Tier 2 schools (public and private) also teach engineering or engineering technology. Ten years ago this system was graduating well under 100,000 engineers annually; today, they are graduating 700,000 engineers a year. (This compares to 7,000 annually in Canada and 65,000 in the United States.)  Anecdotally, only 25 per cent of that number is immediately employable, while the remaining graduates need some degree of retraining after they get jobs in industry. 

Clearly it’s not hard to identify India’s major technical educational issue – Quality; in that I include quality teaching and research materials, courseware, faculty development and overall best practices for motivating the new generation of engineering students.

The need to enhance Quality in engineering education is why Quanser is paying such attention to India.  We’re recognized around the world as a provider of high quality engineering educational materials for teaching and research in controls and robotics. 

Understanding the Challenges and Opportunities

My role on this trip was to gain a deeper, detailed understanding of the challenges faced by India’s different engineering institutions. To that end, I met with senior level educators and government officials in seven cities: Gandhinagar, Chennai, Mumbai, Madras, Delhi, Jodhpur, and Coimbatore.

During that process, we started identifying ways Quanser solutions and services could help meet the diverse schools’ needs. I also took part in conversations with key educational, government and industry decision makers, to learn how they saw their institutions growing in the coming years, and how they could efficiently and effectively make their schools into models of 21^st century engineering education.

Certainly such a conversation extends far beyond selling equipment. It involves a strategic discussion of so many things, including ways to raise the level of teaching, how to set up a modern controls and robotics labs, ways to encourage collaborative projects between Canadian and Indian universities, the potential of various virtual lab programs, how and when to conduct training, workshops and much more.

These conversations often centered on ways to excite and motivate the new generation of engineering students. Like their North American counterparts, these young Indian women and men respond to new methods, materials and learning environments. Theirs is the first generation of engineering students entering university familiar with cell phones, video games and tablets; a generation that is characterized by short attention spans, a remarkable ability to multi-task, and a strong interest in hands-on, practical learning.  Understanding them is the key to our helping Indian educational institutions achieve success.

Sunny Ray (left), Quanser's Channel Manager for South Asia and India, is working closely with Quanser CEO Paul Gilbert  (right)  to inform Indian engineering professors and deans of the ways engineering education can be enhanced through a strategic relationship with Quanser. 

This trip was not a one-man enterprise – far from it. Working closely with me was Sunny Ray, Quanser’s Channel Manager for South Asia and India. Sunny was tireless, meeting with engineering professors and deans to discuss the state of their curriculum, and joining the City of Markham, Ontario, Canada’s Trade Mission, which was meeting with Indian business and government officials.  He gave numerous presentations about Quanser, which is itself based in Markham. Thank you, Sunny, for your stalwart efforts.

Modernizing a Nation Through Education

To sum up, this trip represents to me a significant milestone in our efforts to understand the diverse, worldwide marketplace, as we strive to provide the cost effective and pedagogical effectively solutions our clients require.  For our colleagues and clients in India, we’re attempting nothing less than helping them build their nation through education. That’s a source of immense satisfaction for us.

This trip was a milestone on a very personal level as well.  Given my family’s connection to India, I take great pride in the fact that Quanser is committed to helping one of the oldest cultures in the world transform itself into one of the most vibrant modern communities in the future.

-       -  Paul Gilbert

Paul Gilbert is Chief Executive Officer of Quanser, Inc.

First passage to India

There is a reason why Christopher Columbus, The Beatles, and Julia Roberts all wanted to go to India. It’s a very funky place. For one incredible, intense week in October, I was introduced to the modern India.

The purpose of my visit was to attend National Instruments Educators’ Day in Chennai, followed by a series of visit to several prominent universities including three of the renowned Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) network. And for the most part, I consider my trip to have been successful. My presentation at the conference went well and I had very stimulating discussions with prominent Indian professors in various control specializations. But I could have said the same thing about pretty much every business trip I make. What was really special about this particular trip was exploring and discovering the cultural dimensions of this unique place. A place that seems a little bit more unique among all of the unique places in the world.

Over a thousand professors attended the NI Educators Day conference.

The strongest memory from my first impressions of the country was the traffic. Rome, Seoul, Boston pale in comparison to the ferocity of Indian metropolitan traffic. It’s truly a study in Brownian motion as vehicles squeeze into impossibly small gaps at full speed. Oh yes, and there’s occasionally a cow that wanders on to the street at which point the traffic flow parts in a very laminar fashion and life goes on.

