Oral-History:Vasudev K. Aatre
About Vasudev K. Aatre
IEEE Life Fellow, Vasudev Kalkunte Aatre, was born in Bangalore, India in 1939. He was elevated to IEEE Fellow in 2002 “for leadership in research and development for strategic electronics and defense systems.” His oral history is recorded to help mark the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s seventy-fifth anniversary. He is also a member of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology.
Aatre received three degrees in electrical engineering, including a BE degree from the University of Mysore in 1961; an ME degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1963; and a Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo, Canada in 1967. Specializing in the field of signal processing, he served on the Faculty of Engineering Technical University of Nova Scotia, Halifax Canada as professor of electrical engineering from 1968 to 1980. In 1977, he was visiting professor in the department of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science. He published more than sixty articles and one undergraduate electrical engineering textbook.
In 1980, he returned to India, shifting to a career in technology management and joining the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) at the Naval Physical & Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL) in Cochin, India. Subsequent posts at DRDO included director (1984), chief controller of research and development, and director general (2000) and science advisor to the defense minister. He retired from DRDO in October 2004.
Aatre has received many honors and awards, including the Padma Bhushan award (2000), the Padma Vibhushan award (2016), and the Lifetime Achievement Award for 2014 from the Karnataka Science and Technology Academy.
About the Interview
VASUDEV K. AATRE: An Interview Conducted by K. V. S. Hari, IEEE History Center, 7 January 2022
Interview #869 for the IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Copyright Statement
This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.
Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, IEEE History Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA or ieee-history@ieee.org. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Vasudev K. Aatre, an oral history conducted in 2022 by K. V. S. Hari, IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA.
Interview
INTERVIEWEE: Dr. Vasudev K. Aatre
INTERVIEWER: K. V. S. Hari
DATE: 7 January 2022
PLACE: IEEE India Office, Bengaluru
Early life and education
Hari:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to this special interview with Professor Vasudev K. Aatre (Vasudev Kalkunte Aatre)., who's an IEEE Life Fellow. This initiative to record the oral history of distinguished SPS and IEEE Fellows and IEEE Life Fellows is supported by the [IEEE] Signal Processing Society, in view of its 75th-anniversary celebrations in 2023. I'm K.V.S Hari, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science, Department of ECE, and currently vice president of membership of the [IEEE] Signal Processing Society Board of Governors. It's my privilege to conduct this oral history interview with Professor Vasudev K Aatre. Good afternoon. Welcome to this interview.
Aatre:
Thank you.
Hari:
It's my honor and privilege to talk to and invite you to share your experiences throughout your career.
Aatre:
Equally my pleasure.
Hari:
Let's start at the beginning. You can tell us about your early childhood, your family, and your inspiration during your early schooling?
Aatre:
I come from a very small village called Kalkunte, which is about forty kilometers from Bangalore. My paternal grandfather was the first graduate of that village. He went on to become headmaster of a high school. He made certain that his next generation got well educated. My father was [in] the first batch of electrical engineering students from the Government Engineering College, which now is called University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering. In those days, when you passed electrical engineering, the main thing was to get a job in the Power & Lighting Department of erstwhile Mysore State. He took the job and as such he used to be transferred from place to place frequently.
[In 1939], I was born in a very small village called Kanakapura. Then it used to be called Kahnkahnhalli. My education was always in very small schools, schools with two rooms, schools with very few teachers and combined classes, and so on. I don't think I studied in any city school until I came to Bangalore sometime in [the] mid-1950s. So, obviously, in [my] early education there were limitations.
Thinking back, I do not think any teacher really had [a] very strong influence on me, except those teachers who used to teach what today is called social sciences. We used to learn music, drama, and all these kinds of things. During those days, a lot of patriotic songs were taught. So, the influence school [had on me], especially from the point of view of science and technology, didn't exist.
The first influence I got from a teacher was when I came to Bangalore and studied in Malleswaram high school. Until that time, I was studying in Kannada Medium. When I came to Malleswaram high school, I had to study English medium, which was a problem initially, but I was reasonably good at mathematics also called arithmetic. The languages were always very easy for me as I used to speak Tamil, Kannada, English, and a little bit of Telugu. And because my grandfather was a professor and a teacher, we used to learn a lot of Sanskrit shlokas.
In Malleswram high school, there was one mathematics teacher called M.P. Narasimhachar who somewhat had taken a liking to me. Both of us lived in Malleswaram, and in the evening when class was over, we used to walk along. He used to tell me lots of stories of scientists and mathematicians. The one name which stuck with me was Euler. He talked to me about Euler's contribution, and talked about the Seven Bridges of Königsberg, and asked me to draw a map and see whether I can solve the problem. He used to tell nice stories about a lot of scientists - what Newton did, Dalton theory, and Mendel's work, and these are names [that] stuck with me. The first time I could say that I had some influence on science was from this teacher. Otherwise, I was doing well in class, but nothing to do with science or technology. I didn't know whether I would do good to study science or technology.
My early life was very quiet. A lot of reading. My mother was very highly organized, [and] though, she was not well schooled, she was very well organized, very smart, and intelligent. So, we learnt to be systematic and punctual, and we had to allotted time for everything. We had to do a certain amount of housework and a certain amount of reading. We also learnt music. Science and technology were really the last on my mind when I did my school final SSLC.
Hari:
Once you finish high school, you must have had options of various other subjects to pursue in your undergraduate program. Please tell us about how you became an engineer?
