Candid Conversations: An Exclusive Interview with Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri [Part 1 of 2]

INTRODUCTION

Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri was the Director of IIT Bombay from April 2019 to May 2024. Born in Bahutali, West Bengal, he earned his undergraduate degree in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from IIT Kharagpur. Moving to Canada, he obtained a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Calgary and secured a PhD from the University of California, San Diego. He has a stellar academic career having received various awards for his contribution in the fields of Computer Vision and Image Processing. He served as the Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering, the Dean of International Relations and the Deputy Director (Academic and Infrastructural Affairs) before taking office as the Director in 2019.

Link to Personal Website: https://www.ee.iitb.ac.in/~sc/index.html

PERSONAL LIFE AND BACKGROUND

Q1. How did you develop an interest in engineering? How did you decide that you wanted to study Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering at IIT Kharagpur?

I come from Murshidabad, one of the poorest districts in India. My father was a simple school teacher. Naturally, when you hail from such a background, safety in your career is of utmost importance. You would go for a professional degree, where the options make getting a job easier. I was left with two such options: engineering and medical. My father wanted me to pursue medicine. But as I appeared for the tests in both of the streams, I realised my inclination towards engineering.

At the time, “electronics” was the buzzword. I had a good enough rank to be able to pursue that at IIT Kharagpur and went ahead with it.

Q2. How did your interests transition from your major towards Computer Vision in a time when the quality and access to images was limited?

At the time, when you talked about computer vision, no one really had access to images, and there were no devices to facilitate that. Back then, printing was done using half-tone images: you kept on striking on a printer, which left deep or sparse impressions, and you got an image based on that.  Thus, there was a lot of uncertainty about this field, but my professor encouraged me to try it out, and I decided to pursue a BTP in Computer Vision. From there, I developed an interest in image processing and went forward with a Master’s degree and then a PhD. During my Master’s, I was able to get better access to images as the technology developed and became available.

Q3. Why did you choose to teach at IIT Bombay?

After completing my studies abroad, I decided to return to India. At the time, there were no facilities for e-mailing, and you had to physically send out your biodata to apply to different places. I had the option of choosing where to teach from amongst IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Kharagpur, ISI, and IISc. A professor from the Electrical Engineering department of IIT Bombay visited the complex where I was staying as a graduate student. There were alumni from IIT Bombay as well as other IITs, and I was asking them various questions. 

I learned that the IIT Bombay campus had leopards, which I found very interesting. That’s what led me to join IIT Bombay. Of course, they didn’t tell me that crocodiles were also present!

Q4. We noticed on your homepage that you had Master’s and PhD students under your guidance during your tenure as a director. How did you manage this, along with publishing papers and attending conferences, given your administrative responsibilities?

The director’s tenure was the most difficult, and the last year of tenure has been extremely hectic. Up until my journey as a Deputy Director, I was able to teach at least one course every semester. However, after I assumed my role as director, it was simply not possible with all the meetings and travel. And I was aware that even if I tried teaching, the students would suffer. Hence, during my tenure as director, I did not onboard any new students and decided to primarily work as a co-supervisor. 

Q5. You have held several administrative positions in the institute. How has your experience varied over the years in your capacity as the Deputy Director (Academic and Infrastructural Affairs), Dean (IR), Head of the Electrical Engineering Department, and Warden of Hostels? How has it been different from your role as an academic?

Our primary responsibility as professors is teaching. As academicians, we wish to be recognized by our peers for our research work, as this recognition provides a lot of career satisfaction and motivates us to keep going.

As for administration, somebody has to take up that responsibility, and it should be someone who has good faith and understanding of students. That person should also be respectable and of good standing so that they can create an ecosystem where all students do well. Efforts should also be made to reduce the non-academic burden on faculty so that they can productively utilise their time teaching and researching. As an administrator, you get satisfaction from helping others this way, even though that might mean that your academic and research interests take a hit.

Q6. What expectations did you hold with respect to this position before your tenure, and how have they been realised during your tenure?

I had to be rational in my thinking process. Compared to positions abroad, positions in India have a tenure of only 5 years. Thus, there will be some low-hanging fruits, and others that will be realised over longer durations. Students are the raw input to the institute, and you have to see how much impact you can create by adding value to the four years of their lives here.

One of my classmates had claimed in a book that the students in IITs are anyway good and professors in the classroom serve no purpose! Thus, some of the students may have the perception that there is no value added by the professors to their lives and that they can self-study and learn better. Thus, it is our responsibility as administrators and professors to ensure that the good input at IITB turns out to be exceptional output. As an analogy, if I have a good image as input, I can do far better processing on it and derive results of more value than when the image is blurry. 

Q7. Is there anything that you have set in motion for the next tenure?

The next director naturally has to think and come up with a vision that leads to the betterment of all students, faculty, and staff, and takes them to the next level. Normally, the director can’t do it alone, and they need motivated people to assist them.

Q8. Throughout your tenure as director, how have you tried to maintain a healthy work-life balance, and what strategies have you found most effective in achieving this balance? 

