Dr Tapomoy Guha Sarkar, Associate Professor from the Department of Physics and esteemed researcher at BITS Pilani, has been a revered member of the teaching faculty for the past ten years. After completing his Bachelor of Science from Presidency College, Kolkata, Prof. Tapomoy secured his masters from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur in 2001, followed by his PhD from IIT Kharagpur in 2011. Soon after, Prof. Tapomoy joined BITS Pilani in 2012 as an Assistant Professor following a year of post-doctoral research.

Prof. Tapomoy was initially sceptical about living in Pilani. ‘When I first joined I thought I would not survive since I have lived in big cities all my life, and Pilani is sort of an oasis, with not much outside’, he said. Due to the sudden shift in geography and social structure, he found it difficult to adjust to this new way of living. However, Pilani grew on him in ways he did not anticipate. Even though he found the lives of the students and faculty members very disparate, he could still feel the vibrance and glow of the student life on campus. Having been introduced to the Pilani staples—a calming bicycle ride on a cloudy day, or reading a book on a chilly winter morning at Skylawns—he now enjoys the tranquil life in Pilani more than the hustle and bustle of metropolitan cities. 

He noted that while his academic experience in BITS was not very different from that of IITs, he was pleasantly surprised by certain features in the BITS curriculum, namely the dual degree program and the vast freedom awarded to students and faculty alike. He mentioned that the professors had an immense amount of academic freedom and were not restricted by a constrained syllabus and methodology, albeit within the specified course handout. Similarly, the students had an abundance of courses to choose from—be it humanities or sciences—and form their own timetables. This liberal academic environment interested him from the very first day and made college life much more enjoyable according to him. 

However, over his tenure of ten years, Prof. Tapomoy has seen a lot of changes in the BITS ecosystem. Traditionally regarded as a teaching university, he has witnessed BITS advance into more cutting-edge research, along with a lot of support and incentivisation of research for faculty members, students and PhD scholars. He noted that having students with strong motivation for research has made the classroom experience very engaging, which has helped the professors to push their teaching further. There were also notable setbacks in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused the faculty to rethink and remodel their modes of teaching. According to him, however, those hardships exposed them to new ways of teaching through dependency on technology and changed the horizons of teaching forever. 

‘I believe that knowledge flows like a tradition, which we transmit to the next generation,’ Prof. Tapomoy explained when asked about his teaching ideology. He recalled how he had gone from learning from his teachers and PhD supervisor, to now learning from the internet. ‘In fact, when I teach, I try to remember the practices of my good teachers, from whom I have learnt so much. So whatever little I do in class and in research, is in some sense, a continuation of the tradition and then your generation would carry on that tradition forward’ he explained. He was extremely grateful to his teachers who played an important role in shaping his interest in physics, and his PhD supervisor taught him to research independently.

A researcher in the field of theoretical cosmology—Prof. Tapomoy has published numerous papers in research journals over his illustrious career. Cosmology, a branch of astronomy, deals with the origin and evolution of the universe. ‘My first love in physics as a child was astronomy, it always fascinated me that with such little data about the universe, you could still make so much sense of how the laws of physics unfold themselves in the bigger picture,’ he said. This being a childhood dream of his, Prof. Tapomoy wished to study and make contributions to the field. Consequently, he went on to pursue physics as his major in college and cosmology came to him naturally when he took up research. 

For students wishing to pursue research in physics, he felt that it was imperative to know what physics is fundamentally about. According to him, school education is heavily focused on acing competitive examinations rather than understanding what the subject essentially is. ‘I want the students who opt for physics to have a reasonably broad picture of what the discipline is about. What is the state of affairs in the world of research and what is its frontier?’ he elaborated. Physics is a highly demanding subject and quite pyramidal in its pedagogy according to him, and it is thus important to have a very strong foundation. ‘You are trying to understand and schematise the workings of nature in a mathematical language right? So since the end goal is quite profound there cannot be any lacunas in the base itself.’ he added.

When asked about his go-to advice to students, Prof. Tapomoy laughed initially. ‘I don’t know if the younger generation likes to get lectures from adults. When we were young, we would always resist this idea of people giving us sermons,’ he added. He advised that students should recognise that what they learn while getting an education and what they do as a profession may not even be the same. He felt that the idea of college is to find out one’s place in life, and find out what one really wants to do. Inquisitiveness is key, and he wanted students to keep questioning customs, practices, and traditions. The key to research was asking questions and trying to find answers in a systematic manner, and life was no different. ‘It’s important to challenge your societal norms and find one’s true self. It’s probably far better to be a great chef rather than a mediocre engineer, right? So absorb all the knowledge you can and try to find a place for yourself in the world, that’s college life coming to fruition’ he concluded.