Aatre:
You see during that time, in the 1950s, education was supposed to be for finding a job, and virtually everybody thought of only two professions, the medical profession or the engineering profession. Yes, there was law, but we already had a lawyer in my house, my sister. I was born and brought up in the environment of power and electricity where we used to hear about transformers, transmission lines, etc., and I have seen big generators and all kinds of power equipment, so electrical engineering came naturally to me. Frankly, if you asked me why I took engineering, the answer [is] I don't know. After I finished my school final, my father said to study engineering, and I did. In engineering [the] obvious choice was electrical engineering, so naturally, I gravitated towards electrical engineering with no idea what I would do, except that I had seen power stations. I had seen the power transformers, current transformers, voltage transformers, etc. These were all subjects familiar to me, so I took up electrical engineering. But even then, science was far away in my thought. What triggered me about science was something different when I was studying in the Malleswaram high school, [the] Indian Institute of Science (IISc) was diagonally opposite to the school, so occasionally, when we had a teacher missing or class missing, we used to walk around the IISc campus, The campus was beautiful as it is today. In 1959, IISc celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, and they had some kind of an open house. A lot of my friends and I from engineering college went to the open house, and for the first time, I became aware of the broad canvas of this science or technology. I still remember climbing up two floors to go to the library which was in the main building. I had never seen so many books and titles on various science and engineering. That is when I decided there's something to science and technology, [the] Indian Institute of Science is a very specialized institution, [and] it would be great if I could study there.
When I graduated, I was wondering whether I would get an opportunity to study in such an institution. I did reasonably well on my final exam and got an opportunity in the Indian Institute of Science, and I joined. So, that is how I got into science and technology.
Hari:
During your undergraduate program, which topic or subject excited you or maybe because the system was good, generated interest because you liked mathematics? So, did any special topic trigger your excitement?
Aatre:
Frankly, the electrical engineering faculty at Government Engineering College was very ordinary. We all depended on textbooks or the previous years' notes and things like that. But then, there were two or three very impressive teachers. One was a mathematics teacher, Venkatachala Iyengar. He used to work in esoteric areas like the theory of knots and things like that. He used to talk about these in class while teaching regular maths, and he introduced us to graph theory. He used to talk about mathematics, mathematicians, and anything which came to his mind in science. I was so impressed by him that I took his course as [an] elective. The principal was B R Narayana Iyengar, a machine- design man and a mechanical engineer. He was very impressive. He had just come back from MIT and was [an] excellent teacher. Other than that, I don't think our teachers were good. I'd also heard that if you wanted to join [the] Indian Institute of Science, one must at least be in the top few, so the idea was to do that. We used to read a lot of things that were not taught in the class. Thinking back, we had no subject called electromagnetic theory. Even then, some of us used to read Maxwell's equations and see what we understand. In a sense, the idea of getting into such a thing was triggered more by group discussions among students and our seniors, rather than professors.
Hari:
Did you hear about the Fourier Transform in your undergraduate program?
Aatre:
No. We had not heard of Fourier Transform, but we have heard of Fourier series.
Hari:
Okay.
Aatre:
Fourier Transform was only introduced at a later stage. But the mathematics teacher used to tell us stories of many mathematicians, like my school mathematics teacher who used to tell stories of scientists. In the middle of class, he used to talk about Gauss and what he did. Now thinking back, I remember he suddenly said, “there was a man called Riemann and his geometry was quite different.” That kind of thing.
Indian Institute of Science, Ph.D.
Hari:
When you join the Indian Institute of Science you must have taken some courses, so was there any component of research in those courses which you took and what was the nature of those courses? Was it more a continuation of the undergraduate style of teaching or was there any inclination to inspire students to go to research?
Aatre:
I joined [the] Indian Institute of Science because I found that the education, I had received was inadequate to pursue S&T [science and technology]. In fact, I debated joining the aeronautics department rather than electrical department. I found out that aeronautics may be a little too difficult for me, as I had not studied several mechanical engineering courses. I joined the electrical department, but frankly, a little bit disappointed because the courses were very theoretical and I had already taken two elective courses, symmetrical components and advanced mathematics, which were the same courses being given here. Most of the courses used to not be oriented towards hardware and hardware realizations.
The only exposure [ I had] to somewhat practical application of power systems practice (I used to spend some time with one Professor K. Parthasarathy who became a very good friend of mine) [was] when I spent some time with analog network analyzer. There was one professor, [a] visiting professor, named Professor J.M. Ray. He used to teach power system protection, which was very practical. It really was on how you build relays. He was a very impressive teacher, [and] though his class was theoretical, he used to expose us to all the practical aspects and the work to be done. At one stage, I was thinking that after I finished my master's [degree] I would probably join further to do research at IISc. If I had joined, I would have worked in the field of power system protection. The other interesting course was power system stability, which Professor Rao used to teach. But what was interesting was many of the mechanical subjects, which were taught, like vibrations by Srinivasan, were more interesting. There was a B K Subbrao who used to teach power generation, especially steam power generation. The Indian Institute of Science had a power station, and all the power engineering students were supposed to work there, including night shifts. I found it a little bit familiar because I had spent enough time in the generating station at Sivasamudram and Jog power stations. So that was the only real practical course.
But what happened in Indian Institute of Science was something different because we used to meet students and professors from different fields like aeronautics, physics, biology, especially at the coffee shop and even at nights, we had exposure to a vast canvas of science and technology. In between, one of our classmates from Engineering College Sheshagiri, had joined as a research student in the ECE Department. He was a very good friend of mine and whenever I had time, I used to go to his room. He shared a room with Professor Sonde and Professor V. Ramachandran. The discussion there always used to be electronics. These talks were always oriented towards electronics. Professor Sonde, of course, was a natural born teacher. We used to discuss their research projects and [it] made me appreciate the field of electronics. Sometimes, I thought maybe I should have joined the ECE Department, if there was a provision for joining the ECE Department. If you had done engineering [at the] Bengaluru Engineering College, you could do a two-year master's [degree], but [in the] first year you [had to] take a number of undergraduate courses in electronics. I had already joined ME, so I said if I am going to continue my studies further, I'm going to orient towards electronics, but my electronic knowledge was comparatively miniscule.
One of the subjects which interested me was control theory taught by Professor G. Krishna. Though we didn't have a laboratory, the explanations he used to give us made me think that control systems may be a very interesting field to work. So, what Indian Institute of Science did to me during the two years was to expose me to a variety of technologies. Frankly, when coming out of Bengaluru Engineering College I didn't think there was anything other than generators, machines, motors and so on. In Indian Institute of Science for the first time I saw the spread of electronics. Of course, Signal Processing was not taught at that stage but still electronics was everywhere including instrumentation. I had friends who used to work in hydraulics and other fields where they built small sensors, which were electronics oriented. So, for the first time I appreciated the importance of electronics. I think if I had not joined Indian Institute of Science, probably I would've end up as a power system operator or trainee in Power and Electricity Board.
Hari:
Then came a new phase in your life when you decided to pursue your Ph.D. Tell us how that got triggered and who inspired you and what was your journey to go out of the country to pursue this?
Aatre:
In fact, if you ever asked some of my professors, they would have thought I was the last man to do Ph.D. I was more interested in looking at practical aspects of engineering. Sometime after M.E. I was wondering what I would do. I had appeared for an interview for research students at the Institute and I was selected, I was wondering about joining or not, but I thought I should first spend six months working elsewhere. So, I decided to work in the Electricity Board, and I was selected as a construction engineer, erection engineer in Sharavthi Valley receiving station at Peenya. So, for the first time, I didn't worry about symmetrical components and power system stability, but how to install a transformer, how do we install current transformers and voltage transformers, how to integrate them, how does the isolator work, and all such things. But when I was working there, though the job was very interesting, something about Indian methodology of working bothered me. The transformer was from Mitsubishi. A Japanese scientist used to come in the morning with a big cigar all dressed up. But as soon as he came there, he used to remove his coat and put on a rubber dress and get into the oil to work. I saw several other things like this. I also found that there was a fair amount of the lack of professionalism. The other thing that bothered me was corruption. Frankly, seeing these things, I thought India was not the place to work. So, if I got an opportunity, I'll go away. Now, looking back, I wanted to escape, and it turned out to be very good.
One summer holiday after the first year of my master’s, I met a professor from the University of Waterloo. Professor H.K. Kesavan was the head of the Department of Electrical Engineering there. Somebody introduced me to him, and I don't remember who, but during his talk, he said, “why don't you come to Waterloo, Canada which is a new school. If you decide to come, we will provide you financial assistance.” Financial assistance was at that stage a very important issue. I come from a middle-class family, and I don't think my father would be able to support my education. I applied to a few universities, and I had admission in couple of American universities including Northwestern. But this gentleman offered financial aid and I decided to take it and do my Ph.D. [at the University of Waterloo], so I went to Canada. At that stage, I can say I had no vision of what I would become, but I wanted to do a Ph.D. This time I wanted to orient a little more towards electronics rather than power systems. So, I went to Canada.
Hari:
Did you ever think that after pursuing a Ph.D., you would join academia, or would you join industry? What did you think about this before you decided to go for a Ph.D.?
Aatre:
No, I decided to go to Ph.D. At that stage, I knew I was going to change my field from power systems and transformers. The first year in Waterloo was a very difficult period because we had to learn new subjects like computers and computer programming, which we had not learnt. I had not even seen a computer and several other things. I had to learn a lot of other things like digital systems, EM theory, etc. And it so happened that my guide, who had done his Ph.D. in graph theory (Waterloo was a powerhouse in this field) guided me to take some courses in this field. So, the majority of the courses I took were in graph theory.
Then my project itself was theoretical and involved graphs and state models, which was a dominant issue at that stage; state vectors, state equations etc. -- and their relation electrical networks. The subject, the topic, given to me was whether we can convert the state vector model to an electric network through the graph theoretic principles and realize the network. At that stage, I didn't think that that subject had much to do with industries and applications, but it was good enough to obtain a Ph.D. degree.
My professor had many graduate students, and we used to meet very often, all coming from different cultures. As a graduate student, my job was to handle laboratories and tutorial classes. This is when I was first exposed to filters, and then active filters. In the laboratory I started building small analog, active filters to demonstrate to the undergraduate students and thus I slowly got into the field of filter design. Just before I graduated, I attended a conference where I presented my paper. This gentleman who had come from Halifax offered me a job. I said, let me try teaching for a few years because my grandfather was a teacher, so that may have somewhere lingered that it's good to be in a teaching profession. I also felt the best way to learn a subject is to teach the subject. When the students ask questions, which vary from class to class, answering makes one think differently. So, I decided to spend some time in the teaching profession and went to Halifax for teaching.
IEEE, textbook on filters
Hari:
When did you first hear about IEEE?
Aatre:
I became an IEEE member when I went to Waterloo in 1964, or 1965. I don't remember the year. The IEEE student chapter in Waterloo was very active. Waterloo had what's called a sandwich program, where the students used to come as freshmen, and after the first semester they split into two streams, one used to go to industry and the other used to come on the campus. Then they kept interchanging when they finished. By the time they finished their fourth year, they would have had four semesters in the industries. When I used to tutor these undergraduates - a lot of them had become friends in the IEEE student chapter- many of them used to bring ideas from the industry, and what they did in control systems, filtering, - of course, at that stage there was no computer software - and mostly some instrumentation and for the first time I looked at how a PID controller could be used and so on. These things wouldn't have happened if I had not become an IEEE member as I wouldn't have met all the other students. So, we used to meet up at the pub at the end of the day, have a beer and then talk about these things. So, in a sense, IEEE membership offered me entrance to this kind of a group. Otherwise, I would have stuck to my Ph.D. work only. So that's how I got into IEEE.
Hari:
Was there any exposure to signal processing during your Ph.D.? Did you have colleagues or students who were working at signal processing at that time or maybe IEEE?
Aatre:
No. I didn't have any exposure to signal processing really. The nearest thing I came to signal processing was this area filters, of course, which is a part of it, but mostly analog filters. When I went to Halifax to teach, I used to teach all the courses in networks, graph theory, linear system, and so on. I had the final year students build passive and active filters as a part of their undergraduate projects. Halifax has a very large defense research complex, and because it's the coastal area, this was mainly on underwater research. I used to interact with the research center and the defense researchers. For the first time I got exposure to sonars. We used to hold seminars and workshops in this general area. They were trying to build a spectrum analyzer and digital filters. I was planning to stay in Halifax for a long time, so I decided to work in summers in defense research. I thought I might as well work in digital signal processing and sonar. I attended two short courses. One in the Boston area (Arden house workshop) and the other one in the Washington area, both in digital signal processing. The people who taught were all experts: [Alan] Oppenheim, [Lawrence] Rabiner, Jackson, and Jim Kaiser. I think Oppenheim was about to publish his book. We had a preprint of the book.
When I came back to Halifax, I decided to teach that course. As I said, teaching is the best method of learning. Teaching that course, I learnt a lot. Then I gave two courses, one based on Oppenheim’s book on the applications of digital signal processing, concentrating on two chapters on radar and sonar signal processing. There are a lot of commonalities between the two. And as far as my research was concerned, it was still network theory and active filters, but teaching was DSP (digital signal processing).
Within a couple of years, I had my Ph.D. students work on signal processing. One of the students was working on order statistics and median filters and the other students on TDM-FDM, Transmultiplexers. That is how I got into signal processing. There was an Oceanographic Institute, so I also learned oceanography. Then [I] started teaching underwater acoustics and relevant signal processing, but I didn't build any hardware except a bit slice FFT processor, 4-bit slice at that time. Soon I left Halifax. So, that's how I got into signal processing.
Hari:
When did you, while teaching, think about writing a book? As you know, very few faculty members think about writing a book. You authored a book on filters.
Aatre:
Yes.
Hari:
How did that happen?
Aatre:
One of the things I wanted to do as I was teaching from a printed book, was to put in some additional features, as other teachers do. Even when I taught linear system theory from [Loffti A.] Zadeh and [Charles A.] Desoer's book, the approach I used was quite different. Teaching network theory and filtering, I was using [Ernest] Kuh’s book, an excellent one from Berkeley. I do not know whether it was good for my students. So, I decided to put in some practical applications of filter theory. The first couple of years, I used to do only passive filter design, and then slowly I introduced active filter design. By the time I had learnt digital signal processing, I started putting in digital filters in the course, but the course on the digital filter design was a second course. For the first course, I decided to write my own notes on network theory and filter design, including active filters. When I was a visiting professor at IISc in 1977, that's the time I decided get it published by John Wiley.
Hari:
So that book writing happened when you were on sabbatical.
Aatre:
Yes.
Hari:
You must have been very comfortable in the academic world and with your students and with your colleagues? While you were a faculty member was there any collaboration across departments? Did you have research grants to support your students, or did you get grants from industry to support your students or did the students support it by themselves?
Aatre:
In signal processing, there were two gentlemen who had come from British Telecom, and we worked together on digital signal processing problems, including those in order statistics filter and median filtering. On the active filter side, I had [a] couple of colleagues working with me and we had a fair amount of research grants. And I had [a] research grant from BELL, Canada. One of the interesting projects was to design an active filter, especially using a singular operational amplifier, using the roll-off itself in designing a filter. The imperfections of the amplifiers had a great impact on the final filter design, so, one of my students studied this. I pursued that research even when I came back from sabbatical and worked with Professor Ramakrishna of the electrical department. I had enough research grants to support students, two or three Ph.D. students and several master’s students, and collaborating was mostly in signal processing. But in active filters, I was working alone.
Hari:
Then something happened that you decided to move back to India, so tell us about how that happened. Why did you take that courageous step?
Aatre:
Even, I debate myself, why did I do it at that stage? In 1977, when I was a visiting professor, I was teaching [a] digital signal processing course. I'm not sure whether this course was given in that form in the Institute for the first time. Professor Ramakrishna, who was the man who was responsible for getting me the visiting professorship, and I decided to run a number of workshops and courses along with Professor Dutta Roy form Delhi, and [a] few people like that. In one of the courses which we gave, talking to the students during coffee period, they said they were from defense research organizations.
After the talk, they asked me [to] come and give special lectures in DRDO. They wanted to know about Fourier transformers much beyond what was done in the workshop. So, I gave a series of lectures about Fourier transforms. Then the laboratory in Cochin, [the] Naval Physical and Oceanographic laboratory invited me. They wanted me to talk to them more elaborately on sonar signal processing, so I went to NPOL and gave one week's full lecture (really a heavy forty hour lecture) on marine acoustics, frontend signal processing, and so on, up to data processing. I gave the course and then the Director of NPOL, Dr. Srinivasan, said after the last lecture that he needed academic people here to trigger them to do [a] good job. Avery polite man, and he politely asked, and I politely said, no, and I will think about it.
Professor Ramakrishna used to work on a project for NPOL. He said, yes, it's a good place to work, so why don't I consider it? Come for one year and try. I said that my children were spending enough time with their grandparents, and I would like to go back as I was on the fast track in my school. So why bother? I'm quite happy. But Ramakrishna kept on pestering me and every second or third week I used to receive a letter from him; you should come back. In fact, I used to argue with him that I did not have enough knowledge about hardware. I've never built a sonar system really. I know how to build one. I designed one on paper, but I've not built one and so on. This continued for a long time. On January 1st, 1980, I had come back from a New Year party, maybe at 4 o'clock or something and I had a collect call from Ramakrishna. He just said, "you will get a call from Professor Raja Ramanna, and you just say yes." I said, what for? “No, no, just says yes. That's all.” I think one hour later, I had a call from Professor Raja Ramanna, whom I've known for a few years. He said, “we offer you a job as Principal Scientific Officer at NPOL and I would like you to come and join.” I couldn't dismiss Professor Raja Ramanna as easily as I could dismiss Ramakrishna, so I said, “yes, sir. Oh, thank you very much. He said that his director of HR will call and fix up the other details. So, he called and said that I don't have to worry that the agreement is for a supernumerary post. One year’s notice, we'll do for either side. I thought about it, and maybe something triggered. Okay, I always used to talk to the students, Indian students, after your studies, all of you go back and your deserted in India and so on. Here I am about to hold the mirror to myself. And I said, why not? I got an opportunity, let me go. I thought about several things. You're going to NPOLO, an organization which is highly hardware dependent. You're not fully a hardware man though you teach all the hardware. I said, I will take a chance. I asked my wife, who always wanted to go back to India. One of the things was that my daughter was eight or nine years old. I said if she becomes ten and beyond, I think it would be unfair to change. I also thought, perhaps if it doesn't work out in two years, I have built enough acquaintances here in Canada I can always come back to Waterloo or otherwise and so on. And with a lot of ambivalent feelings, whether or not I will succeed, I decided to join NPOL.
Today, looking back, it looks good. At that stage, many thought that it was a foolish move. It was very unusual as the flow used to be the other way around. But there was also something else, CSIR had had some substantive scheme for foreigners and there were several Indians who had come but gone back, and a couple of them had committed suicide and all of this. Within a year or two of my coming, Dr. Arunachalam had arranged a meeting with the PM, and she wanted to meet all the people who had just returned from abroad. PM gave us assurance and said, 'we want you and don't keep believing that such things happen all the time.”
Hari:
So was your university comfortable leaving you?
Aatre:
You see, first, when I accepted this, I thought it would be a two-year affair. I thought if I come on a two-year extraordinary leave, I can always go back. So, I didn't want to do that. I talked to several of my friends in Canada. They said “Look, in two years from now, if you don't like the job, well, we will give you a job? You're always welcome.” So, with that kind of semi assurance, I decided to take the offer from DRDO. In fact, I had three Ph.D. students at that stage, and I had to pan them out to other professors. All my Indian friends thought I was doing great.
Hari:
What age were you?
Aatre:
Forty-one.
Hari:
The transition to India both from the social point of view and living style and your professional career in a lab, which is not an academic institution must have created some kind of uncertainty when you began. How did you manage to cope with it and how did you succeed?
Aatre:
Plenty of uncertainties, especially going to Kochin that too in July, pouring down rain. If had come to Bangalore, probably the situation would have been different. My parents were here, my wife's parents were there, my brothers and sisters were all here. So, when I came back, I came back with two fundamental decisions that I am not going to compare the standard of living and the kind of environment we lived in Canada; because if you do, you're not going to come back. Second thing is, I have come by choice, not necessity, and it was not that I did not have a job. Now that I had come, I had to make it a success. I had [a] fair amount of academic knowledge, and on paper, I had sufficient hardware knowledge. I also by the time had heard that one Paulraj was already building a hull mounted sonar, and that two, it was very successful. So, we decided technologically to cooperate.
I and my wife decided not to compare our lives in Canada financially or comfort wise. We are going to grit our teeth, try for a couple of years, [and see] whether we can survive reasonably well. That was the first thing.
As far as the work scenario was concerned, I had friends who had come back, but couldn't survive and went back to America. I used to always tell them perhaps they gave the impression that the American graduates are superior and have a chip on the shoulder; and Indian graduates are “so so.” So, I'm not going to show off that I am a graduate from [the] USA., I had this - we have three computers, my lab was so big, and I have so much of this and that etc. When I came back, Dr. Srinivas was the director and assigned me all the work other than the Hull mounted Sonar. I suddenly had a group of over one hundred scientists working with me from a small group of three, four Ph.D. students.
But one of the things, without being arrogant, going for me [is that] I could get along with any group easily. Wherever I went, I used to build groups, so slowly, I talked with them and found out how I could work with them. I also decided that I needed a lot of support from [the] academic world to build a laboratory with cutting edge technology. So, I came to the Indian Institute of Science, and I think by that time I knew Professor Anand well and that he was going to be our regular consultant for NPOL working on Marine acoustics. He agreed, so we gave him projects and he used to come NPOL and even his Ph.D. students. I also knew Professor ES Raja Gopal. I worked a bit on oceanography and between us we guided [a] couple of Ph.D. students with me as the internal guide and he was the guide from the Indian Institute of Science. I was planning to launch several other projects which needed a lot of mechanical engineering and hydrodynamic work towed array sonars etc. Somebody introduced me to Vijay Arakere and I had him as a consultant to NPOL.
In the meantime, I conducted an international workshop and seminar in digital signal processing for which I invited people like V. U. Reddy. When V. U. Reddy came there, he for the first time exposed us to the MUSIC algorithm. In fact, later, on my pressure, V. U. Reddy came and spent a year in the DRDO. So, I said, “look we're going to implement this algorithm and we’re going to use it in our systems.”
I told all my scientists that they are going to spend one to one and half hours every day on something other than their project work and on theoretical work. In fact, one of the theoretical works we did was we had a mathematician who was trying to become an electronic engineer and we decided to build a three- operational amplifier based Chaotic signal demonstrator. I gather, he went on to do his master's thesis in this field. So, with this kind approach, I slowly built NPOL as a real research laboratory.
By that time, IIT, Delhi had an institute called Centre of Advanced Electronics, Professor Indiresan had just left, and Professor Surendra Prasad had taken over. They were building sonar. Several NPOL scientists were deputed for MTech degree and worked at CARE. They brought back a lot of academic knowledge, and we had enough hardware knowledge. We started building systems. Then ensured whatever we built succeeded and went for production. In fact, in 1984, India was about to launch its nuclear submarine program, I told our headquarters, that we're going to build a submarine sonar, the principal sensor for submarine, and we don't have to import. The question was that we had not built any submarine sonar, but we have built our sonar. One of the things I observed was to build. Paper publishing research is one thing and to build these kinds of systems where the philosophy and physics have already been established elsewhere, what you need was a group of hardworking people. I always felt and my motto is that one can get extraordinary output from ordinary people, provided you identify their role, and clearly indicate what you expect from them. This is what [is] happened.
