May 27, 2020 | Adamas University

Going Digital in a VUCAD world

In a typical career context, the 2 critical junctures in K12 for making a decision are a) which stream to choose after 10th grade & b) which is the field of study/ major should one pursue? We are more informed decision makers today but with so many career options, it may make sense evaluate them from a wider perspective beyond academics.

While India (& South Asia) continues to be a story of too many aspirants chase too few seats, what remains unchanged is only winning in a rat race still makes us remain a rat. It may make sense if you also focus on what’s beyond school and college curriculum. Academics can at best open the door. When we move in to a job, runways are short, learning is post reflection of our experience, iterative & reiterative and well, we are on our own.
Our career growth will depend, among other things, on our problem solving ability (many a times, a problem which doesn’t have a precedence”), decision making when information is imcomplete and the outcome uncertain with huge trade-offs, focused execution skills, our ability to carry on a conversation, ability to think logically and communicate it precisely, how good we can collaborate, how self-driven are we, can we resolve conflicts, aligning a team towards the goal, our networking skills…… Welcome to the VUCAD world.

In an average life span, conventionally one will spend ~ 80,000 hrs working. The billion dollar point of consideration is we cannot live those 80,000 hrs without doing something we are interested in or we like doing. A recent report showed 69% of the respondents admitting they would reconsider their career decisions. The other way of looking at it is to ask “ would I like to do something for a substantial time in my life, which I don’t like”? It’s an imperative to be clear about what you don’t want to do.

Coming to specifics, let’s talk about the digital of things. When questioned what’s the future of digital, I politely nod “ the future is digital”. It’s a common saying that not knowing coding is the latest definition of illiteracy in the 21st century. Think about the journey, when we stopped remembering and start googling & our 1st port of call to buy something is Amazon. Think how Netflix evaluated from video renting to an OTT behemoth, how Apple came back from the brink of oblivion to charm the globe with a series of I-devices. Data has become mainstream now as personalization, convenience and access are becoming hygiene. What was called emerging skills early last year are becoming mainstream skills in deep learning & AI . Remember, a basic training in coding can open avenues long and wide. If science and tech scares you, remember that your ability to think logically, ability to identify the problem you want to solve are paramount. Coding is a means towards the end and not the end. The end is the problem you solved or the innovation you accomplished thru coding. A couple of summers back, IBM commented they don’t have any problem hiring someone who has the right skills and a University degree may not be necessary.

Consider learning UI/UX and make a career in product management, if you wish. A rare point of agreement between Steve Jobs and Larry Page was “ In the end, it’s the product and how you experience it”. User acquisition and retention, two primary digital metrics rely significantly on how much the brand managed to own the experience for the customer, over its competitors.

Consider learning any or more of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Adwords, Referral & affiliate marketing, SMM (Social Media Marketing). Marketing spends have moved to enhance how one’s brand gets discovered online, how many users fill up the form, how many sign up finally, how many are returning users, how many a brand manages to retain, how unique visitors, Pageviews and stickiness improve…so on and so forth.

It’s an exciting world of careers out there. Stay tuned!

The Author is a Business leader with a deep passion for technology, education and people, Dipanjan accomplished an Executive Management program from INSEAD, also holding a Master degree in Economics and an MBA. StartupIndia hub mentor, Industry speaker & a guest lecturer in B’schools, he leads the Edtech practice in Network 18 Media & Investments Ltd in the broadcast and digital space

Bioactive surfaces: diverse facets

Introduction: Interfacial reactions have become an important subject of research in the past decade. Chemical and biochemical sensing based on such reactions are being widely studied and applied to extend the scope of practical science. Exploring biological interactions on solid support is crucial for a better understanding of biological pathways, designing of biosensors and bioactive surfaces. Such solid supported biological interactions find huge applications in industrial catalysis, drug screening and medical diagnostics.

