DYPIU – Prof Prabhat Ranjan’s Blog

6 Years at D Y Patil International University, Akurdi, Pune(DYPIU)

In 6 years of its existence , DYPIU has been trendsetter in many ways for the whole country!

I completed my 5 years tenure at TIFAC on April 24, 2018. During farewell, my colleagues asked me what was my next plan. To keep suspense about my plans, I mentioned that I have 3 things in mind : (1) To catch up on sleep (2) To spend time with my grandson (who was about 5 months old at that time!) (3) To write a book.
However from TIFAC, I directly went to airport and took a flight to Pune in the evening. Next day (April 25, 2018), a press conference was organized to announce the starting of D Y Patil International Univ at Akurdi campus in Pune. I took a photo of nameplate and shared with my TIFAC colleagues about my next engagement and broke the suspense!

Prof Prabhat Ranjan Listed Among “Visionaries of India” by Outlook Magazine

Prof Prabhat Ranjan has been identified by Outlook Magazine as one of the visionaries to take India towards a $ 5 Trillion economy

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected India to become a $5 trillion economy with the third largest GDP in 2027-28, early in the ‘Amrit Kaal’ on the path to achieving the goal of becoming an advanced economy by 2047. “Outlook” magazine has tried to identify “visionaries” of India under whose guidance, India is moving towards achieving this goal in a special anniversary edition.

29th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference, London -Energy Justice and Social Licensing Discussion

Prof Prabhat Ranjan’s talk at 29th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference, London on “Energy Justice and Social Licensing”

Video of the talk

Transcript of the talk

ARTURO(Moderator):

So I’ll move us to a global context. You gave a really great introduction of in the US what’s being done.

And I’d like to pass this next question to Prabhat. Prabhat, as the fusion ecosystem moved towards the fusion pilot plants and commercialization, what concerns do you see regarding the global south’s role in the process? And what opportunities do you envision in this process?

PRABHAT RANJAN(Panelist):

Thank you. Global South is not only a geographical concept. It’s also an economic concept. And that economic concept keeps changing. And the countries that are part of the global south are not really fixed. Today, if I take from Steve’s talk, he talked about the industrial revolution. If I see economy before that, from 1st AD to 1800 AD, it was India and China, which was producing maximum 20 % to 30 % of global manufacturing was happening in India and China. It was industrial revolution which changed the games. And things moved to global north at that time. And the countries like India became poorer in that process.

DYPIU Student’s Time – My Involvement with Chandrayaan-2

DYPIU Student Times – weekly news bulletin – student anchor, Sakshi, interacts with me about my involvement with India’s Moon mission

Digital Fabrication Movement in India

Finally effort to create a digital fabrication movement is sweeping across the country with the AICTE IDEA Lab network growing. This would have profound effect on the innovation landscape of the country as well as manufacturing sector and growth of GDP and move India towards “Aatmanirbhar Bharat”

While preparing Technology Vision 2035, after joining TIFAC as its head in April 2013, we started tracking various technologies that were likely to impact us in the coming decades. I have described these aspects in detail in my blog Making and Launching of Technology Vision 2035. Among the many technologies that were on the horizon, we had 3D printing (also known as additive manufacturing). This was also covered widely in the Manufacturing Sector Roadmap of Technology Vision 2035. I was aware of this and of FabLab initiative from MIT. 3D printing and other digital fabrication technologies were revolutionizing prototype development as well as customized manufacturing. The cost of setting up labs of this kind was around Rs 50 Lakhs at that time. Due to lack of awareness and cost, very few places in India were setting up such facilities. Most of the educational institutes were not aware of these developments nor were these part of the curriculum. Even those places (one could count them on fingers) were mostly setting it up for projects and special facilities, not for the part of regular training of students as part of the curriculum. From my project funding, I had procured a PCB milling machine to reduce the time to make PCBs. This made it easier for students to indulge in hardware development.

PCB Milling machine in my DA-IICT, Gandhinagar Lab 202

Coaching distorting Indian School Education?

Coaching industry flourishes in India at the cost of students’ learning opportunities and loss to nation of innovative minds essential for India to progress fast. Key issue is popular perception of very few “quality”seats being chased by large number of good quality students.

Recently IISc Bangalore Professor Arindam Ghosh highlighted the importance of school education and how the recent structure is destroying the minds of the students. He said that students leave schooling to prepare for IITs ‘Destroys Fabric of Education’.

I basically agree with this statement about students spending 4-5 years in coaching to prepare for one exam is distorting the learning process. They do very targeted learning during this period focused on “cracking” an exam. We do lose a very important part of students’ life where creativity and exploration would have been important. Being able to ask questions is more important learning than trying to learn what is the “correct answer”. We make the students “convergent thinkers” rather than “Divergent thinkers” needed for an innovative mind.

My Contribution to Nuclear Fusion Technology

For nearly four decades, I have been involved in the Nuclear Fusion work due to a midnight patriotic feeling while on my way out of the country for higher studies and since then have continued to play a role in developing or promoting nuclear fusion in India. I hope to continue contributing to this and expect to see applications happening in India too!

Starting in 1983 at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (and Univ of California, Berkeley) till 2002, I did full-time research in the area of Nuclear Fusion in USA and India. I contributed through modeling, development of data acquisition and control system, variety of system development, experiments, and operational improvements as well as solving technical problems to enhance the performance of both the first generation Tokamaks(a type of Nuclear Fusion Reactor) in Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics(SINP), Kolkata and Institute for Plasma Research(IPR), Gandhinagar to international levels of performance. At IPR, I was project leader of Aditya Tokamak from 1996 to 2002. I was also Project Leader of SST-1(Superconducting Tokamak) Operation and Control Group from 1997-2002.

Here I describe my contribution during the continued contribution to Nuclear Fusion for almost 4 decades.