From the Director’s desk: Episode 4

“I got exposed to research only after I came to IIT Bombay to do my MTech in microelectronics. The way my professors taught motivated me to pursue an academic career. I even published a paper in ‘Journal of Applied Physics’ during my Master’s which was a huge boost of confidence for me and I went on to continue in the same laboratory under the same supervisor, Prof. J. Vasi, for my PhD.

He had received information about a DAAD programme that allowed me to go to Germany for 1.5 years during my PhD. Interestingly, I was the only device engineer amongst physicists in the place I went to. That worked in my favor and in those 1.5 years, I got very interesting results and published some good papers, including one in IEDM. Although the PhD program I was enrolled in mentioned that I had to submit my thesis with the parent institute, i.e. IITB, looking at my performance perhaps, my supervisor in Germany suggested I do it there. But I had to defend in German, despite my thesis being in English. It was a bit of a struggle since I had taken a German language course only for four months. Fortunately, I was the last graduate student to do so.

I moved to UCLA thereafter for my PostDoc and spent around eighteen months in the US working on lateral asymmetric channel transistors. I published thirty-six papers with the group there which were based on my postdoctoral work. I…