Immobilization and sensing: Immobilization of biomolecules (proteins, enzymes etc.) on solid support is the first step of such studies and has been carried out by varied means. Several chemoselective methods like native ligation, Staudinger ligation, Diels-Alder and Click reactions and chemoenzymatic methods have been used to graft various proteins on surface. Proteins have also been physically adsorbed on nitrocelluslose membranes for visual sensing. Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) and metal nanoparticles are vital components of nanoscience which have been extensively used for fixation and labelling of biomolecules respectively. Exploiting specific nature of antigen-antibody binding, antibodies tagged with nanoparticles can be used for sensitive visual detection of antigens, even when present in very low quantities or in complex media.¹ This has opened up avenues for the development of assays/detection methods.

Self-assembled monolayers²: SAMs are organic assemblies formed by spontaneous assembly of molecular constituents/surfactants from liquid or gas phases on the surface of solids. These are one molecular layer thick (1-3 nm in thickness). The driving force behind formation of SAMs is the affinity between the head group of the molecule and the substrate surface. When the affinity is strong, it results in formation of a stable film. SAMs can simplify attachment of a target molecule on a solid surface by proper chemical activation of the surface. For this purpose, either a suitably functionalised molecular chain can be synthesized and self-assembled, or post assembly synthetic transformations need to be carried out on a precursor SAM. The latter is simpler and mostly in vogue. Chemical modification of the SAMs and the scope of introduction of virtually any functional group as the tail group of SAMs open up the possibility of tuning surface composition and hence can serve as an invaluable tool for immobilization of different molecules and studying interfacial reactions.

*Image from above mentioned reference (2)

Few examples of bioactive surfaces on SAMs:

Bacteriolytic surface³: Lysozyme is a bacteriolytic enzyme. In one of our studies, it was covalently immobilised by a mild and convenient chemical reaction on glass and silicon surfaces with almost ̴ 40 % retention of its activity and could be reused without loss of activity. This strategy can be extended and modified to coat surgical devices with bacteriolytic coating which will facilitate sterilising. Such surfaces can also find extensive use in food processing industries.

Heat shock resistant surface⁴: This was designed by grafting of a chaperone protein (α-Crystallin) at the terminus of a suitable chemically modified The chaperone activity of immobilized α-Crystallin was measured against aggregation of Aldolase as the target protein. It was found from this study that this heat-shock resistant protein could prevent aggregation of proteins for a wide range of temperatures, showing better activity in immobilised state than in solution. This implies better heat shock resistance at much lower concentrations!! This strategy could make storage and transport of proteins operationally simpler.

Bio-affinity chips⁵: Silicon/glass and Au surfaces have been modified with chemically tuneable SAMs that allowed rapid immobilization of protein A on surface, which lead to bio-affinity immobilization of rabbit IgG in an oriented manner. It was shown that by using the protein A chip developed by this protocol, rabbit IgG can be successfully purified from rabbit serum. This chip could also be recycled over 3 cycles. This strategy can be thus used for designing other such chips and can be used to detect target proteins present in low concentration from mixtures of other proteins!! Such systems have come up as a very vital tool in detection and assays.

*Image from above mentioned reference (5)

Detection techniques for Covid-19:

RT-PCR technique: We are all aware of the SARS-CoV-2 and the havoc it has been wrecking. It is a single-stranded RNA virus. As a primary method of detection, the RT-PCR method is being used. For this a nasopharyngeal swab is collected from the patient. An extracted sample from it is treated with an enzyme known as Reverse Transcriptase in presence nucleotides and primers that are complimentary to a specific SARS-CoV-2 target sequence. If viral RNA is present in the sample, the primers bind to them and the enzyme then synthesises a complementary DNA strand. Then the cDNA strand is amplified by PCR technique and can be detected.
Antibody testing: Another detection strategy is based on antibodies specific to Covid-19. Development of immunity to a pathogen is a time taking process. After a non-specific response via macrophages, neutrophils and dendritic cells to hinder the virus, the body makes an adaptive response by making antibodies (proteins known as immunoglobulins).⁶ Antibodies collected from blood samples of recovered people can then be used for detection of the virus from test samples.

This is where a bioactive surface could come very handy. To put it simply, if the antigen could be immobilised on a SAM and the antibody tagged to a nanoparticle, their binding could show color to the naked eye and detection may not require sophisticated instruments. It is definitely easier said than done, but science and technology is moving forward in leaps and bounds and most of what is reasonably thought of can be achieved.

References:

Analytical Methods, 2014, 6, 351–354
Chemical Reviews 2005, 105, 1103-1169.
Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, 2011, 9, 5123–5128
Bioconjugate Chem. 2014, 25, 888−895
Bioconjugate Chem. 2011, 22, 1202–1209
https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-passports-in-the-context-of-covid-19

Era of Digital Manufacturing & Industry 4.0

Technology is evolving faster than ever before and it’s having a huge impact on manufacturing. Fifteen years ago the products saw a three to five-year time to obsolescence, compared to perhaps 14 to 18 months today. What does this mean to manufacturers? They need to reimagine how they take a product from ideation to a useable product into consumer’s hands, and the product needs to have incredible levels of customization, quality and performance along with the competitive price. The fact of the matter is, with the improvements made in information technology, material sciences, production technologies and supply chain strategies for the past 50 years, we’re well positioned to challenge the traditional way products are developed. We are at the initial stages of a new era and the next Industrial revolution popularly termed as Industry 4.0. In this era, we will develop products virtually, bypassing time-consuming and non-value added task associated with traditional methods.

Mechanization and of the machinery and production systems are the aims of the First industrial revolution utilizing water and steam power around in 1780. In 1870 the Second revolution of industries hits the market with the help of electricity results large scale manufacturing. The 3rd revolutions comes with automation of production processes utilizing electronics and information technology in 1969. Presently a 4th Industrial Revolution is escalating on the Third, has been happening since the middle of the last century by digital transformation. It is characterized by a blending of technologies that is obscuring the lines between the digital, physical, and biological spheres.

We are now entering what is being described as a fourth revolution, also known as Industry 4.0. It is the next phase in the evolution of manufacturing. Combining the cyber capabilities resulting from advances in computing with physical systems to create a highly intelligent, interactive, and automated manufacturing ecosystem. That integrates product design, manufacturing, and logistics.

Effectively, artificial intelligence is surrounding us, from self-driving vehicles and automatons to drones to virtual assistants and programming that interpret or contribute. Noteworthy advancement has been made in AI as of late, determined by exponential increments in figuring power and by the accessibility of tremendous amount of information, from programming used to find new medications to algorithms used to foresee our cultural interests. Day by day Digital manufacturing technologies, in the interim, are cooperating with the biological field. Designers, Engineers, and architects are joining additive manufacturing, computational design, materials innovation, and to pioneer a symbiosis between microorganisms by the help of synthetic biology, our bodies, the items we devour, and even the buildings we reside in.

The Society of Automotive Engineers estimates that 90 percent of all products will be developed virtually in the coming years. So, how does this new product development process look? You have an idea, you convert the idea into a product and process model, which is virtually tested to make sure it meets customer requirements, and then, great! You go into production. It’s as simple as that. This is made possible by sharing data and information across all stages of the product life cycle, what is referred to as, the digital thread.

Manufacturing is the most tangible part of the product lifecycle because it results in a clear outcome. There are multiple definitions of the product lifecycle. Most differing only in their terminology or details. Lifecycle as all aspects of a product’s life, from its design through manufacture, deployment and maintenance. Culminating in the product’s removal from service and final disposal. The first stage in a product’s lifecycle is planning. In a product’s lifecycle, many iterations may be required before customer approval is received. In traditional paper based processes, information sharing can consume valuable time and delay the development process. In traditional processes, there is also a lag during and in-between stages in the lifecycle as necessary approvals are sought. Sometimes, this can even result in losing first-to-market competitive advantage.

The Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute, defines digital manufacturing as an integrated set of tools that work with data sets for product definition having provision of tool design, design of manufacturing process, conceptualization, modeling and simulation, analysis of data, and further analyses necessary to optimize the processes of manufacturing. Deployed throughout the product lifecycle, digital manufacturing enables more quickly and authoritatively share information in the design process. With all the data generated in every part of the lifecycle representing a digital thread. This digital thread can be used to create a computer based digital twin. An integrated system of data, models, and analyses that can be used in design, manufacturing, support, and disposal. These concepts all come together as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Industry 4.0.

