‘IITs need a vibrant system involving academia and industry’
We need to create a good eco-system for more Ph.Ds and research work to come out of our institute. Bhaskar Ramamurthi graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1980 with a B.Tech in Electronics Engineering. He would not have dreamt then that three decades later he would be the Director of the institute. After his doctorate from the University of California, he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories, US. In 1986, he returned to IIT Madras as a faculty at the Department of Electrical Engineering. He became a Dean of the department before taking over as director of the institute in September 2011. The soft spoken Ramamurthi says that in the last few years the IITs have transformed themselves from being strong undergraduate-focused institutions to now focusing more on post-graduate education such as Ph.Ds and research. “If we are a pure undergraduate institution, we are dead. We need to create a good eco-system for more Ph.Ds and research work to