 Hello everyone, welcome to another Pilates India Expedition Sharing session. This session is going to be on women doing research. We have Prachi Singh with us, who is a PhD student at IASC Bangalore. And she'll be talking about her journey on person PhD and how it opens doors to many opportunities. Over to you Prachi. Thank you, Sukanya. Hi, everyone. I'm a PhD student in Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. I'm working in the area of speech processing. I try to apply algorithms of deep learning and machine learning in speakers, recombination, and audio segmentation. The popular voice devices like Siri, Alexa, and Google Home, they have some speech processing going on inside them. And I'm trying to improve the algorithm and to build on that. So with that, I would like to start the talk. I'm going to talk about a PhD, a door to many opportunities. So this topic I've chosen based on my experiences, because when I was working for an automobile company, I wanted to explore more and learn new things. So I decided to go for a PhD. But because of many stereotypes, people around me were not very supportive, including my parents. Because they were like, it will take a lot of time. And eventually, you'll become a professor. Instead, I can go and find another job, and so on. But I still chose this path because I wanted to experience student life again and explore new things. And I don't regret it. I want to inspire the youngsters who are watching me right now and other people to explore more and to also consider research and PhD as an option and for good reasons. I also want to highlight some of the key aspects which we have in the academia, like gender issues and all. So with that, let me begin with the quote by Nobel laureate Albert Sanz-Kerge. He said, research is to see what everybody else has seen and to think what nobody else has thought. So this is the outline of the talk. First, I will discuss various aspects of PhD, what it is about, and then I will discuss advantages of doing PhD in India, followed by some statistics related to gender gap. Then I want to uncover some facts and what myths we have regarding PhD. I also want to highlight some of the research and career opportunities during and after PhD. Then I would like to end the talk by highlighting some women scientists who are doing great work in India. So let's begin by asking the great question, that is, what is PhD actually about? So like if you consider here in the figure the big circle representing human knowledge, all of human knowledge. So when you start your primary school or high school, you gain some little knowledge. So that is represented by a small blue circle, then it grows to green circle. And when you do a bachelor's, it grows further. But it grows also, you gain some particular specialty. And when you do master's, it goes in that particular direction. And when you choose research, you have gone specific to that area of research. So it's like you are going to gain knowledge in that particular area that you touch the human knowledge. And when you finish your PhD, you are making a dent in that human knowledge, even by a fraction. But still it makes a difference. And it helps the science community and the world as a whole. So that's what I want to say. And apart from doing research, you also learn a lot of life lessons, which I have learned. So that I want to give example from my experience. Like when I joined PhD, I had no clue what area I will be working on. But then I had to read a lot to figure that out. So I had the freedom to choose whatever area I can. But still I have some time frame within which I should decide. And then I had flexibility to work as long as I want. So it is like freedom with responsibility. And once I decided, then I have to study more about that subject in depth. So I have to keep myself self-motivated because nobody will be guiding me all the time. There will be supervisor. But it is not like our bachelors or our school that the teacher will be always monitoring you. So you have to be self-motivated. And then you have to manage your time. And then many times you won't get what you desired or what you expected the results. So you have to have a lot of patience and you have to be optimistic. Then while writing paper, you have to be creative to express yourselves just that all other people understand it. See, I have learned and I have grown as a person during my three years of PhD. So here I want to highlight some of the expertise and skills which we learned while doing the PhD. So first is data analysis. So you have to collect a lot of data and analyze it. So it helps to build the ability to analyze and present complex data. Then there is testing and experimentation, which is basically helping to learn more problem-solving skills with a positive approach. Then there is publishing in reports and presentation in conferences, which is like helping us to present complex project in a comprehensive and precise way and gain good communication skills. Then we have to organize research seminars, which builds our confidence and gives us the ability to lead from the front. And the last important things are completion of PhD on time. Although it is flexible, but if you can finish it within time, then it shows that you have the ability to handle complete, tough projects in the given time period. And then you have to write a hundred plus of pages, this is that shows that you're good at analyzing, planning and collecting information in a productive way. So with this, I also, in the next section, I want to highlight, like what are the advantages of PhD in India? Like many people sometimes to think or many times think that going abroad and doing PhD will be more better. But as a personal experience, I want to show what are the benefits you will get if you do it in India. The first advantage is that you get scholarships whenever you join for PhD in a government institution. It provides monthly staff and to all the PhD students for a duration of five years. And it is sufficient to fulfill your basic needs. And also you can save on that because you will be living in a hostel and you will be provided with mass facility. So it will be a very cheap option compared to living outside. And the students can also apply for other industry or government fellowship based on the research proposal. Like the MAJRD is there, then PMRF has recently started for to encourage people to go for PhD. So it encourages people who are from IITs and NITs and who pass the entrance examination with certain cutoff to directly apply for this fellowship. And then they will be getting some 70,000 per month as a stipend, which is very good if you compared with the industry. And there are other for science streams. There are other UGC and then CSIR and then industry of Google fellowship and IBM. And there are many other. So next is the travel grant. So you receive travel grant from Institute for traveling and accommodation to attend conferences. So you get to explore new places across the globe and meet experts from various fields. So on the right side, I have shown the picture of a conference which I have attended last year. It was in Austria and it was a very great experience for me because this was my first international conference. So it helped me to stay updated. I've also put the recent trends in industry and meet people for internship and job prospects. And one more important thing is the campus life. So it's like campus is spread around more than 100 acres of land. It is all full of greenery and fresh air and without any noise. So it's very searing to spend your time there. And we get all the facilities like playground, badminton, code, swimming pool, gym, et cetera to enjoy extracurricular activities. We can be part of various clubs like Tama Club, Dance Club. And in the first year, you get to interact with people from all around the world. So there are lots of benefits. But still, there are issues like there are not as many post-graduates as undergraduates. And also there is a ratio difference between men and women. So here I want to highlight some of the statistics. So this is representing the gender gap. So the blue color represent the men percentage across scientific career. And women is represented by orange color. This I have taken from Women in Science Forum of UNESCO. And it is showing that initially, although the ratio is equal when we are in high school or bachelor level, but as we grow in the scientific career, the gap is widening. With in top academic positions, there are only 11% women compared to 89% men. And there are only 3% female who won the Nobel Prize. So yeah, there is a gap. And even in this 2020, where we have all the facility, internet and all, we should be doing better, I feel. And if we see this in academics, so the women faculty ratio, here the plot is the access shows the women faculty percentage and the Y axis across various discipline in Indian scientific institutions. So we can see it is very less, like it is less than 30%. And for engineering, it's the most poor. This is taken from a website biaswatchinger.com which is managed by a professor from IIC. Dr. Vaishnavi. Here also, it's showing the percentage gap, like the Y axis is the women percentage and the X axis is the various Indian institution. So it is less than 50%. And mostly it is less than 20%. So that is a very, not a good thing. Like we should be having more women in all this field. So according to the February 2020 report by United Nation, India actually tops the world in producing female graduates in science, technology, engineering and maths, which is called STEM, but ranks 19 in employing them. So there are as many as 40% of Indians who graduate in STEM are women. Despite this, women cost you nearly 14% of the total 280,000 scientists, engineer and technologist in India. And two of the many reasons which was published in social psychology of education article in Springer this year are the stereotypes about science in the family, like parents and other family member think that based on the gender which is the better for women and for men. And then there is lack of information about careers in science. So from my part, since I have got this opportunity, I want to give highlight some of the aspects so that people get some more information and they can pursue career in science. There are some myths which people have which I also had. And based on the experiences, I want to highlight the facts so that you can take the right decision. So first is the PhD involves lots of studying. So everybody thinks and they'll get scared that okay, we have done enough studying, now we want to work and all. But I will say yes, it will involve studying, but you select your own subject, ideas, theories, which you are curious about and want to know in depth. So it is more, you will be enjoying while doing it rather than taking it as a hard work. So here I have just highlighted one comic. It is from a very famous phdcomics.com website. They actually make fun of PhD students. So I just wanted to put it for fun, like the guy is putting webcam and the other guy is getting scared, like okay, people will know how hard we work. Means it is like a sarcasm. So yeah, okay. Moving on. So other myth is that we can go only for teaching profession, but that is also not true because there are research position in Google, Microsoft and other big companies and organization like is so the audio. And then you have other opportunities. So it's not like you have to only teach. Here it's like people think it will take a lot of time and you have to do mtech, then only you can do PhD. But direct PhD is also the option. In fact, I am direct