I had convinced them that I don't believe in the forty hours per week work culture; if necessary, we should work seventy or eighty hours a week. Many of them used to come back after a break and work late at night. In some cases, when we were in the pre-trial period, we worked all night, until like, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock. So, all of them made some contribution. I always feel that each one of us has an inherent innovation ability in us. It is the job of the leadership to bring it out and allow it to blossom. We had very few IIT type graduates, but I was able to get extraordinary output. Within five or six years, NPOL became the top technological laboratory. We had a lot of contact with academic institutions: IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IISc. IIT Chennai had an Ocean engineering department in those days, and we used them. I always felt that in the DRDO Laboratories of India, if they do not have an academician along with them, then they have lost something. Because I was familiar with academicians, and I used to visit all of them very often. I used to give them projects and many succeeded.
Hari:
So, were there any technical challenges in your team's system design or faced complications? How did you handle that?
Aatre:
Yes. I want to give two examples. One was that NPOL laboratory used to work without a ship. I convinced our headquarters and got that project sanctioned. You can't have a naval laboratory without a ship. I understood that it was very expensive, probably a few hundred crores in the eighties [1980s]. Most research ships in India were built outside India. We decide to build in India and instrument it. Again, a lot of people advised me against it. So, I assembled a group of people who were pretty good at instrumentation, [I] hired a foreign consultant who had built such kind of a ship to help us, and [I] got a Naval Commander who was familiar with ships to head the project group on integration. Integration was the major problem [other] than building the ship itself. But one thing was [that] every month I used to spend one to one and a half days in Kolkata reviewing what was happening at the shipyard. The ship was built. Even after thirty years, I gather it is working well.
It was the first challenge I had. I'd also taken on a project on towed arrays. One of the things in underwater transmission, like in the atmospheric transmission, higher frequencies fade in shorter range (and proportional to the square of the frequency), so one has to go to lower and lower frequencies. When you go to lower and lower frequencies, [the] antenna becomes bigger and bigger, so it cannot be carried on a ship. It has to be towed. We got the project sanctioned. This towed array was totally 500 meters long and 100-meter modules. You connect them all. The sensors are to be packaged in a polyethylene tube. These sensor modules contain piezo ceramic crystals, preamplifiers, pre filters etc. The 100 meters long modules have dozens of dozens of sensors, large amount of electronics and a lot of wires. And the tube we had chosen was such that the external diameter of the sensor module is equal to the inner diameter of the tube. So, inserting a long module was a problem. I gave [the] problem to two mechanical engineers. I just called them and said this is what it is. You can't push it in very easily. It's very difficult. So, can you come up with a method? Three weeks later, they came back with a solution. The solution was that you take the tube and put it inside a bigger metal tube, about two millimeters bigger. Block the ends with the connectors and evacuate the annular region. Though the polyethylene tube is inelastic, because the pressure variation expanded by one millimeter to half a millimeter. That was enough to push the sensor module through and release the vacuum. And seal the ends properly with connectors. These were done by two students who come from a small engineering college in Kerala. So, this was another challenge.
The last challenge was building the huge transducer for the submarine sonar. This had 1024 channels and it was about 4.5-meter diameter and 2.5 meter high. Beamforming is used to direct the energy. As the submarine moves, it rolls and pitches, the beams formed also move. We wanted to generate an algorithm for beam stabilization despite the gyration. Of course, there were other challenges, but the overall challenge to India in those days was [the] embargo on components device and IC chips. For instance, we were not allowed to get 14- bit convertor or 16-bit multiplier chips. So, when we decided to look at the stabilization of the beam, we wanted to import appropriate signal processing chips. EMBARGO! So, I put a group to design the chip. We designed the chip in India, but we got it manufactured in France. We got it done in ES-2 France. Perhaps it was the first signal processing chip built in India. In developing the hardware configuration, we got help from the Semiconductor Complex India.
I'm bringing these out [because there is a] lot of experts that are available to solve any challenges, if you identify the right kind of people and put them solve those challenges.
Hari:
In the context of what you have just said, it means that to be a leader and to get things done, or to build things which are complex, you need to have these soft skills, human skills to enable and to inspire the team members to come together and build something.
Aatre:
Absolutely.
Hari:
Our education system or even maybe other education systems do not have this as part of the curriculum. Do you think that organizations like IEEE could help in providing opportunities for students while they are in engineering colleges to experience or try out these team building kind of skills? What is your view on that?
Aatre:
You just brought up three very important points. For a project, a practical project to succeed, we do not need unusual brilliance. It requires group work.
Technology is multi-dimensional, so you have to build a group. How do you build a group? There are two things which are important. What I did in the NPOL (I learnt later that Kalam had done exactly the same thing in DRDL), we allowed the youngsters, mid-level people to be the project leaders. They can run around, get things done, and the technology leaders were seniors. They have the knowledge, they have the experience, but going along, meeting the industry here, running around to get things done is something which requires energy. But the seniors have to report to junior program directors. Initially there were lots of objections. I, a director myself doing some work in signal processing, decided to report to the program directors. So, I actually physically demonstrated [this] by going and sitting in the meeting and reporting to the chairman program director. Slowly, [I] got them used to the fact that the youngsters are the program leaders. I used to say: Technical expertise comes with experience, so seniors are the leader, you're a technology leader, but he is the program leader. If [the] program fails, it's his neck, but if the technology fails, it's your neck.
I noticed Kalam had also chosen a lot of youngsters as project leaders. Can such [an] approach be taught? Yes, but try it in small groups, three or four, and see how they would work.