An example of the vision and promise of Industry 4.0 can be found in the wind power industry. Wind power is an important component of the clean energy industry. An ongoing challenge for wind farm operators is the significant wear and tear of gearboxes. Gearboxes are expensive to fix especially after failure. However, if sensors on the turbine are linked with weather information and computational models, a very accurate simulation can be developed for each individual turbine. Enabling evidence based decision-making and the creation of predictive models for performance of individual turbines and the wind farm as a whole. This concludes the effectiveness of digital manufacturing and design.

Electrical Engineers-Electrical Security of the Society

Eight years back, in the year 2012, there was a blackout problem on 30^th July. This hit the society hard and adversely affected over 400 million people almost instantly. And on the next day, the count increased to 620 million, mainly in Northern and Easter India.

During this mishap, most of us have seen how within 48 hours our daily life schedules were disrupted beyond control. Later, it was informed to the general public that this sudden disaster was due to some frequency mismatch. The public couldn’t imagine what the frequency mismatch was. But the phenomenon was of vital concern to Electrical Engineers and it affected the society like a bolt from the blue.

This lasted for a few hours and those few hours kept the Electrical Engineers extremely busy like anything. But why so?

Because during those few hours we, the concerned Electrical Engineers, were busy using our backup power sources like batteries, inverters, power backup devices etc. to maintain the supply of electricity in the country.

Very recently, a similar situation prevailed in the post Amphun period on 21^st May, 2020. In many places in West Bengal and Orissa, people were suffering without electricity for more than 72 hours. What a horrible experience it was!. As a consequence of lack of electrical power, the following were directly affected:

Due to the rampage of Amphan, innumerable trees were uprooted or broken and many major roads were blocked bringing the traffic to a halt. Quick removal of these trees needed power saws which operate using electrical power. So, it was almost an impossible deal to execute the task without electricity. And people suffered like anything with the roads and streets blocked for days.
Houses were without electricity due to devastation of Amphan. So, domestic water supply was completely stopped as the domestic water pumps, driven by electric motors, were “dead”.
Internet connectivity and mobile networks have stopped as well due to lack of electrical power and also some mechanical damages to communication towers.
Online work in our laptops or in mobile phones lasted only until the batteries within the device became dead.
Automated home appliances worked with electricity. So, they breathed their last.
All automated devices in business places and various motor drives in industrial belts came to an abrupt halt without the supply of electricity.

Dear readers, just think it over, without all the above activity, can we do any good to the society? The answer is a big NO. We are being educated to serve our society, and to fulfil this dream we need a large number of technically sound Electrical Engineers. For the survival of the society, even for 24 hours, we need the support of Electrical Engineers, which can only be possible if we join the community of Electrical Engineers and be ready to serve the society.

For the foundation of the human civilization, to look after our daily basic needs, we need Electrical Engineers. So in view of the continuous need of our society, I encourage all young minds to think about it once again: join the community of Electrical Engineers.

Our society needs you.

Medical Physics and Instrumentation: A Prospective Field for Job-Oriented Study

nCOVID-19 and Healthcare Technology

Since its first perceives in 1960s, enormous types of Corona virus are available in nature and in 2002 we witnessed the severity of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoV (SARS-CoV) that executed from southern China and affected world population severely. Later it tainted the Middle East areas as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV) that caused thousand people to die with an outstandingly high mortality rate of ~ 35%. In December 2019, it has returned in Wuhan, China, in mutated form of Novel Corona Virus and has spread over 180 countries and affected more than three million of world population till date with killing nearly three lakhs of people (Source: World Health Organization 2020) until this point of time. World Health Organization has declared this as ‘pandemic’ by the middle of March – 2020. The severity of the disease is increasing daily and the whole world is effectively under lockdown situation. To battle with this scenario, physicians are in frontiers and trying to provide their best to cure the diseased population. At one part the situation demands involvement of more doctors and healthcare person to combat with this unprecedented scenario, on the other hand, huge technological and scientific supports are required parallel for providing a curative measures. These include production of medicated masks, low cost ventilators, sanitizers, rapid diagnostic kits, life support equipment, medicines & more importantly vaccine.

