Rocketing Science

“If I have to impress someone, I usually say I do rocket science. Scientifically, I don’t; my PhD mostly entails designing efficient combustion systems for aircraft engines. Deciding to do a PhD wasn’t a lone event for me, it was a slow build-up of multiple events which ultimately led me to pursue that path. I got particularly interested in physics because of this one physics textbook called “Fundamentals of Physics by Resnick and Halliday” where every chapter started with a story. Although I wanted to pursue my engineering in aerospace, since I loved aircrafts, I didn’t get that branch. So I chose mechanical engineering, which is like the mother branch encompassing aerospace within it.

I joined a club in my second year where we used to build all kinds of flying robots; I think that was my first preliminary exposure to research. After having done multiple internships, by the end of my engineering, I was sure I wanted to do a PhD.

IIT Madras offered a direct PhD admission and since I was clear in my thoughts this is what I wanted, I simply went for it. We have a very good set of faculty here, so the transition from Bachelor’s to a PhD wasn’t a bumpy ride for me. However, in my initial days of PhD, I did feel very lonely. I had shifted from Bangalore, where I had a big friend circle. Here, in IIT, even though I had to take up courses, they were tailored based on my PhD. So my peers during those different courses kept changing. Furthermore, I wanted to do computational work in a predominantly experimental laboratory. My supervisor, an experimental physicist, did give me a scientific problem of my liking, but also made it clear that I was mostly on my own since he didn’t have a lot of expertise on the computational side of things. I took up the challenge but at the same time, understood how important guidance was, not just from your supervisor, but also from your colleagues and seniors, which were pretty minimal in my case. So I wasn’t just lonely socially but also professionally.

In order to circumvent that, after my PhD qualifiers, I started looking for clubs at IIT and joined the Toastmasters club, which changed the game for me. Everyone in the club was really nice, everyone welcomed each other wholeheartedly and many times, we would venture out of the campus together to hang out. I also started looking for collaborations outside my institute, so as to garner more professional experience and for guidance. I got this opportunity to go to NUS, Singapore, which ultimately didn’t pan out because the scholarships stopped that very year. But it didn’t stop me from pursuing other places. I eventually went on to intern at Siemens, Bangalore, for six months and it was there, I actually found people I could look up to, who helped me professionally. Earlier in 2022, I got another internship in GE Research, Bangalore, where I also found colleagues I could learn things from, and have constant interactions with, despite most of them being in the US.

I was lucky in the sense I didn’t have funding issues during my PhD. For a computational physicist like me, I think MHRD provides enough money to live a decent life even in a metro city like Chennai. Additionally, the pandemic also didn’t have a huge impact on my PhD, barring the first few months, when the world had just shifted, because I could work from home. Throughout this journey, my supervisor helped me in his own capacity, allowed me to do independent work and didn’t micro-manage. I got to work in Siemens because of him. Most supervisors do not let their students go outside to do internships during their PhD, let alone two six months internships which my supervisor allowed and encouraged.

I was offered a position at GE immediately after my internship there. IIT Madras lets you pursue such job offers, if you get one, provided you have fulfilled the minimum PhD requirements. So I joined GE within two weeks of being offered the position. Having spent more than a year now in an industry, I realize that research is very focused here; you get one problem statement, and you have a few ways to solve them which you are going to work on. In academia, you are allowed to explore multiple problems/solutions at the same time! Moreover, we think we understand the value of our academic work, but in reality we don’t. When it comes to articulating the monetary value of your work to stakeholders which would eventually help in generating better revenues for the company down the line, you realize how difficult a task it is. It is at GE that I understood what it means to articulate the value of your research, not just to yourself but to people who may not be experts in your field of research. I believe it’s a skill every researcher should possess.

This is an aspect that academia lacks particularly in India. PhD students need to be taught how to communicate their work to a broader audience, how to write a research proposal or a paper very early on. Even in a top institute like IIT, there is hardly any training on these attributes. Another major problem in Indian academia is the lack of postdoc culture. As a PostDoc, it is one of your responsibilities to not just train junior PhDs but also learn how exactly to train, because the supervisor might not be available whenever you need and PostDocs are the people who are going to become academic supervisors in the future.

So unless that paradigm shift happens where PhDs pursue postdoctoral research in India, my advice to all PhD aspirants would be to find an advisor who’s a right fit for you. Secondly, accept that there will be setbacks, sometimes major, in your academic journey, no matter how good of a researcher you are. A good PhD student is a resilient PhD student. And lastly, you don’t have to put a stop on your social life and lock yourself behind those walls of your laboratory or room to do great work. My friends, family and hobbies beyond academia kept me sane and motivated me throughout this journey.”

-Navin Mahto, PhD in Computational Combustion, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras

Interviewed by Debalina Acharyya, Aniruddha Mukherjee and Abisha Aseervatham

Written by Payel Das