Another season of Nobel Prizes for sciences (Physiology
or Medicine, Physics and Chemistry) has come, this October 2013. The Nobel Prize
in Physiology or Medicine 2013 was awarded jointly to James E. Rothman, Randy
W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof "for
their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport
system in our cells". The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 was awarded
jointly to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to
our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which
recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental
particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron
Collider". The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013 was awarded jointly to
Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical
systems".
James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Sudhof are affiliated, at the time of the award, to Yale University, CT, USA and Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA respectively. Francois Englert and Peter W. Higgs are affiliated, at the time of the award, to Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, and University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, respectively. Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel are affiliated, at the time of the award, to Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA and University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, respectively. As almost always, the Nobel Prizes have been bagged by scientists working in the universities of advanced countries such as USA and European Union. Not unexpectedly, an Indian scientist has not figured the prestigious Nobel roll call this year as well.
James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Sudhof are affiliated, at the time of the award, to Yale University, CT, USA and Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA respectively. Francois Englert and Peter W. Higgs are affiliated, at the time of the award, to Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, and University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, respectively. Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel are affiliated, at the time of the award, to Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA and University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, respectively. As almost always, the Nobel Prizes have been bagged by scientists working in the universities of advanced countries such as USA and European Union. Not unexpectedly, an Indian scientist has not figured the prestigious Nobel roll call this year as well.
Indian Nobel Laureates
Sir CV Raman
(1930) and Abdus Salam (1979) and Subramanyam Chandrasekhar (1983) in Physics,
Ronald Ross (1902) and H Gobind Khorana (1968) in Physiology or Medicine,
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (2009) in Chemistry are some of the prominent scientific
luminaries from India who won Nobel Prizes in Sciences (excluding literature
and economic sciences). Given that in terms of numbers India has probably the
largest number of colleges, institutions and universities offering scientific
and technical education, the small number of Indians amongst Nobel Laureates and
the non-appearance of Indian institutions in terms of affiliations at the time
of award is quite disappointing. It is also disappointing that although
thousands of bright Indian scholars leave each year for higher order scientific
education, including doctoral and post-doctoral studies in the USA and EU, the
number of such Indians who became Nobel Laureates is even smaller.
This situation is to be read with the fact that in a ranking
of the Top 500 universities by ARWU (Academic Ranking of World Universities),
only one Indian educational institution, the Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore figures, with a ranking between 300 and 400. American universities
have captured 17 positions of the top 20 slots, with two going to British
universities and one being occupied by the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology at Zurich. Of the 500 universities ranked, American universities
captured a total of 182 slots; European universities occupied 200 slots — but
only three made the top 20. As many as 17 Chinese universities were included as
well. ARWU, also known as Shanghai Rankings, considers every university that
has any Nobel Laureates, field medalists, highly cited researchers, or papers
published in Nature or Science. In addition, universities with significant
amount of papers indexed by the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCIE) and the
Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) are also included. In total, more than
1000 universities are actually ranked, and the best 500 are published on the
web. Universities are also ranked by several indicators of academic or research
performance, and the per capita academic performance of an institution. For
each indicator, the highest scoring institution is assigned a score of 100, and
other institutions are calculated as a percentage of the top score.
Indian University Scenario
India has around 570 universities,
including 13 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), 17 Indian Institutes of
Technology (IITs) and 30 National Institutes of Technology (NITs). Each
university, except the IIMs, IITs and NITs as well as some specialized
universities tends to have several colleges attached to it; an average reported
figure is 300 colleges per university. All the universities and colleges except
the few dedicated to management education teach and conduct research in science
and engineering. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is
the largest Government funded, autonomous R&D Organization in India, having
37 laboratories which cover, among others, biological sciences, physical
sciences, chemical sciences and engineering sciences. Nearly 17,000 staff work
in the CSIR laboratories. Nearly 700,000
science and mathematics graduates and another 700,000 engineering graduates are
turned out each year by the Indian educational system – impressive figures by
any standard.