The demand for medical physicists starts from here and as per the global scenario, within the next few years an estimated two crore job openings is expected, especially in the present era of COVID-19 healthcare and cancer treatment, particularly in coming technology of proton therapy.

Importance of Medical Physics & Instrumentation

Medical Physics is a unique combination of Physics and Medicine; on more specific language, this is the application of Physics in Medicine and this subject can be considered as a lifeline to the human population when it comes to the diagnosis and treatment of several diseases. It’s important to understand that a Bio-Medical Scientist/Physicist has a very different role to a physician, but still one could be able to make a significant difference to the patients’ lives and that would be a big motivator for the person in this field. However, the Medical physicist/ Biomedical instrumentation job itself doesn’t involve as much day-to-day contact with patients, they aren’t laboratory-bound people. However, in hospital or research center, bio-medical physicists are at the forefront of patient care, and helping to save lives by ensuring the maintenance of high-tech sophisticated equipment used for the diagnosis & treatment of patients; actively contributing to the R&D of cutting-edge medical equipment development, innovation in treatment and medical procedures, that is incredibly rewarding and challenging as well.

Skills Required for the Profession in Medical Physicist & Bio-Instrumentalist job

If someone has passion and fascination to work with some of the world’s most advanced & sophisticated machinery, who are interested to serve the mankind through their innovation, this is where one can really put the concept of Physics expertise to the test. The subject is multi-disciplinary in true sense, depending on the area of expertise, one can design specialized technology in radio-therapy for cancer treatment, may work with optical & laser technology to make surgery non-invasive as much as possible, may explore possibilities for the betterment of imaging modalities to detect disease at early stage, can do work in the field of prosthetics, implants and AI enabled Bio-telemetry, or even in developing image-guided surgery to treat disease and diagnose illnesses in patients.

Simply the technical know-how will not be enough when it comes to a career in bio-medical physics & instrumentation. Persons who are supposed to be in this field, have to work closely with healthcare professionals including doctors, radiologists on a daily basis, thus interpersonal and communication skills are vital and being able to demonstrate good leadership abilities. In nutshell following are the skills one need to have:

a strong interest in the integration of medicine and applied physics (i.e. engineering)
excellent communication skills in order to liaise with a variety of people
spatial awareness, 3D conceptual ability and knowledge in computer handling (particularly for design engineers)
the capacity to combine a high degree of technical knowledge with creativity
the skill to design new products, efficient and practical, also cost effective and aesthetically attracting.
Knowledge of market to estimate a product’s marketability
Good problem-solving skills and the ability to work under pressure.

Pre-Requisite Qualification

The prospective students who have got an undergraduate degree / are in the process of getting one, in the fields of physics, applied science, chemistry, life-science, pharmacy, engineering, or applied mathematics, are the ideal for enrolling in this medical physics & instrumentation post-graduate degree program. The program is conducted in collaboration with hospital / ISO certified diagnostic centres for the medical equipment / machinery training. To get excellence in this profession they must know a fair amount of physics, chemistry, biology, technology, medicine and engineering.

Course Contents:

Apart from the basic knowledge of Anotomy, Physiology, Physical and Chemical sciences, the postgraduate program in Medical Physics & Instrumentation covers the following important core topics:

Radiotherapy Equipment (treatment and imaging) and Quality Assurance
Dosimetry
Radiation Safety Measures
Clinical and OT instruments
Medical imaging
Artificial Intelligence and Data Science
IoHT and Bio-telemetry
Bio-Medical sensors, Laser and MEMS/ NEMS
Spectroscopy and imaging
Bio-informatics
Tissue Engineering