To complete a project, you need three kinds of people: a good if not a brilliant designer (academic knowledge!), a person to implement (young, energetic, and intelligent); and a middleman like me to facilitate this group. I was able to bridge this gap between the visionary academicians with technology implementers very easily. And as I said later on, I found Kalam had done it very, very successfully also. Kalam might not have been [a] brilliant designer, but he was a brilliant man manager. He found the right kind of people to do the job. It cannot be taught, but it has to be learnt. One should be exposed to such issues. So, for all people who want to become a technologist, one should give a special course. It requires lots of soft, soft skills. You must be able to articulate. You must be able to get along well with everybody. You must know who can do what. You must be able to gauge the extent of the weaknesses and how to bring the strengths out.
Hari:
Maybe IEEE should be organizing such programs.
Aatre:
In fact, one of the things which I would like to suggest to the IEEE Sections is running technology workshops [and] running a soft skill workshop. Technology these days is quite easy to learn. Everything is available on the web, but soft skills, you cannot easily learn them. Soft skills are learnt by experience. I found this even after I left the NPOL. I left the NPOL after Dr. Arunachalam said, “You have done enough for NPOL, and you should do something for my electronic laboratories.” I used the same technique because the technology was already available with the laboratories. Can one build an overarching support system from that?
Hari:
Before we go to your next phase, I wanted to ask you, when you were building things, technologies in the lab, your end user was the Indian Defense. There must have been again, a bridge to cross, meeting their expectations, trying to convince the limitations of the current technology, and what the user wants. [Do you have] any anecdotal experience which you think you can share?
Aatre:
Clearly, there was one advantage. The sonar built by Paulraj was the answer, so I followed that formula. In all projects, there was a navy commander on the team, not as a junior man making no decisions, but [as an] active participant in the development cycle. There was always a debate.
Why was the Naval laboratory successful? I said, because we first talked to [the] Navy. And in fact, at one stage the Navy used to say, “even if we give a project to a LRDE, let it go through NPOL.” I had Navy people in all our projects at our lab and I got along superbly with all the Naval chiefs. I used to brief them regularly as to this is what I'm doing [and] this why I'm doing it. I'll tell you what technology to use, [but]what projects we should do is your decision. I once said jokingly this is Paulraj's culture for NPOL. He knew all the details of the project. So, throughout my career I did [the]same. I did that even for LRDE at a later stage. First, ask them what they want. Make sure that it can be produced. I find that those people who have done this in DRDO have all succeeded. But if you say, “I'm the last person I' to talk to the user,” you won't succeed. For all NPOL projects, steering committees used to be chaired by the Vice Chief of Naval Staff. I used to brief him, saying this is what I want. I think you should help me get this, so he used to instruct the Naval officers, accordingly, including ship availability and all. Ship availability, submarine available, it's not easy. So, that bridge has to be built. I think DRDO now follows this and is doing well. Again, can this attitude be taught? Ego should not be involved. Ego should be left behind.
Hari:
Then, again, there was a time in your India leadership responsibilities, if I might say, you had to go from a lab, a single lab, after the director of that lab into a different role where you had to track more labs across the country. How did that happen? How was that experience?
Aatre:
After Arunachalam told me that “'you have done enough for NPOL. I would like somebody to do the same thing with electronic laboratory,” I went as chief Controller (R&D) at Delhi and looked after all Electronic Laboratories.
Hari:
Scientific Advisor?
Aatre:
No, later I became the Scientific Advisor. I was Chief Controller first. I found that LRDE, which was in charge of the radar and communication systems, and DLRL, which was into electronic warfare systems, had equal amount technological strength. LRDE was very well managed by Dr. Shenoy, and it was doing well. DLRL was not doing that well, even with very competent people. I soon realized that they're doing small, tiny, tiny projects. Five crores here, six crores there, and at the end of it, it was going to the user. And the user said, “I did not say, I did not ask for this, so I don't want it.”
One of the first things I tackled was to build a very large electronic warfare system. I spent sufficient time with [the] Navy and [the] Army asking them what kind of system they wanted. Then I assembled a group of technology people and sat with them and designed a system. A large part of the design, system design at a very broad level, was done in my room in Delhi with Services representatives present there. I also was lucky enough to convince the Services people, saying “I would convince the R&D to fund the development phase. If I build one and if you need ten, then for the next nine, you'll pay.” Somehow, they were able to convince that this project will be jointly sanctioned by services in this case [the] Army, [the] Navy, and DRDO. As long as R&D is running, DRDO will chair the steering committee. Once [the} R&D phases work was finished, [the]steering committee will be chaired by Services. Thus, we built a very large EW system.
The other thing which I tackled when I went to Delhi: India lacked components and devices. One of the things which was lacking in the electronic warfare system - 2 to 18 GHz components, especially gallium arsenide components. [The] Solid State physics laboratory of DRDO had some technology of gallium arsenide devices, but there was no foundry, so I convinced Kalam to sanction gallium arsenide foundry. Kalam had become SA to RM (Defense Minister) by that time, and he implemented that. Again, I think, without being arrogant, one of my major contributions was establishing building the first one to 18GHz gallium arsenide foundry in Hyderabad. Again, my job was not technical. Technology came from SSPL. My job was putting together [the team]. We needed somebody who had experience running a foundry, so I convinced the Semiconductor Complex of India to run the foundry for us on contract. And then finally, [I] hired one person from VLSI technology in [the] U.S., who had eighteen years’ experience in foundry [work]. So, Dr. Hanuman Vyas was hired to run the foundry.
Unfortunately, in a similar way I couldn't make a success of fabricating infra-red detectors. Even today we do not have infra-red detector technology in India or even the MCT technology. But in radars we did excellently [and in] electronic warfare and Gallium arsenide we did very well. So, that was during the phase when I was the chief controller of R&D.
Hari:
You have sort of had a journey across technologies as you progressed in your career. Where did you get information about rising technologists? Did IEEE publications play any role? The Internet was not there at that time, so how did you get access to all this new level of information?