PhD student directly after bachelor I worked and then I joined as a PhD student. And I also was not sure of this option when I applied, I applied for mtech and then they gave me the option whether you want to go for PhD directly. And I was more than happy because eventually I was thinking to do it. And then I saved my two years and could do it. And yeah, then while working on PhD it's on your area and efforts that decide the duration. And within this range maybe three to six years you will explore more. You will meet new people across the globe and you will know what your passion actually is. So while you come out of the PhD you will be more confident to choose your profession and yeah, you have the liberty. Yeah, for girls it is another concern. Like for married women it will be difficult. So during PhD I can't get married and then it will get late. Like it's basically the concern of parents. But here actually there are many married women in my campus and they are doing very well with the family support and advisor support. And you have the flexibility to work according to your time rather than in companies you have to work fixed hours you have to finish or something over the deadlines. But here you have the flexibility. Yeah, so with this I want to show some research and career opportunities which are there during PhD after PhDs. So there are many potential areas which are all interconnected. So there is neuroscience where you explore how human cognitive abilities work and then you have to take lot of data or to analyze that. And then that data can be used in data science to do some other experiments. And this can be used to build machines. So then comes the artificial intelligence. Then people build robots by using the whatever data they have and train their models. So there is the mechatronics and there are other disciplines, aerospace, applied physics, neuroscience. And they're all interconnected. So it's not like you are working then you have to be in that field only. But you have to know a little bit of everything actually. It's not like you can do only one thing. The world is all connected. These are the some of the career opportunities. So in academia and industry, both places you have the opportunity. In academia you can go for a professor in various government institutions or postdoctoral fellow, which is like after PhD, if you want to work on your own for a few years in a lab. Yeah, then you can go for becoming a scientist in the organization like Ishrode, Yardu, NASA, CSIR and so on. And then other than that, you can go for science writing or you can become an analyst or scientific advisor. In industry you have options to join big companies and become a researcher. Like every big company have a research lab. They're publishing lots of paper and data scientist research program. And can you start even your own company? Like there are many PhDs who go for that. So there are many, many opportunities. Now to encourage the women who are watching me, I want to highlight some of the great works done by the women scientists in India. So the list is actually very long, but I have cut short to highlight some of them. So first is Sunita Sarawagi. She's a professor in computer science and she's working in the area of data mining and machine learning. She has won the Infosys prize of $100,000 in computer science and engineering and she's working on how to figure out how to extract information from the unstructured data and use it in a better way. Other professor, famous professor is Vibhita Vardhir. She is from Tartan Street of Fundamental Research and working in the area of neuroscience and she's working on how to decode human experiences and stress affect the circuitry of the brain so that we can figure out some of the psychic disorders which people develop. And she has also won many awards. Then there's a young scientist, Chandni. She is a system professor from instrumentation applied physics, ISC Langler. Her area of research is in interface of material science and experimental condensed metaphysics. She's trying to explore properties of graphene which is found in pencil and how it has potential application in physics. Then to highlight some of the scientists from the government organization, there is Ritu Karidhal. She is very famous for the mass orbiter mission and Chandrayaan too. She is part of ISRO. She has won ISRO Young Scientist Award. And then there is one entrepreneur also, Geetha Manjunath. She is the founder, CEO and CTO of Neera Mai who develops novel software to detect breast cancer. Then last but not the least, there is Dr. Rohini Godbele. She's a physicist in center for high energy physics, ISC Bangalore. And she is working in the area of particle physics. And she has won many national and international awards and one of them is Padma Shree which she recently won for her efforts in science and engineering into 2019. She has more than 150 papers and she is actively working to inspire young women to pursue science as a career. So yeah, there are many, many women out there and you can become one of them. So with this, I would like to thank Pycon India for giving this platform to express my views. I want to thank Sukanya for giving the opportunity. Thank you. It was a very nice and informative session. We have one question so far. To all those who are seeing this, please, you can keep your presentation on if you feel like. I can take the questions from the chat and we'll get back to you, okay? So to all those who are listening, if you have any questions, please put it in the chat. So one question from Rangaraj. What we have are all research papers after published will become a practical application or is there a mandate that the PhD research should become practical? No, it's not like that. It need not be go to industry. Actually, it takes a lot of time to, like