Silicon Valley CEO's high praise for IIT Madras

 Vivek Wadhwa, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has high praise for IIT Madras in this article:

When I visited IIT Madras earlier this year, I was blown away by the talent, world-class facilities, and their ability to connect with top scientists across India. I was so impressed that I decided to outsource the development of breakthrough technologies for my company, Vionix Biosciences, to them. Frankly, I told my friends and VCs in Silicon Valley where I live, that IIT Madras puts MIT, Duke, Stanford - and the Valley itself - to shame in terms of intellectual capacity, scale, ambition and  readiness to collaborate.

I've been more than amazed by the progress IIT Madras has already made in building technologies that could never be built in the West. The last company that tried to develop what we're doing was Theranos, which burned through $1.4 bn on medical diagnostics that are nowhere near the advanced solutions IIT has already created - at a tiny fraction of the cost.

Wadhwa goes on to make suggestions about the sort of research that Indian educational institutions must focus on:

India must avoid the pitfalls of the US research system, which, despite vast investments in basic research, is often disconnected from real-world applications. The US spends over $130 bn annually on academic research. Yet, much of it remains locked in the 'Valley of Death', where promising research never transitions into marketable solutions. As former dean of engineering at Duke University, Tom Katsouleas had told me, based on his work with the US National Academy of Engineering, 'Only about 1% of university patents are ever commercialised.'

I do not know how IIT Madras evaluates faculty. Do commercial applications carry as much weight in tenure and promotion decisions as publications in journals? If they do, then IIT Madras will find it difficult to improve its ranking in international ratings of institutions of higher education.

But then if research publications alone matter, institutions such as IIT Madras may lose out on applications. Wherein lies the balance between pure research and impact on practice? The answer has implications not just for IITs but also the IIMs and other places. 

Should the IIMs be trying to influence  practice through executive training, consulting and participation in policy-making by using the available research? Or should they try to catch up on research with the top institutions of the world, an objective that will remain elusive in the foreseeable future?