Introducing vocational education in schools and institutions and allowing students to learn at least one vocation will teach students to learn by doing. This was the message from “Nurturing the innovation potential of research for students”, the fourth in The Hindu Education Plus Career Counselling webinar series, presented by SRMIST, held on July 22.
The speakers were T. Ramasami, the Nayudamma Abdul Wahid-Chair professor at the Department of Leather Technology, Anna University, Chennai; R. Ramanujam, professor of Theoretical Computer Science, Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai; Leena Wadia, senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, Mumbai; and K. Ramasamy, director of Faculty and Academics, SRMIST.
The session was moderated by Shubashree Desikan, Senior Assistant Editor, The Hindu .
Research was multidimensional, said Dr. Leena and cited the evolution of the smartphone as an example of innovation and research. She stressed on the importance of allotting more funds for research and innovation. She said India’s allocation of 0.7% of the GDP for research and innovation was much less than that of China (2.1%), the U.S. (2.8%), Israel (4.3%) and South Korea (4.2%).
Dr. Ramasamy said as students reached higher classes, their innovative capacity dwindled as their focus shifted to their thesis. Innovation in research not only created new knowledge but added to existing knowledge too.
Dr. Ramanujam explained how computational sciences, especially physics and mathematical biology, should be taken seriously. “We need different insights to do research. An important line of thinking is to not compartmentalise. A willingness to think about everything, coupled with intuition, is necessary,” he said.
Dr. Ramasami said the creation of ideas was not as much an issue as converting the idea into something workable. Most teachers wanted their students to become scientists, he said.