whatever research we are doing to get to the industry because there is always a gap. And what we work, can be theoretical also, which will have application which somebody else will work on. So it need not be that it has to become a product. Hope that answers your question, Rangaraj. Yeah, any further questions? Okay, in which area are you pursuing your PhD from Neeraj Kumar Singhbhai? I'm working in the area of speech processing. Basically, I work in the conversational speech where many talkers are there and my task currently is to segment those speakers and to annotate the meetings because it has a lot of applications because it is used in many devices also. So you need to have separate segments for each speaker to understand what each speaker is saying. That's great. Do you want to, Prasid, do you want to share your social media handle so that people can reach out to you if they have questions? What would be the best way to reach out to you if they have questions? Maybe LinkedIn will be the best, should I share? Should I share? You can stop a presentation and you can just keep your video on for the moment. Okay, okay. Just a second. Yeah. There's another question from Sachin Goyal who would like to know, how is the work pressure strict deadlines? So in job, usually we have strict deadlines which helps to keep the learning pace high. So is it the same for PhD? Compared to job, I would say the pressure will be less. So means also it depends on your supervisor. Like some supervisor are very strict about the deadlines and some are lenient. So it is depending on that. But more or less it is not that much as in job. Any further questions? Okay, so a follow-up question to that is like, so the learning curve is steeper then. Ideally it should be yes, right? How about learning curve steeper then? How about the deadlines? What if you don't need deadlines? Actually deadlines is all relative because it depends on the your area. And you have to, there is minimum publications required if you want to finish your PhD. So if your area is like very fast growing then you have to publish fast. And if it is like more experimental work, like in biology generally takes a lot of time. So then it will need more time to experiment than the publication even if it is less then also it is fine. So it is all relative. Okay, there's a question from Julene who is asking, is it okay to apply randomly for any PhD? Actually no, I would say because PhD is very specific and if you apply randomly then you might not enjoy it and you might not be interested. So you should first know, actually you need not go in depth of what you actually want to do but a broad idea should be there. Okay, does it answer your question Julene? Yes, so yeah. So there's another question. Are you familiar with explainable AI Prachi? There's another question on explainable AI. So Neeraj Kumar is asking, what is the future of research in explainable AI? Is this topic related to your research also? Means I'm not directly working but yeah it is gaining a lot of interest and definitely it is a very potential topic because people are now interested in learning in knowing like how we can explain the models because earlier it was like people used to train the model but they used to think that okay how it happened, like how it worked but now it is like people want to know how we can explain like what is happening inside it. So it is a very good topic. There's another question. Do we have any platform to check whether the research is a duplicate one or not? Actually, please raise your hand probably. Okay, yeah there are websites where we can check plagiarism but actually I don't have those links right now but there are websites and then there is Google Scholar where you can keep yourself updated about recent publication. It mostly many publication will be there who are already published, which are already published. Right, okay. There's another question. I think they're already over time but yeah this would be okay. Two more questions and we'll end because we have already crossed the time. So from Julian we have what if two groups work on the same thing and one group publishes when the other is halfway. What to do then? Like two research groups working on same paper one already reached the end line other is still on their way. So how to deal with that situation or what to do then? So yeah, there is a lot of competition in PSG also like if somebody is already published and you are on your way then you have to deviate from some what different thing you should then focus on. Like there are cases like in ISC also like there was already one working on some new idea and then by the time he finished then already somebody published it. Then he had to little bit add another thing to showcase okay this is little different one from what is done. So there is always a little bit of competition. Great, yeah. Last question, I think it's mostly covered this but still I'll go ahead with the question. Where does the PhD needs to lead your career to? Is it a path to do a better job or is it a career choice in itself? Actually after PSG you can go for any career. So PSG is not actually a career choice in itself because after PSG also people go in management like for starting their own company they can do another management course. So it's not in on itself a career but it is heading towards some psych. If you have some idea where you want to go then a PhD is good. Great, great. So thank you Prachi. People had a lot of questions. So if anyone has any further questions we have two Zulip streams. Prachi could be available. Yeah, so you can ask your questions and so here I am posting the Zulip streams in the chat. You can go there, hang along and ask your Prachi any further questions if you have. I am Prachi. Yes, yes, sure. Thank you, thank you everyone for attending.