More relevant is the number of doctoral candidates that emerge from the Indian
education system each year. India turns out close to 10,000 Ph Ds each year in
science, engineering and technology. This is quantitatively impressive
considering that all the OECD countries are reportedly producing 100,000 Ph Ds
each year, and the leading country, USA itself contributes around 50,000 Ph Ds
in science and engineering. Numbers possibly tell only less than half of the
story, at least as far as India is concerned. While the doctoral programs in
the USA are focused on the cutting edge of science and engineering, with a fair
degree of association with Nobel Laureates and laboratories undertaking fundamental
research, the Indian Ph Ds are handicapped by the lack of such leading edge
associations. In addition, lack of laboratories committed to fundamental research
in India for post-doctoral and research employment in public sector or private
sector further constrains even those who have passion for research in India. An
article in Nature, 472, 276-279 (2011), ruefully observes that the academic
employment opportunities for Ph Ds have been declining even in the US, leading
to their migration to jobs that do not require such advanced degrees.
IIFRs for a Research Ecosystem
India has less than 1 percent of its graduates enrolling for Ph D programs.
The brightest of graduates, in fact, migrate to the advanced universities in US
and Europe for Ph D programs. There is a clear need to address the fundamental
research paradigm in India not merely to retain more Ph D talent but more
fundamentally to raise the state of discovery and innovation in India. With India
harmonizing its intellectual property regime with the world order the previously
held concerns on protecting discoveries and inventions out of India have
considerably reduced. There must, therefore, be concerted efforts in, and for,
India to participate in cutting edge research. Rather than spread itself thin, India
could implement a phased plan to establish the foundations of fundamental
research, starting with physical and chemical sciences, followed by engineering
sciences and biological sciences.
The research ecosystem can take roots and grow only when the industry
integrates the fundamental research in its operations, and also is proactive in
contributing to the establishment of centers of fundamental research in India. Like
the industry and business are expected to contribute financially to fulfill corporate
social responsibility (CSR), there would need to be contributions to fulfill
corporate innovation responsibility (CIR). A part of the research ecosystem should
include a major initiative by the Government of India to set up a chain of Indian
Institutes of Fundamental Research (IIFRs), on the lines of the IITs and IIMs,
but exclusively focused on post-graduate education and doctoral and
post-doctoral research. In addition, two developments in the Indian educational
system that are potentially on their way must be restructured and leveraged for
the benefit of fundamental research.
The first is the entry of corporate houses into Indian education. Instead of
focusing on run-of-the-mill programs, business houses should partner the IIFRs
to establish research schools of excellence and/or provide grants and chairs to
encourage fundamental researchers. If they must set up their own institutes
they must be their own institutes of fundamental research. Secondly, foreign
universities which want to enter India must be asked to set up at least one
center of fundamental research in each of their Indian centers as part of their
physical campus programs in India. Just as India has delivered substantial
value in global outsourcing of information technology and manufacturing, India
would deliver significant value for foreign universities networking into India
for fundamental research. A combination of Government sponsored IIFRs, public
sector and private sector corporate sponsored research centers and foreign
universities’ extension research schools should provide the winning formula for
a pervasive ecosystem for fundamental research in India.
Research is a Passion
Basic to fundamental
research is the fact that research is a passion, and not an employment or a
business input. True researchers tend to be passionate in the field of
discovery and invention. Neither age and gender nor nationality and geography
have any relevance to the unending quest for new discoveries and inventions. Amongst
the hundreds of Nobel Laureates, 25 years is the age of the youngest Laureate and
90 is the age of the oldest; 59 years is the average. In fact, over 49
Laureates are younger than 40 years, with most of them being in Physics. As Dr
Higgs’s continuing work demonstrates, fundamental research is a lifetime passion.
Similarly, it is truly multinational; as long as a world class research ecosystem
exists in any nation, world class researchers would migrate to that nation, as
a large nation like US and a small nation like Sweden equally exemplify.
Research takes extraordinarily extended time and intense effort that cannot
be ordinarily rewarded. It is even more so with fundamental research. It drills
down to unexplored hidden depths of knowledge but also connects seemingly
unconnected domains of knowledge. The 2013 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and
Physiology demonstrate the importance of cross-functional knowledge, especially
computer modeling or transportation modeling, in understanding complex chemical
and biological activities. The God Particle (Higgs boson) research could not
have happened but for the massive investment and effort involved in
establishing the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. While India does
need to go a long way in fulfilling certain basic economic, industrial and
social growth needs through considerable investments, India cannot also afford
to ignore the need and responsibility to invest in establishing and nurturing an
ecosystem for fundamental research. Fundamental research will lead to a truly
fundamental transformation towards a leadership role in global scientific and
engineering domains for India.
Posted by Dr CB Rao on October 13, 2013
