When I had joined IISc as an M.E. student in 2008, I was a single-minded careerist. My aim was to complete M.E., publish papers and secure an admission in some top university in US. There I would launch a career in research, and publish lots of papers. I had no intentions of settling in USA, I wanted to come back to India, become a prof in some IIT, and continue research there. I do not know WHY I wanted all these things. Perhaps it was peer pressure to shine academically, which had got ingrained in my mind from the higher classes in school. It was very probably an ego issue rather than any real purpose. But it drove me, and I focused on work (my M.E. project) single-mindedly.
My detailed plans and draining efforts came crashing down. 2010 was like an “Annus Horribilis” for me. All applications to US universities were rejected, as were research papers based on the M.E. project. I was left without a Plan B. I continued in the same lab for PhD, submitted a journal paper based on the work done during ME, and still hoped to quickly publish many research papers thick and fast, and build a tremendous research career in machine learning and computer vision. But on 11 Jan 2011, when the journal paper was also rejected with very discouraging reviews, I was well and truly deflated. I had no success to draw encouragement from, and no direction to move forward. My dreams were well and truly crushed.
It is at this time that the question first arose in my mind: “Why at all am I trying to do research?” Suddenly I realized that, mainstream academic research in Computer Science does not **directly** aim to benefit any significant part of the society around me. Most of mainstream research in CS focuses on solving abstract theoretical problems, or develop efficient computing technology or build fancy intelligent applications. When I tried to discuss this issue with others, I received comments like research should be done just for it’s own sake, as computer science researchers we should focus on our own field only and leave social development to government and activists, etc. I was far from convinced, and spent weeks of sleepless nights. I often felt that my PhD is going nowhere, and in any case academic research is useless according to my interpretation of “use”. But if I quit PhD, then what would I do? I did not know about things like “Young India Fellowship” or “SBI Youth for India Fellowship” at that time, and in any case would probably not have the courage to deviate so far from the mainstream. Joining the civil services also may not have worked, since by nature I am shy and mild-mannered/soft-spoken and would probably not make a good administrator. And I never considered computer industry job as an option. So I continued in PhD, deciding to look at it as a learning and training experience. I would train to do research, and all the while keep thinking of how I could put this training to “real use” later in life. I started to keep myself better informed about social and political issues. I started reading books and articles on a wide range of topics. I was disturbed by conflicting and polarized opinions on issues related to poverty and development, economics and environment. I started feeling that most political intellectuals, left and right, take stances based on their views and beliefs rather than concrete reasons and evidences. This made me start thinking about evaluating and assessing impacts of public policies via data-driven simulation of society and the environment, on which I hope to work.
From the nadir of early 2011, things started improving for me. It was still very far from a smooth journey, but better than the first two years. I managed to work with some good researchers in IISc, Yahoo Labs and IBM-IRL. I managed to do some intellectually stimulating work in Bayesian nonparametrics and videos. Gradually papers also got accepted- not great papers, but decent ones. The process took longer than I expected, but finally it is nearing its end. In pure academic terms, it has not been a great PhD- it is at best a decent one. I don’t have any best paper awards or Google/MSR/IBM fellowships to show. Still I feel I have made a reasonable utilization of these 5 years. I now have some ideas about how to do “useful” work even without veering away too much from academics (though I have not attempted that during PhD!). The best thing is that, I am no know longer the no-nonsense careerist I had been when I first started. I still want to do research, but it is no longer driven by ambitions for personal success. I no longer care about publishing truckloads of papers.
Adway Mitra
Adway graduated in Computer Science from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and earned Masters’ degree and Phd in the same field from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He is currently trying out interdisciplinary research.
