How do you use AI tools in your work? (Edited by Ashmita Gupta)
Category: Campus Chronicles
‘My Work on National Projects Became the Driving Force of my Life’
Narayanaswamy Balakrishnan (“Balki”) has spent over five decades at IISc. Upon completing his BE (Hons) from the Coimbatore Institute of Technology, he pursued his PhD from the Department of Aerospace Engineering, IISc, where he continued as a faculty member. He contributed to diverse areas, including aerospace electronics, computational electromagnetics, and information security. He also played […]
Doors Wide Open
A brief history of IISc hostels To the south-west of the IISc Main Building, a stone’s throw away stands a rather squat piece of architecture. The ground floor construction is of grey-brown rock, cut and piled in rectangles of various sizes. The first floor is painted with what must have been a shade of […]
Amulya KN Reddy
The scientist for social development One morning in the early 1940s, 12-year-old Amulya Reddy received a letter from his uncle and hero, CGK Reddy, a marine engineer and political activist. The letter, written on a rough piece of paper, had arrived from the Madras jail where CGK was imprisoned for his anti-British activities. In […]
‘Call me When Decroos is Here’
Mariadasan Anthony Decroos (known as MA Decroos) dedicated more than 40 years of service to the Institute from 1965. He worked with five Directors, handling sensitive, confidential, and strategic planning assignments that contributed significantly to the Institute’s growth. When CONNECT reached out for an interview, the 85-year-old promptly agreed to reflect on his life and […]
Choosing Academia
Faculty members in academia want more than what a lucrative corporate package following a conventional career path has to offer. The modest income compared to industry jobs is just a known feature of their decision to join academia and not a problem that they’re trying to solve. It’s the call to heed something bigger than […]
Design Dilemma
The ongoing debate on digital vs. physical prototyping It was supposed to be a simple task. As part of our coursework project on Applied Ergonomics at IISc’s Department of Design and Manufacturing (DM; formerly known as the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, CPDM), my team wanted to design earphones with the perfect ergonomic […]
Connect Asks
What does ‘summer’ mean to you? (Compiled by Divyanshu Bhatt, Anjaney Jaishankar Prasad Pandey, Aarav Ghate, Creetika Dahal, Shruti Sharma)
Driving Change
Elected bodies are giving voice to student issues On a rainy October evening in 2024, Chiranjeevi Sadana, PhD student at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and newly elected Chairperson of the Students’ Council, is making arrangements for the first open mic of his term. The Students’ Council had finally been reinstated after six months. […]
‘With Gen AI, there are now a lot of opportunities, but also challenges’
Nihar B Shah is Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, USA, where he leads a research group exploring how human-AI collaboration can lead to more trustworthy research publications and fairer evaluation systems. He completed his ME from the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering (ECE) at IISc in 2010, and also received the Young Alumnus Medal […]
