mahendra-verma

"No matter how tough the chase is, you should always have the dream you saw on the first day. It’ll keep you motivated and rescue you from any weak thoughts." ―  Jack Ma “PhD made me poorer, without money, but richer in thoughts.”  ―  Lailah Gifty Akita Many Physics students join a doctoral program with a dream of doing great science. To start well, it is important to choose your PhD research topic and PhD supervisor with care.  In this blog I will try to provide some tips that may help you in this quandary. Which research topic should I choose for my PhD? Statistics show that a majority of academicians continue to work on the same topic as their PhD work for at least 10 years.  Hence, it is prudent to choose your PhD research topic with a proper care.  As I wrote in my blog Should I go for higher eduction in Science & Engineering? ,  I believe that you should choose a topic that interests you most.  This way you will enjoy your work and produ...

"Questions can be categorized into four groups: 1: Ones for which both a student and a teacher know the answers; 2: Ones for which only the teacher knows the answer; 3: Ones for which both the student and teacher do not know the answer, but someone in the world knows the answer; 4: Ones for which no one knows the answer."  ― A. P. Shukla "Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing."  ― Wernher van Braun After graduation, many students are in quandary: Job, higher education, switch field, take a break, etc. In this blog, I will try to discuss the joys and sorrows of higher education in science and engineering.   I believe that the most dominant factor in your career choice should be what interests you most. You will be productive and happy if your passion becomes your profession.  A good college, good teachers, and friends may help you discover your inner talent, but finally, it is you who has to discover your inner fire and dream that you...

Most of us are not aware of the anthem of Indian National Army  (INA). Here it is.. शुभ सुख चैन की बरखा बरसे , भारत भाग है जागा पंजाब, सिन्ध, गुजरात, मराठा, द्राविड़ उत्कल बंगा चंचल सागर, विन्ध्य, हिमालय, नीला जमुना गंगा तेरे नित गुण गाएँ, तुझसे जीवन पाएँ हर तन पाए आशा। सूरज बन कर जग पर चमके, भारत नाम सुभागा, जए हो! जए हो! जए हो! जए जए जए जए हो!॥ सब के दिल में प्रीत बसाए, तेरी मीठी बाणी हर सूबे के रहने वाले, हर मज़हब के प्राणी सब भेद और फ़र्क मिटा के, सब गोद में तेरी आके, गूँथें प्रेम की माला। सूरज बन कर जग पर चमके, भारत नाम सुभागा, जए हो! जए हो! जए हो! जए जए जए जए हो!॥ शुभ सवेरे पंख पखेरे, तेरे ही गुण गाएँ, बास भरी भरपूर हवाएँ, जीवन में रूत लाएँ, सब मिल कर हिन्द पुकारे, जय आज़ाद हिन्द के नारे। प्यारा देश हमारा। सूरज बन कर जग पर चमके, भारत नाम सुभागा, जए हो! जए हो! जए हो! जए जए जए जए हो!॥ (Credits:  https://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/शुभ_सुख_चैन ) This is rewordings of  Rabindranath Tagore’s Bengali poem ‘Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata’ by...

I am happy to share a news that I received Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam  Cray HPC award for the development of  TARANG. The citation reads.. "Development of open-source code TARANG and using it for turbulence simulation at extreme scales”. I thank all contributors to  TARANG.  I have missed many names in my acceptance speech (given below)… but I thank all of you!! The award is really to the whole team who are scattered at many places. 
“Prof. Balakrishnan, Prof. Balaram, Prof. Narasimha, Dr. Di Rose, and members of Cray Computers, I thank you all for the award that means a lot to me and our turbulent group at IIT Kanpur.  Many thanks! I will briefly describe about our code TARANG and its history.  It is a spectral code for solving fluid flows.  Spectral means we use Fourier transforms to resolve a flow at various length scales.  This method is very accurate, and hence it is popular choice for weather modellers. Now, how is TARANG unique?  Th...

In the wee hours of 30th August, I was in the queue of Air India to check in.  It took more than ½ hour with only 5 passengers ahead of me.  Funny part was that  there were 2 counters for all  the economy class passengers, 2 for business class (with  no passenger to check in), 1 for crew.  There was a counter for counter management, and several officials going around.  More managers than workers!!!   Of course, some of the passengers at the counter had huge overweight bags, and possibly they were arguing at the counter for as long as 15 minutes.  But the counter management and officers around were doing nothing.  I complained several times for speeding up the process, or convert the business class queue to economy class, but no avail.     In almost all airline I have travelled with, empty business class counters are also used for economy class passenger.  There was no empathy today. It is impossible to reform the system...