And many more…

Job-Scenario

As per the recent study, presently in developed counties 15-20 numbers of Medical Physicists are available and the number falls to 1-5 per million, in developing countries – this indicates the void of such specialised manpower in world scenario. Now-a-days Government has taken initiative to appoint at least one Medical Physicist in each hospitals/ healthcare sectors for the smooth running of multispecialty hospitals, high-tech equipment. Job opening is also there in teaching/research/health administration. A job in Medical Physics & Instrumentation means applying Physics & Engineering principles and techniques to the medical field. A successful career uses the skills of engineering to improve healthcare diagnosis and treatment. The field can be thought of as chemical, electrical, optics and optical, and/or mechanical engineering depending on the application. There are many jobs in Radiation Safety Officer, Bio-instrument engineering improving and using medical devices, which are healthcare products. There are some career opportunities with drug companies as well. In nutshell following are the job market:

Hospital , Laboratories and Healthcare units
Medical equipment manufacturing Unit / Industry
University and National Research departments / Centres
Other ( Public and Private) Research Units
Rehabilitation or health charities.
Heath –Administration

Job-Responsibilities

The responsibilities associated with the job vary depending on the employer and the seniority of the post one hold:

To use mathematical design tool and software to design, develop and test new materials, devices and equipment. This includes programming electronics, building and evaluating prototypes, troubleshooting problems, and rethinking the design until it works correctly.
To liaising with manufacturer and technical people to ensure the feasibility of a device / product in view of design and economic viability.
To pursue research to solve clinical problems using different techniques to collate the necessary information.
To work closely with doctors, healthcare people and therapists as well as with end-users (patients and patient parties)
To discuss and solve problems with manufacturing, quality, purchasing and marketing departments
To arrange for the clinical trials of medical products
To approach marketing and other industry companies for product sell.
To write reports and attending conferences and seminars to present latest development and latest designs to a range of technical and non-technical audiences
To meet with health service people and managers to exchange findings
To deal with technical queries from hospitals and doctors and to provide advice on new equipment
To test and maintain clinical equipment
To provide training to technical & clinical staffs
To ensure bio and radiation safety-related incidents
To keep up to date with new developments in the field, nationally and internationally.

Where to Study

Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has a regulatory body for accreditation of Medical Physics / Radiation Physics courses in India. Selected Universities are offering this course in Master’s degree level now. Though in the eastern zone of India, the program is running in very few colleges/Universities. Only a few, including Adamas University, is presently conducting this multi-disciplinary program from 2018-’19 academic year and placement record is excellent. It offers a broad spectrum of career opportunities starting from radiation safety officer, clinical activities, quality assurance and research by including Machine learning / big data and AI within diagnostic radiology physics, radiation therapy physics, and nuclear medicine physics. Additionally the starting pay package is quite impressive. The associated faculty members of Adamas University are well qualified, mostly M.Tech. and PhD (Tech), for conducting this program. The state of the art laboratories, regular hands on training, industry internship program, special emphasis on Research & Development, have made this program attractive and job oriented for interested students. In addition to Adamas University program, CMC-Vellore, Manipal University, Punjab University, D Y Patil University and IIT Kharagpur are conducting two year postgraduate program in Medical Physics. In spite of offering the same M.Sc. program in Medical Physics, Adamas University program is bit different in the sense; they are offering the M.Sc. (Tech) program in Medical Physics and Instrumentation, keeping emphasis on instrument parts, so that the students could get trained in the instrument design, application and supervision.

Optical Fibre & LASER Technology Edification: Diverse Career Prospects

Optical fiber refers to the medium or waveguide and the technology linked with the transmission of information as light pulses along a glass or plastic element or fiber. Today more than 90 percent of the world’s long-distance traffic is passed over optical fiber cables as it provides high-performance data networking. Fiber optics technology are also commonly used in telecommunication services, like internet, television and telephones. Verizon and Google have explored fiber optics in their Verizon FIOS and Google Fiber services which is providing gigabit internet speeds to users. Another relatively unexplored area is optical sensing with optical fiber, with myriad opportunities spanning many fields including environmental detection, biomedical sensing, and structural monitoring.

Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation or LASER invented as an extension of the maser, or “Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.” Name indicates, the maser is an amplifier that was originally used for amplifying weak radio signals from space. Laser devices or technology use light to store, transfer, or print images and text. Contemporary world is enriched with various application of LASER in wide range like surgery and weaponry etc. The coherent radiation of the laser gives it special strength.

