Page 9 - 8th Convocation

CHAROTAR UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

CHARUSAT

8 CONVOCATION
th

Saturday - January 12, 2019

SPEECH DELIVERED BY DR R. CHIDAMBARAM, CHIEF GUEST

Honourable President of the University, Shri. Surendra Patel, Honorable Provost Dr Pankaj Joshi, Dr Devang
Joshi, Shri. Naginbhai Patel, Dr M. C Patel, distinguished members of the faculty, the board of management and
other academic bodies of Charotar University of Science and Technology, my young friends who are graduating
today, distinguished invitees, ladies and gentlemen.

I am very grateful to your Provost for the invitation to be with you on this important occasion. I am also
very happy to hear from Dr Pankaj Joshi just now that the university has been awarded ‘A’ grade by National
Assessment and Accreditation Council. The first private university in the state to get this grade in the very first
cycle. Also, the rank among the top three private universities of Gujarat by NIRF. I understand also that Charusat
has been ranked as number one university for the ICT Initiative in Education Sector at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit
of 2018. Even though you are a young university relatively speaking, you are growing rapidly. I am delighted
to know your ambition to become a World Class University in the long term and achieving the status of a top
university in India in the shorter term.

A large number of disciplines are here and that is good because most of the frontier area of science
and technology has now become multi-disciplinary and often need inputs from social sciences particularly in
the diffusion of innovations - rural innovations for instance. I am happy to see that the faculties here range from
technology & engineering to management and medical sciences which gives the research student an opportunity
to take up challenging multi-disciplinary projects.

Pharmacy, for instance, one of the important jobs today is to prevent counterfeit drugs and substandard
drugs and this requires marking. That marking given by the original manufacturer which requires electronics
and communication. An important part of management is technology management. Sooner or later, I am sure
you will have to learn about technology management. Medical sciences, a long time we had Biophysics using
physical techniques to study Biological systems. Now you have biological physics. Biological physics is studying
biological systems as physical systems, it’s very interesting. Many people who are working in soft condensed
matter are drifting towards Biological physics. Then you have medical physics. applied sciences, you have
accelerator physics, technical physics - the border between engineering and physics, the border is getting a
little fussy. Computer Science and application - ICT is one of the fields which is more or less omnipresent.
Supercomputers and then you go to supercomputing More’s law is hitting a roadblock, when you come down
below 20 nanometers, then you have to go to quantum computing and quantum computing requires a lot of
physics and of course can give you unlimited power it is related to quantum communication, quantum cryptology
and so on. E-connectivity of course all over the place, electronic connectivity and you need secure communication,
cyber-security. Cybercriminals are getting smarter day by day, particularly there are cleverer than honest citizen
using the social media, artificial intelligence, machine learning, internet of things, sensor technology, connecting
sensors and so on. Even in the nuclear reactors we use, expert systems based on artificial intelligence so that
the reactor should not shut down on the false alarm for instance. Essentially the thing is a computer – computer
companion. So, as I said this is very glad that so many disciplines are one place and you are going to add some
more in the future.

India wants dreams, your dreams, all our dreams particularly young people’s dreams. It is an India which
is economically developed, scientifically advanced and militarily strong. I always said that national development
and national security are two sides of the same coin. Development without security is vulnerable; security without
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