These are my favorite physics and mathematics books that I hope a budding science enthusiast will find interesting and useful. Please keep in mind that the choices are always biased, hence you should develop your own taste.   High School and Intermediate Level: Resnick and Halliday: Principles of Physics H.  C. Verma: Concepts in Physics Kumar and Mittal: Nootan Intermediate Physics (in Hindi, not so popular at present) [Some good mathematics books] S. L. Loney: The elements of Coordinate Geometry; Plane Trignometry Hall and Knight: Higher Algebra Hall and Stevens: School Geometry Undergraduate level: R. P. Feynman: Feynman Lectures in Physics A. M. Purcell and D. J. Morin: Electricity and Magnetis A. Reif: Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics D. J. Tritton: Physical Fluid Dynamics S. H. Strogatz: Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos Mathews and Walker: Mathematical methods of Physics M. K. Verma: Introduction to Mechanics (my own book) ...

I did my undergraduate studies from IIT Madras, and entered IIT Kanpur for work as a faculty.  On the whole I have spent 25 years of my life in the IIT system so far, and I do owe a lot to it for what it gave to me. During my student days,  the environment was an eye opener for me, and it provided exposure to new worldview.  Just to name some of the topics that came up in our mid-night discussions were curved space-time, Godel Eschar Bach, Richard Bach, and many others.  It was very exciting for a kid coming from a small town.  Some classes were very fascinating, and they were the comparable to  my graduate courses at the University of Maryland at College Park.  There are raging debates in India on the contributions of IIT system to the nation.  Did it contribute enough to the development of nation? Did we create new technology, or inspire students to do the same? Why our IITs do not figure in the top 100 institutions of the world? Why don’...

Several months before a summer vacation, almost every faculty is flooded with email requests for summer internship.  The volumes are so large and the requests are so generic that I just press delete button on those emails.  This phenomena has led me to write this blog to offer some unsolicited advise to students. Solving difficult academic problems take a large amount of time, typically extending much longer than three months of summer.  If a person is not trained in an area, he/she may not even be able to start on a problem. This is quite common to my area of research, fluid dynamics and turbulence, which is not covered in normal physics curriculum.  Thus, incentive to offer a single internship appears to be a waste of time for both sides, unless the student wishes to continue to work on a mutually agreed upon  project for a longer time after the start (say the next summer).  Unfortunately, most students work on different problems with different gui...

Hundreds of thousands of students from IITs and other leading colleges in India go abroad for higher education (Masters and Ph. D.).  Of course, many students also choose indian academic institutions, but the first preference appears to be abroad. In this blog, I will argue how pursuing higher studies in India can fetch rich dividends to students.  A rider, my conclusions are general, but they are more aligned to physics research due to my familiarity in this field. In India, there is a significant research support to Ph D scholars.  For example, the institute or university, rather than the individual scientist, pays scholarship to the students.  Consequently, a student can choose to work on in unfashionable area with a professor who is not funded.  This is not possible in many western countries, specially USA.  Note that fundamental fields of science and engineering need to be supported for advancement of knowledge, even though it may not yield fina...

Recently I read the Parmeswaran’s biography [1] of Sir C. V. Raman, India’s only Nobel laureate in Physics, as well as looked up at several other sources.  It is needless to say that Raman was highly committed, hardworking, and inspiring scientist.  I rather highlight a less-known fact about Raman: how publishing in Indian journal helped him win the Nobel prize, and how he supported Indian journals. Raman was intrigued by the deep-blue light of the Mediterranean sea during his travel to Europe in 1921.  He disbelieved Lord Rayleigh’s theory that it is due to the reflection of the sky.  After a series of works, the last conclusive experiment on the vibrational spectra of liquid was performed by Raman and Krishnan on 16 February 1928. Raman and Krishnan sent a telegram to Nature on the same that was published on 31 March 1928 with submission date as 16 Feb. 1928 [2]. Raman gave a public lecture on 16th March 1928 in Bangalore; his lecture was published in Indian...