Photonics: A sub-discipline of Physics introduce the science of creating, sensing and monitoring photons or light particles

Photonics includes light emission, transmission, deflection, amplification and detection by optical components and instruments. Most significantly, whenever career opportunity on Photonics is point of interest, the other sub-component such as lasers and other light sources, fiber optics, electro-optical instrumentation, related hardware and electronics and sophisticated systems is very important. In brief, optical fiber technology and LASER education is sort of diverging your job opportunity in India, Europe and USA.

Institutions who offer knowledge!!

In India, the International School of Photonics (Cochin University of Science and Technology) offers M.Tech, MPhil and PhD programs in Photonics.
Many IITs, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology offer MTech degree in applied optic or Optical engineering, candidates pursuing this degree always follow up with Laser and Fiber optics special/elective paper.
Apart from this many other universities like Calcutta University, Adamas University etc. and engineering colleges across the country offer optoelectronics and photonics or Applied optics as interdisciplinary subjects.
The course structure of B.Sc. Physics, Adamas University always cover paper like Electromagnetic wave theory, Laser and Fiber Optics. Thus, a candidate having Bachelor’s degree with Physics and Mathematics can pursue M.Sc in Photonics or optoelectronics.
With M.Sc in Physics or Photonics, one can pursue MTech/ MPhil/PhD in the field.
All major universities of the world offer courses in Photonics and optoelectronics. The University of New South Wales, Institute of Physics (London) and University of Leeds are few renowned institutes abroad offering courses in Photonics and related field.

Interesting fact you wanted to know about photonics/Optical fiber technology and laser careers

Recently, the medical aesthetics industryhas prolonged by leaps and bounds as more people mandate aesthetic services to enhance their looks as well as youth. Medical aesthetics institutions across the country offer training programs for individuals looking to become a cosmetic laser technician.

Photonic or Laser job prospective industries include: Aerospace & Aviation division, Laboratory & University, Manufacturing equipment, Communications, Electronics/Semiconductor, Medical/Biotechnology, Military, Photonics, Chemical, Pharmaceuticals, Environment.

Picture Curtsey: Phtonics.com

Don’t be surprise! Surveys conducted during the past several years depicted that European workers in the photonics industry are generally satisfied with their jobs, enjoy prolonged vacations and earn a better-than-average living with their highly specialized, technical knowledge.

1. Recent techno-savvy India demands scientists, engineers and technicians with relevant qualification and experience of photonics. Making a career in Photonics is stable and rewarding. Students of Photonics and Optoelectronics are fascinated as sales or service engineers in high-tech equipment industries; High scope as researcher or professional officers in universities, government and industry-research laboratories. There is opportunity as optical communications network support engineers and managers; and also, in defence research and development organizations.
2. As broadband access expands to more communities and rural areas, the use and deployment of fiber optic networks continues to grow as people rely heavily on the availability of faster broadband speeds to stay connected and utilize the latest apps and services. As a result, there are demands of optical engineers/ optical fiber expert in different companies such as, Verizon, AT&T, Tata Communication, Comcast and Google Fibre etc. In India, Reliance Jio, Vodafone, Airtel, Sify Technologies, Siemens Limited, Himachal Futuristic Communications Limited, Cisco, Nokia etc.

Future industry will bring an enormous marketplace for the optical fiber & Laser accessory instruments. There will be increasing demand for more effective cleavers, low-loss splicers, multi-port couplers, intra-fiber devices, and mode-area transformers etc. Consequently, the associated companies will create job market. If economy of any country lagging behind, they should make strategy promptly on optical Fibre and Laser technology. Private sector, R & D sector should attentive more on this technology and application related to it. Thus, photonics technology could accelerate global technical progress delightfully.

Improvement of education system with the aid of fuzzy logic

Nowadays, the education system has become commercial. The educational institutes are now the source of income to the societies. In fact, it becomes one of the business hubs for many. Each and every year, lot of Engineering, Medical, Management institutions are established. In order to maintain it properly and to bag high amount of profits, the fee structure is quite high in these institutions, yet quality of education is not available in each institute. In the present scenario, cost is one aspect, globalization is another important aspect. Students are free to go anywhere in the country as well as in the world and do the job according to their own choice.