The engineer in me was also fascinated by the famed “auto” three-wheeled taxis. Based on the motor sounds, I suspect that there is a small two stroke engine puttering beneath body. For about a dollar you can cross a pretty impressive distance on one of these marvels. And because they are tiny, they can easily zip in and out of those fleeting traffic gaps. The business guy in me, pondered whether we could import these beauties then refit them with electric motors and make a killing driving tourists around Toronto’s tourist districts.

“Auto” cab scoots along in Mamallapuram, a small town near Chennai.

But it all works! Even with TWO flat tires in an auto cab, I made it to my meeting with time to spare. This phrase probably describes my first India experience best … it all works. At first encounter, it’s so easy to interpret the blistering pace and machinations of this country as utter chaos but beneath that visibly hectic layer lies a strange order that, to be honest, I think only Indians fully comprehend and command. Whether it was a horribly cumbersome process of getting an entry visa, missing parts in our demo equipment, serpentine queues at the airport, random or possibly scheduled national power shortages several times a day, or full contact haggling with souvenir vendors, it all works out. This is the magic of India.

But it makes so much sense. India, with over a billion people, is the largest democracy in the world. This means, somehow, this country constantly reconciles the voices of its immense population to do anything. Of course this often begets a bureaucracy of cosmic proportions, but the fact remains that the modern India has achieved some pretty spectacular things. It has redefined the global computing segment producing roughly the same number of software professionals as the US within a single generation. Tata Motors have become a global company with legendary marques such as Jaguar and Land Rover in their portfolio. And its entertainment industry has produced Bollywood … and now Collywood (the Chennai-based film industry) and collectively, they constitute the most prolific film region in the world.

Closer my own heart, and very indicative of India’s emerging role in the world stage are the renowned Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) – a network of 16 internationally ranked research universities located in most of the country’s key metropolitan areas. My hometown of Waterloo is a “college town” similar in vibe to Berkeley in the US and Cambridge in the UK (and the US), and with the university’s reputation in engineering and computer science, we have a very vibrant and healthy local population of scholars from India. My Indian peers at university were often some of the brightest and the best and I always wondered what kind of an education system produces such consistent talent. On this trip, I got closer to the answer as I had the pleasure of visiting three IITs on this trip IIT Madras, IIT Jodhpur, and IIT Delhi.

From the campus of IIT Madras!

During these visits, I had a chance to chat with professors about this and that in research and teaching and other topics that typically comprise a nondescript academic discussion. I am happy to report however, that I got a fascinating glimpse into some of the more current trends in Indian Academe. One very happy discovery was the seemingly universal desire to develop interdisciplinary, or system-centric engineering methodologies. As in many places, Indian engineering is discovering that the traditional disciplines of engineering are not capable of addressing the increasing complexity of modern engineering systems. Those who know me, also know that the systems approach has been a key part of my own education and professional life. It’s good to know that these methodologies are increasing in importance throughout the world.

There was also a noticeable tendency towards highly theoretical frameworks for both research and teaching. This is, of course, very consistent with the grand traditions of mathematics in the culture. This fully explains why Quanser products appeal to so many faculty in the country. The “Quanser Method” – a term coined by Founder, Jacob Apkarian, stresses the harmony of the theoretical and the practical. Our devices provide efficient and creative platforms for exploring very challenging engineering concepts -- from fundamental models, to advanced controller prototyping, to testing and data acquisition, the Quanser method provides a holistic framework for modern control systems.

An IIT Jodhpur researcher with a Quanser Active Suspension.

As the week went on, this country so full of exotic contradictions made more and more sense … or at least stopped making me nervous. This was definitely one of the more action-packed itineraries that I have had in a very long time but once I and my travel colleagues got into the groove and the rhythms of India, things became much easier. We were never late for meetings. There was always a cab near by. The hotel bar tender Vipin always had a cold glass of Kingfisher beer ready at the end of the day. Even the domestic airport experience became tolerable if not enjoyable. Ha! I pity you tourists struggling with the 15 extra steps that you need to clear security at the airport.

In the end, I felt sad to leave. Ironically, this country that is so challenging and different from home, that drains you daily, physically and mentally, also connected with me in a way that so few countries have done. Although I had an opportunity to use up all of my cash supply at the hotel on the last day, I left 800 Rupees in my wallet, hoping that it will be useful the next time I visit and continue my education.

Danyavadh India. Nandri Chennai.

- Tom Lee
As Chief Education Officer at Quanser, Tom Lee is focused on spearheading the development of Quanser's global academic community. He is closely involved with Quanser's technology and solution development process and the company's partner and alliance programs. He holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, and an MASc and BASc in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo.