Although the age of digital transformation or digital economy has got a long tail of growth, these technologies have already matured and areas like deep science and technology hold a lot of promise for the future, said N Lakshmi Narayanan, Former Vice Chairman, Cognizant Technologies, Chennai.

“E-commerce or e-learning companies are no longer of great interest now although it is taking the next stage in the world of metaverse,” Narayanan said. He was addressing the 63rd Institute day of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras on Tuesday. 

Edison quadrant

Highlighting the importance of application-oriented research, former vice-chairman of Cognizant and chairman of ICT Academy, pointed out Pasteur’s Quadrant, a classification of scientific research projects that seek fundamental understanding of scientific problems and aims to bridge the gap between basic research and applied research to create maximum impact to the society.

Pure basic research is classified as Bohr’s quadrant (named after 20th century atomic physicist Niels Bohr) while pure applied research quadrant is named as Edison quadrant (named after inventor Thomas Edison). The use-inspired basic research with high applicability is described in Pasteur’s Quadrant.

“That’s the quadrant everyone is trying to gravitate towards and there are funds that are focussed on driving the research and application activities to the Pasteur’s Quadrant,” Narayanan, who is also a serial investor, said. 

He also emphasised the need for collaborative research between industry and academia which can result in phenomenal outcomes.

Earlier, V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “I am very happy to announce that the pandemic did not stop IIT Madras from its growth — be it the number of research, consultancy and Corporate Social Responsibility projects that were executed; the placements and internships, as well as the number of patents that have been filed.”

He said IIT Madras once again swept the top honours in National Institutional Rankings Framework (NIRF) of the Ministry of Education, Government of India, and was rated as number one institute in both ‘Overall’ category for three consecutive years and number one in ‘Engineering’ Category for six consecutive years from 2016 to 2021.

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April 26, 2022