Why quality of education is needed?

It is quite challenging for the Indian students to compete international students. It is now necessary to deliver quality of education for the students to improve the current education system such that they can compete anyone and they will become globally recognized person.

What to do?

UGC has created some rules/parameters to ensure quality of education delivered to the learners. First of all, it is necessary to understand the quality of teachers and students of the country. Once students’ as well as the teachers’ qualities are known, it can be enhanced by improving the weaknesses.

What makes a good teacher?

Academicians are the Nation Builders. Their role is not only to improve the subject knowledge but also to make the students a very good human being. In a word, teachers are responsible for the overall development of their students. Recently, the teachers’ role has moved from one where they know everything to one where teachers must be continuously learning and reflective on their. The role of teachers in the education system would be the most influential aspect to improve students’ satisfaction, performance. A teacher can improve teaching skills, through pre-service teaching qualification, training, and career expertise.

Where is the problem?

Students have to study various subjects during the academic year. They have to successfully complete this task and also they have to develop skills involving the management of imprecision like heuristics for learning and data memory techniques, strategies for relating different information, reasoning by analogy to solve the problem based on similar or previously solved questions, etc. This is a challenging task as it involves implicit rather than explicit, approximate rather than crisp reasoning. Moreover, in every specific discipline, many arguments may have inaccurate and incomplete data which requires approximation and tuning. On the other hand, the characterizations of teachers’ performance at each state of the model of teaching process is not numeric rather it is linguistic (good, bad, etc). So, quantification of these linguistic term is necessary.

Can Fuzzy Logic improve the quality of Education?

The main aim of fuzzy logic is to introduce propositions which are not necessarily true or false, rather it is logic closer to reality, able to capture natural languages (good, bad, young, hot, etc), it breaks the dichotomic world. Similar to any logic, fuzzy logic deals with argumentation, but unlike other modalities which concerns crisp reasoning of mathematics, whereas fuzzy logic deals with approximate reasoning. The logic of teaching has formed a part of mainstream education for many years, wherein fuzzy logic is a much more recent inclusion to the education system. Fuzzy Logic has that much contribution in the education system which can change the common believeness that mathematics are far from reality. Following are strong evidence of this fact.

To evaluate academicians, a model based on fuzzy logic is proposed which is not only consider the parameters suggested by the statuary bodies like UGC but also taking into account the parameters from the students’ perspective, e.g. subject knowledge, creativity, satisfaction, discipline, etc (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e6f1/87ca85821ebc5b3a72c239b764bf2a5f56e9.pdf).
The quality of learning and teaching Mathematics is one of the challenging aspects to the educators. People believe that the formal mathematical teaching comes from the very exactness of the science of Mathematics as a result there is no possible space in Mathematics for any lack or abundance of information, or vagueness. However, a teacher’s teaching skill about the various Mathematics teaching methodology concepts is usually imperfect, characterized by a different degree of depth related to subject knowledge or way of delivery. This suggests that the application of fuzzy set theory in Mathematics teaching could be a very promising tool in order to represent such situations and get useful conclusions (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b329/5306cdc2ce19718e679f65e96b137d6c7123.pdf).
Soft computing represents the combination of emerging problem solving technologies like fuzzy logic, neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, etc. For evaluating teachers’ overall performance a soft computing model is introduced by using fuzzy logic (DOI: 10.4172/2165-7866.1000199).

Source of figure: DOI: 10.4172/2165-7866.1000199

Conclusion:

Every institute should make such a unique platform/model to provide facility of interaction between students and course instructors. This platform can measure the degree of students’ engagement with the delivered study materials and teaching-learning activity. Teachers’ overall performance can be evaluated by course content, presentation, classroom management, students’ feedback, involvement in the research work, etc. This information is highly valuable for improvement of the current status of the system. It is a truly challenging task due to the high levels of uncertainties related to this context. Fuzzy logic based model can handle these uncertainties more robustly.