It’s difficult to maintain a healthy work-life balance. One or the other will always suffer. At a younger age, when you’re getting married, having kids, and forming a family, it’s more important to maintain this balance. 

I couldn’t maintain this balance properly. But I don’t think that the lack of balance affected the kids and their lifestyle that much since they had already grown accustomed to their independence to some extent. But as the kids grew older, my wife got less time with them, and since I was busy with my commitments at the office or work-related travel, I couldn’t spend as much time as I would have liked with her either. I think the spouses are the actual sufferers of an unhealthy work-life balance in this sense.

Q9. Are there any particular areas of research or teaching that you’re eager to delve deeper into as your tenure as the director comes to an end?

The question is, where do I stand right now as far as my research is concerned? I am not updated with the recent developments in my areas of study. I need time to understand where I fit in and the areas that I can contribute to. I realise there has been a loss in this sense, but there has also been a gain. I have developed a better understanding of the education system of the country, the research potential of other people, and the administration.

For now, I might take a sabbatical to read up and better understand what spheres I can contribute to. That is an option, but I haven’t decided yet.

Q10. What are some of your current hobbies?

When I was a kid, whenever it used to rain, I used to open my bedroom window facing the Ganges river, and study math. I found it to be quite pleasurable. My hobbies have changed since.

As life progresses, your perspective changes, and you realise that life is not an optimisation problem and you need to go beyond it.

Now, I really enjoy reading Vedantic Indian philosophy. I think it’s beautiful and agnostic about faith and individuality. It’s rich and more difficult in comparison to engineering. It has given me a very different outlook on life, and I think everyone should read it when the time is right.

Q11. What are your fondest memories and regrets from when you were a student at IIT Kharagpur?

Student life in Kharagpur was very fun and interesting. I made a lot of friends there, and I definitely look back fondly on the time I spent with them.

In hindsight, I should have put a bit more effort into learning math, it would have given me a better dividend as a researcher.

ACADEMICS AND RESEARCH

Q1. What do you think about students’ increasing choice of non-core careers, especially after getting a degree in science/engineering from one of the most prestigious technology institutions?

I want students of this institute to contribute to society and generate jobs and wealth for the country. For that, the career they choose or the sector they decide to work in does not matter. A lot of people, when they come to IIT Bombay, think that a high paying career is what matters in life, which is not the case!

IIT is not a destination but merely a launching pad. Our job is to provide whatever fodder is required to feed you well.

As a director or a professor, I would be happier if our students take up the highest positions in companies, and create new opportunities and wealth, and give back to society, rather than join the shopfloor. When the foundation stone was laid for IITs, it was with the vision that these institutes would create manpower at the highest level who would provide leadership to the manpower in industry. This mindset should reduce the distinction between core and non-core. 

For instance, cars, which used to be considered the heart of mechanical engineering earlier, have now transitioned to being more electrical engineering and computer science based. With changing times, new sectors develop and old ones change.  When you enter this college for a B.Tech., you have not committed to engineering but to the process of learning 

You do not have to do what you have been trained to do; you have been given an analytical skillset. So, if you want to go to fintech or product design or you want to join politics, go ahead. I have seen people become very good lawyers. It’s all your choice.

Q2. Liberal Arts, Sciences and Engineering (LASE) program was introduced by the Centre for Liberal Education (CLE) at IIT Bombay in 2022. What do you think about the program and why did it not pick up?

There were certain problems with how the LASE program was implemented. It was not aligned with my vision. I believe there was too much compartmentalisation of courses, which led to it being messy. Students want complete freedom of courses, but they were also skeptical about the program because they were worried about not being able to get a job with the degree. Additional pressure comes from the parents as well. But, in my opinion, companies these days look at what you know, not what your degree is. A lot of non-Computer Science and non-Electrical Engineering students are looking for non-core jobs, so I believe we should let them take whatever courses they want that would help them towards the career of their choice. The student can be awarded a degree in the field that makes up over 50% of their total credits. In the future, I want LASE to be completely flexible, allowing students to pick whatever courses they want. I’m sure a lot of people would be interested in such a program. 

Q3. How do you feel about the coming up of new specialised branches in IIT Bombay and other IITs as well (eg.- BTech in IEOR, other IITs having B.Tech in AI or Bio-engineering, etc.)? What do you think about the current scenario of undergraduate education? 

I believe that a B.Tech. program should be foundational. The base knowledge should be broad because you never know what might attract you tomorrow. Based on your interests, you can take minors or other courses. The idea should be to provide options. 

Regarding branches like IEOR, it is no longer a small area. Warehousing and supply chain management are crucial; they are the backbone of today’s industry and essential for product distribution. Even OTT companies rely on IEOR principles (from physical to digital warehousing), making it highly relevant in today’s world.

To take another example, the field of bioengineering has become highly computational. If a strong program is developed, it should be very successful because it can lead to significant innovations like artificial placenta or retina. While these typically have a long gestation period, the establishment of such departments can expedite these developments, showcasing their long-term applications.

Q4. How do you feel about IIT Bombay’s current research output? What metrics does IIT Bombay use to quantify this?

