GROW-N

The Pleasure of Being an Academic:  A Journey with Prof. B.S. Murty                                                                                                                                                 - Amit Kantode In a world increasingly chasing immediate rewards and fast success, listening to Professor B.S. Murty talk about his academic journey feels like a refreshing walk through a forest of patience, passion, and purpose. Speaking at the inaugural event of GROW-N, a collaborative initiative to foster academic interaction, Prof. Murty's heartf...

In this blog article, we will underline the need for a new networking platform for people working in areas related to remote sensing, ocean engineering, and water resources engineering, and highlight how GROW-N aims to address this need. Why We Need an Effective Networking Platform in India Science is inherently a social activity. People learn from each other, ensuring the passage of knowledge from one generation to the next. While reading books and research papers is considered as the primary mode of learning, the importance of personal interaction should not be ignored at all. It is often far easier to learn from someone through personal interaction than by reading journal articles written by the person. That is why we attend conferences, sometimes travelling thousands of miles. The importance of shared learning has been realized in recent years, prompting funding agencies to encourage multi-institutional research projects. In essence, everyone in a scientific community is part of t...

by  Prof.  Basudev Biswal  Pursuing PhD is challenging for many reasons, the main one being the confusion surrounding it, partly created by memes and misinformation about PhD struggles on the internet. Many students start PhD with the notion that it’s simply a continuation of their academic journey. In reality, it requires a different level of intellectual rigor. In a blog post I wrote in 2019, I provided a few suggestions for prospective PhD students. In this post, I highlight the importance of being independent during PhD. Broadly, there are two types of PhDs: Type 1 PhD: The adviser hands over a problem statement (research proposal). The student conducts literature reviews to figure out the steps for execution. The student and adviser work together to do the analysis, discuss the results, and frame the story to publish the findings. Type 2 PhD: The student conducts literature reviews and comes up with a problem statement. The adviser helps the student polish the pro...

originally published in Sept 24th, 2020 on  GROW's website . For a country like India whose economy is primarily dependent on agriculture and experiencing frequent drought episodes, is it enough to assess those drought conditions based on precipitation alone? That being the case, we used Multivariate Standardized Drought Index to analyze the historical drought conditions caused by simultaneous deficits in precipitation and soil moisture for 30 meteorological sub-divisions in India. Further, we present a country-wide multivariate drought atlas for India based on the severity-duration-frequency relationships.   The 2015 drought event in India had affected multiple sectors including reservoir levels, crop yields, and well-being of people. This drought event was deficient in both precipitation and soil moisture. Therefore, we used the developed multivariate drought atlas to analyze the rarity, spatial extent, and the historical context of the impactful 201...

originally published in Sept 17th, 2020 on  GROW's website . Ever wondered how floods are monitored across the world? Very often we might think that there is someone regularly monitoring the flood extents when a calamity strikes, and when relief efforts are in full swing. This is based on our assumption that with the advent of satellite remote sensing, including optical and synthetic radar satellites, it gives us the capability to map flood events on an unprecedented spatial scale. However, even with such advancement of technology, we still cannot predict which places might be flooded on any given day. This in turn always results in an inadequate temporal sampling of flood extents since these traditional satellites do not cover the entire world at any given time. We have come up with a methodology to map inundation periodically which makes use of novel reflected GPS signals that are available daily on a near-global scale. The paper can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/...

by  Dr. Rakesh  originally published in July 23rd, 2020 on  GROW's website . Dr. Rakesh (our alum) is back with another video related to PhD admissions. So, here are some tips for your interview preparation that can bring you one step closer to cracking the admission. Watch here

by Prof . Arpita Mondal originally published in July 15th, 2020 on  GROW's website . In the interview below, Prof. Arpita Monda l talks with Irene Josa of Barcelona Tech about the importance, strengths, and challenges of Civil Engineering education, the need for interdisciplinary approaches in engineering education and research, and what lies ahead in the future.