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The Macaulay system of education is generally regarded as one of the British legacies that have long outlived their utility; in fact both academicians and more particularly India Inc. regard it as an oxymoron that should have been abolished long back. The main grouse against the Macaulay system is its over-the-top emphasis on theoretical approach of education, mainly promoting learning by rote. That inevitably leads to a huge disconnect between the academic and industrial worlds, and companies had to invest both time and money just to make their joinees employable.

While the government and official university curriculum are yet to fully rid themselves of the Macaulay baggage, the scenario has started to change over the past few years,thanks to the efforts of the likes of IBM and other private players who are actively co-operating with institutes of higher studies, especially in the fields of technology and management in India. Students are now getting relevant industry exposure to groom them as industry ready even before their final semester is over.

This industry academia collaboration in India recently received a tremendous boost when three Indian universities, International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), and Indian School of Business (ISB) of Hyderabad and SP Jain Management Institute and Research (SPJMIR) Mumbai were selected for the IBM Shared University Research awards (SUR).

A total grant of $210,000 has been given out to these institutes to drive key projects along with IBM experts. IIIT- Hyderabad has been nominated to set up a Center of Excellence on cell and power multi-core architecture. The idea is to drive collaborative research on the architectural and algorithmic aspects of cell and power multi-core architecture. ISB has been selected to foster research on service supply chain management and services operations management. SPJMR has on the other hand, been entrusted to enhance R&D on business process management and simulations.

It is about the effort that we put behind the initiatives that makes the difference Anmol Mahamuni, program director, university relations, IBM India/South Asia	We are glad that IBM gave us the opportunity to work with it PJ Narayanan, professor, IIT-Hyderabad	We are setting up a state-of-the-art lab having modern tools Shrikant Parikh, professor, SPJMIR

Fostering Industry-Academia Relationship
The IBM Shared University Research (SUR) Awards is a global award program designed to promote research in areas of mutual value and interest to IBM and the universities. Taking a look at IBMs strategy related to industry academia collaboration, one factor that we do consider in this crusade is how to have a shared or joint research on areas of leading edge technologies of tomorrow, says Amol B Mahamuni from IBM. As a part of this initiative, we give away hardware grants or research grants to select institutes with an idea to help them collaborate with IBM for a joint research on a certain technology. The grant may be given to purchase required hardware to set up a center of excellence or it may be given to pursue research on certain area, or it could be a combination of both, he explains.

The SUR award is handled by IBM at the global level. It works with multiple universities across the globe to pursue collaborative research work on various technology areas. It is this association that helps IBM to understand the right candidature of the award through which the ongoing initiative can be transformed to the next level. Stretching on the need of industry academia relationship, Mahamuni suggests that the philosophy behind giving this award is not just putting money on the table but to have a passion behind technology with which one can work towards making fundamental difference in making a smart planet and give back that greener earth to our next generation. It is about the effort that we put behind the initiatives that makes the difference and not just the grant, says Mahamuni.

Multi Core Activities
IIIT-Hyderabad has been working on aspects like high performance computing, multi core activities, algorithms for few years now as well as applying these researches to certain areas. Driven by a strong group for computation science it had in touch with IBM for the last couple of years on this matter. Knowing IBMs contribution in this field, we were pretty keen to get associated with them and jointly carry forward this research for next-gen computing. IBM too was looking for a place wherein they could set up this kind of Center of Excellence. We are glad that IBM gave us the opportunity to work with them and set up the third Center of Excellence at IIIT Hyderabad, informs Professor P J Narayanan from IIIT-Hyderabad. Interestingly, IBM already has one such facility at the US and another one at Spain.

The institute plans to work on few key areas in this center including IBM multi core cell processor architecture. We will research more on the technology and the architecture of high performing computing. We have been studying little bit but couldnt forward in the application part, says Narayanan. The IBM SUR award consists of financial grant to buy the required cell equipments which we have implemented in our center. Therefore, we have now a very comprehensive cell set-up wherein we can perform our research and application, he adds.

To start with, IIIT-Hyderabad is currently working on developing internal competency to work on cell developing algorithm and multi-core architecture. It is now running a course on multi-core architecture and programming wherein the institute is teaching the students fundamental principals of multi core architecture and its application. We are encouraging the students to develop projects and programs on cell as part of the course, informs Narayanan. IIIT-H is a purely technology institute. As part of our effort for green IT we are looking for datacenter management, server consolidation and how to reduce carbon footprint and lesser heat generation, lesser electricity consumption, lesser air-conditioning requirement. And we are looking at developing and using multi core cell processors that will take care of all these factors. To carry on joint research on this area we have awarded the grant to IIIT-H, says Mahamuni.

Managing Services
Considering the fact that over 30% of the present Indian economy is services led which includes sectors like IT, healthcare, hospitality and others, services is the next big wave. Keeping these eventualities into consideration, fostering an idea of service science research and management at the national level was long desirable. Optimization of business processes and remodeling can bring down cost and increase productivity. Therefore business process management is very important and along with SPJMIR, IBM plans to work on business process simulation and modeling. Majority of the Indian IT business happens through services and the key contributor for the overall revenue generated in IT is service led businesses. The way services science is emerging today, it is essential to develop academic content on service, says Mahamuni.

SPJMIR has created a multi dimensional Center of Excellence in partnership with IBM wherein the institute plans to perform various works including research and case study development. India has excelled in the world of services. The idea therefore, is to capture some of these cases, document them and share them with the world of academia, says Professor Shrikant Parikh, SPJMIR. Further it is planning to develop certain core skills like process modeling and process analysis. To do that we are conducting workshops and also setting up state-of-the-art lab having modern tools for process modeling and analysis, informs Parikh.

Piyali Guha
piyalig@cybermedia.co.in

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