There are three types of research:

Blue Sky Research: Research on topics that do not have immediate applications and are quite futuristic in their goals. For example, the Fourier analysis was invented in the early nineteenth century but found its engineering applications much later. CT scans are based on Radon transform, which was developed in the 1920s. The people who developed the computational method for Radon transform as used in CT scans got the Nobel prize in the 1970s. Those days, it was a math problem, but now it has found crucial practical applications.

Practical Research: As engineers, you have a theory about a real phenomenon, and you want to test it or apply it to a useful or concocted problem. Beyond the physics of the problem, you need to consider various constraints, noise, computational or monetary cost, the robustness of your theoretical model, etc. However, this research, despite having possibly good applications, may not be pursued by the researcher to a logical end to properly define a product application. It could also be that the market is not ready for its immediate absorption.

Translational Research: Research like gene therapy and chip-memory design, on which the research is continuously going on, but they also have immediate applications.

We want to do all types of research. It depends on an individual and their knack, to determine what research they want to do. Getting new ideas, new solutions, and patents, is what we aim for. We want good-quality research in all three verticals and for it to be published in good places and also be cited. We want the faculty as well as the students to be involved. We don’t want to publish just for the sake of it. We want our researchers to go to conferences and present their work.

Q5. While you were the Dean IR, there were efforts to open an off-campus in New York. Other IITs like IITD and IITM are also pursuing campuses abroad. What is the idea behind this? Do you think the institute should strive for campuses abroad in the future?

Mr. Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, had invited universities from around the world to set up a special kind of institution in NYC. Universities were expected to devise an idea and compete for space and monetary support. If you won, you could have set up an institute. 

We realised that setting up in NY on our own would be tough, so we tied up with other universities – New York University, Toronto University and Warwick University, with NYU being the lead partner. We came up with the idea of an institute for solving city problems. We did well and stood second in the competition, while Cornell University stood first. But Cornell anonymously got another offer of 350 million dollars, leading them to go on their own. Since we were in the second position, they gave us space in NYC to set up our institution, but they did not cover the operation cost. We set up CUSP – Centre for Urban Science and Progress. The institute was supposed to research to solve city problems, and it didn’t generate any revenue, and covering the operating costs proved to be tough. We had several brainstorming meetings to figure out our further steps. NYU, a private university, said that they would use it as an executive education center on city living.

After this was over, we thought of setting up a similar thing in IITB, and that’s how CUSE – Centre for Urban Science and Engineering came into being. But as students started taking the curriculum, we realised that it was not a very recognised degree and there was not enough faculty. So, we made it part of civil engineering.

The idea of what other IITs have been doing is to create ambassadors of India in places where people benefit from setting up a premier university. They have been set up in places like Tanzania and Abu Dhabi, where there is no robust research or education culture. In these situations, though, IITs are not getting academic benefits and end up overspending our faculty bandwidth. If IITs are also to academically benefit from setting up campuses abroad, I believe instead of going down the educational funnel, you should go to places where there is an existing and valued educational culture – like the US, Japan, etc. But for that as well, expenses are a problem. We are discussing with our colleagues whether we can set up something with a much less financial burden. If we do end up setting campuses in such places, it will be a great opportunity for student and faculty exchange. We have had some initial discussions, and I hope this succeeds. 

Q6. When considering the formulation of institute policies and rules, how do you ensure meaningful student representation? According to you, how important is student representation in the committees and the senate that take academic decisions directly affecting the student community?

Students shouldn’t feel that a new policy or reform is being thrust upon them. We usually work on new policies when either the older policies affect the students negatively, or there is no policy existing to address certain student issues. An ideal committee will take feedback from the student populace and then make good decisions. And I have observed the committees doing this. It is important that the students are aware if any policies or reforms are under work. But they don’t need to worry about all the nitty-gritty of each decision.

For instance, long ago, DUGCs did not have student representatives. Currently, we have student representatives in the Senate. I always ensure that I ask them to voice their opinions in the senate meetings. It’s not necessary to have too many students on committees. Having one or two student representatives who can get feedback from the student community and aid in decision-making is ideal.

Follow-up: Was the inclusion of student representatives in the committees something that you brought in your tenure? 

Student representatives have been involved in decision-making for quite a while, not particularly in my tenure. It is just that over the years, sometimes the committees didn’t invite student representatives to the meetings, or students of certain batches did not participate enough, and hence, the culture died down. However, including student representatives and incorporating the opinions of the student community is definitely important when making decisions.

Q7.  As an institute, what kind of outreach have we done for students who are planning to join IIT Bombay to give them an idea of the experience here? What are we planning to do in the future?

We have been running open houses for female students after the JEE results are out to make them aware of the opportunities. This is because many parents prefer not to send their daughters far from home. We wanted them to know that it’s a safe space with a lot of opportunities. 

Once the JEE results are out, the institute should do outreach programs. To further increase our outreach, I believe FAQs should be collected and answered in sessions.

Editorial Credits: Ananya Jain, Radhika Goyal, Pratham Srivastava, Vaidehi Jha

Design Credits: Anjali Baghel

Read about the director’s comments on the institute’s infrastructure and current affairs of the institute in the next part of the article coming soon!

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