The English Press Club had the opportunity to interact with the new Vice Chancellor of BITS Pilani—Dr V Ramgopal Rao, to understand his vision for the institute.

Dr Rao attributed his childhood unawareness of various opportunities for higher education to his upbringing in a remote town in Telangana and his Telugu-medium education. After graduating from a regional college with a degree in Electrical Engineering, he joined the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, for a postgraduate degree in Microelectronics. He marked this as the ‘milestone starting his journey with IIT Bombay’. Having pursued doctorate and post-doctorate programmes in Germany and the USA respectively, he returned to his alma mater—IIT Bombay—as a Professor. Some of his notable achievements there, culminating in his appointment as a Chair Professor, included starting an on-campus nanotechnology centre, as well as two ventures in deep technology. According to him, the next milestone in his trajectory came in 2016 when he was appointed as the Director of IIT Delhi. He added that while the end of his tenure there  in 2021 should have been when he reverted to IIT Bombay, he chose to remain at IIT Delhi instead, where he was a Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. 

When asked about his connection to BITS Pilani, Dr Rao explained that it came from Kumar Mangalam Birla—the Chairman of the Board of Governors of IIT Delhi during his tenure. He reminisced that three of the six years of his tenure as Director saw him working with Birla. He remarked that they both held a very similar vision for BITS Pilani, which played a significant role in his accepting the offer to become the Vice Chancellor of the institute. He mentioned that other factors that urged him to accept the offer included the accountability of the BITS system and the differences between the bureaucratic structures in a privately owned institution and a government institution. 

Dr Rao then proceeded to talk about some changes from his tenure at IIT Delhi to now. Dr Rao explained that he saw very little difference between the IIT system and the BITS system, one of which was the source of funding. Another difference was the strength of the research culture, which he acknowledged to be greater in the IITs. He commented that the scale of his role in BITS is vastly different as the BITS group includes five separate institutions. He also mentioned that he was still getting used to the different bureaucratic structures and the ‘zero attendance policy’. Dr Rao highlighted that a problem he intended to solve in his tenure was adapting classrooms to the latest teaching-learning pedagogies to facilitate holistic learning. Another immediate issue he aimed at tackling was the revision of the curriculum, last done in 2011. He explained that this was the need of the hour, given that industry requirements had seen a lot of change since then. He lauded the alumni network as an asset to the institution, of whom around 3000 were academicians themselves. He explained that he intended to interact with not only the Professors and the students but also these alumni to understand the different changes that could be brought about to the curriculum.

Another challenge Dr Rao said he intended to tackle was that of on-campus research culture. He explained that it takes around ten years for research to translate into impact, thus his intention to focus on generating more impact. He reflected that he would like to see on-campus education and research to be impactful, which in turn is measured by the number of citations and the quality of publications. He highlighted that this would require increased research funding, which was another issue he intended to address. He also aimed to hold more recruitment drives for top faculty to boost research culture. 

The third facet Dr Rao highlighted was that of innovation. He labelled innovation as ‘generating value for research’. He stressed that BITS was not filing enough patents at present, making it more necessary to protect the intellectual property of the institute. He stated that the institute should ideally be filing 100 patents per year. He also emphasised the importance of faculty-led deep technology startups at the forefront of innovation. 

Dr Rao finally touched upon the high fees paid by students and stated that the institute required a diversified financial model immediately. He reasoned that following the same would reduce the fees to be paid by each student. He explained that this model would include four main sources of revenue—tuition fees (20–25%), endowment funds and the interest on them (20–25%), research overheads (in turn used for equipment maintenance), and alternate sources like the Work-Integrated Learning Programme. 

Dr Rao concluded by optimistically stating, ‘BITS today is where IIT Delhi was when I joined it. I think I would have succeeded in my mission if I am able to grow BITS the way I grew IIT Delhi by the time I left.’