In India, 1857 revolt against the British is termed as the “first struggle for the Indian freedom", "Sipoy mutiny",  "1857 revolt" etc.  It was spontaneous, and grew out of emotional discontent of native soldiers in the English army (East India Company), local chieftains, and part of populace.  The response from both the sides, Indian revolters as well as English army [1], were emotional, which led to killing of large number of people.   The rules of conflict was broken from both the sides that led to murder of innocent people, both Indian and English. The events of 1857 have certain similarities with several major emotional events of history.  According to me, in 1857, the desire for freedom and to dethrone unpopular rulers was similar to that seen in the French and American revolutions.  Incidentally, many centuries back (around 320 BC) duo of Chankya and Chandragupta successfully overthrew the Alexander’s army from India, and started a new Imperial t...

I am on a visit to IIT Gandhinagar (IITGN), which is one of the newly built IIT in India.  There are some very impressive and fresh things that made me write this blog.  Everyone seems to be happy here, and I heard no complaints.  Let me just list some of the things I noticed in the campus. 1. There is visible enthusiasm among the faculty and students.  One of the most impressive things is the sense of belonging the faculty and student have to the institute, which is quite rare now a days.   2. Openness and democracy in the system is quite impressive. A new physics faculty  is  introducing open experiments in undergraduate lab, where the students propose experiments along with the required budget, and then they get to do the experiment under an enthusiastic guidance from a faculty.  A fourth-year undergraduate student, Akash Singh, toured me the new campus with an enthusiasm as if he was a key member of the building committee; he knew the en...

Individual liberty is one of the major pillars of present-day democracy.  It allows an individual to choose profession of his/her liking, have ones own belief system, voice opinion, etc. Individual freedom allowed many creative individuals to chart out their own paths, which led to tremendous creativity and innovation in modern times.   The alternative, or the old system, is indeed suffocating, at least for the creative individuals; here the system decides the role of an individual.  It is worth noting that the personal liberty over the rights the state and the church over an individual came after a lot of sacrifice; the charter of “Rights of Man” , which outlined these rights for the first time, is a beautiful document to read. Ref: ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen) An important question is whether we have Individual liberty or not in India?  I believe that the answer is mixed.  In India, the poor do not...

One of the best things modern times offers to all of us is democracy.  Everyone has right and privileges that cannot be taken away by anyone.  Also, we take collective decisions on how our surrounding be managed or governed.  Of course, in any system, some individuals or groups are chosen/elected to take executive decision. The remain section, an integral of the democratic system, plays an important part in democracy.  In true democracy, both, the executive and the commoners, shape the policies, execute the work, thus make the system function.   Yet, there seems to be a constant mistrust and friction between the two sections, the administrator and others, which is a big impediment to democracy. In this blog, I will try to discuss my view on this topic. In a typical scenario, we blame the top person (politician or top administrator) for all the ills of the system.  But, we forget that we are also decision makers in many forums: as a family member in a ...

As a teacher, the most annoying things for me are the exams. I believe one should not judge the other person. Every student or scientist is good in something. There could be gradations in aptitudes in various skills like analytic, memory, problem solving, experimental, design etc.  A written exam for several hours is simply not good enough to test various skill.  In fact, it is meaningless to test all the skills,  because typically a person has liking for one or several of these skills. The problem is that the outside world wants to know who are the better students of the class. the award-giving institutions want to know the best students.  Given all these irritating constrains, we award grades and conduct exams.  One may say that the grades are the thing, because we can get the coveted job/scholarship/awards etc. by getting very good grades.  It turns out that if you try to focus too much...

I have been visiting our ancestral village Mandhar (in Chattishgarh, near Raipur) on Diwali for the last two years after an interval of  around 30 years.  The present village is very different from what it was before.  Industry has come in the village, which has provided jobs to some youths of this village and the neighbouring villages.  It has brought pollution (plenty of carbon ash) and cash in the village.  More cash is bringing in more liquor and gambling.  More money does not necessarily mean good life. There is no desire of learning, no interest in politics or culture.  Not even desire for better schools for children, hence better life for them.  I was surprised to see that the villagers are not even interested in local politics.  People do not read newspaper.  There are too many issues like road, water, better education, health care, sewage system, etc. to fight for, but there is no talk about it. Urban population does not quit...