Aatre:
Okay. In mechanical tech, I could understand the basic principles. I didn't want to get into the nitty-gritty. If you get to the nitty-gritty or try to understand how these equations and beyond work, you lose. What are the principles? If we do not understand the principles, we can seek academicians to support you. We cannot do everything. I used to get information and I used to assemble the right kind of people. For example, let me go back to the NPOL. We tried to build sonar which can operate from a helicopter. There the transducer is going to be winched up and down. Well, we had no experience building such a winch, so I formed [a] small group of mechanical engineers, two people [who] were graduates from IIT Bombay. I gave them the responsibility. These are the requirements: [a] light weight winch with [the] right material for strength and [I] asked them to get winch built. In fact, they hired a company called InfoTech and [they] built such a winch for us. There are ways to achieve your goal, but one must be able to absorb the principle and ask somebody else to do it for you.
[The] same thing happened when I became a Scientific Advisor. The two major projects I inherited were Missiles and LCA (Light Combat Aircraft). Now, I was not very involved with the missile program or the aeronautics. So, when I became SA, I said to all of them, these are the two main programs, they need it to be operationalized, and LCA has to fly. I spent hours and hours with those people trying to learn the basic principles and trying to learn what [it] is that they want from me. If they said, “keep your hands off?” Okay. I'll keep my hands off. Of course, they did not.
In LCA, every Saturday I used to hold a meeting in Bangalore and all designers and suppliers would come. I put them together in the same room [to] discuss their problems. We may not have [the] solution, but then we will finally find a solution.
One of the issues that came about was [the] availability of primary actuators, which are used for moving all control surfaces like rudders, elevators, and so on. They were all being imported. Only one company in the world gave it to us, MOOG (USA). We were wondering when they would give us the technology or close their shop, saying no more. Then we would lose the program. We were in some sense desperate to build them in India itself and we used people from VSSC of ISRO. I gather it is available now.
LCA did its first flight in 2001 and went supersonic thereafter. Towards the latter part of my tenure as Scientific Advisor to the Defense Minister - I have really gone so far away from signal processing - I spent more and more time with the aeronautics people, not only learning terminology of aeronautics.
I [also] learned enough to understand what they were talking about.
Hari:
This activity brings the need of people being open to receive information about other disciplines because the world has become systems oriented, which means interdisciplinary in nature. You are an example of how you were able to absorb all the knowledge. What do you advise a young engineer for shaping one’s own career?
Aatre:
First of all, you must realize if you want to become a good teacher you must be [s] good student. I am sure the signal processing you teach and signal processing I taught were quite different. In fact, there are aspects of signal processing I don't understand now. But if I want to do that, I must constantly update myself and learn new things. Second, if you are going to be a technologist, you must have an open mind. Learn from everybody. If an intern has new technology, learn from him. In technology there are no seniors and juniors, technology speaks. This is a kind of hubris, I left long back. The other thing is you must constantly read. Take yourself off one hour a day or five hours a week to read something related to technologies, and don't try to understand all the minute details unless you want to be a designer in that field. You must define your boundaries. What are you? Are you a designer? Do you want to [have] in-depth knowledge? If you want to have in-depth knowledge, then it will be like becoming an academician. If not, use him by building linkages.
In-depth knowledge generally restricts the spread. In an organization like DRDO, as you keep going up the ladder, you may have to expand horizontally. But never expect that you are going to reach that kind of expertise of an expert. It's not possible, so you don't have to feel bad about that. Today, if somebody asks me about teaching signal processing, I have to think for a long time. I don't understand a large part of the present signal processing, but on the other hand, if somebody asks me how the signal processing is used LCA, I probably have better knowledge than many.
Scientific advisor to the defense minister of India
Hari:
When your stint as chief controller in research and development was coming to a close, how did this position transition to being a scientific advisor to the defense minister of India happen?
Aatre:
In 1999, I decided to call it quits, since I would've become sixty and I thought [that] I [would] go back and do some teaching. I thought I'd go back and learn afresh. By this time, [a] number of new colleges had increased, and I was quite familiar with VTU (Visvesvaraya Technological University). Some of the colleges were asking me to join them and teach. I said I will come and teach in one of those colleges. Teaching at [the] post graduate level is no challenge, according to me; but at [the] graduate level it is. The lower classes you teach, the greater is the real difficulty. I had casually hinted to Kalam that my radar program has succeeded and so has the electronic war program. I would like to quit. Sometime in September 1999, Kalam said George Fernandes wanted to meet you.
Hari:
George Fernandes was the defense minister.
Aatre:
Defense Minister. When Kalam took me to George Fernandes, he said, “we are trying to elevate Kalam to something else (Kalam became the Principal Scientific Advisor later). We would like you to take over the department.” It scared me a little for two reasons. One, my capabilities to lead a whole department and whether I would be able to manage it. Second, I would be removed one more step away from technology. When you are a technologist, you are already removed from academia; then you were removed from technology and if you know, you will be removed to managing operations. This bothered me. But after a few weeks, Fernandes took me to Prime Minister Vajpayee. And they said, “we have zeroed in on you and I should take over.”
Hari:
They spoke to you?
Aatre:
Yes.
Hari:
Okay.
Aatre:
What do you do? I was wondering whether they would give a five-year contract. I said, “if it is either one or two years, I will not join.” They gave me a contract for five years, [from] 999 to 2004.
There were several thoughts as I accepted this challenge. My new job would involve more than technology [because it was] interlinking with the government, Defense Services, and production agencies. There were a few, two or three projects, in which I had to take [a] little more active part. One was of course LCA.
At that time, I was deeply involved trying to build a frequency hopping radio. I was amazed that India hadn't built a frequency hopping radio all these years. The project was being, to some extent, guided by me through the year.
I had to learn to interact with chiefs of staff. There were special projects, like the nuclear submarine projects, and there were nuclear arsenal projects, which only [a] few people knew. So, these things I should deal [with] directly for others, I could select the right directors and allow them to operate freely and tell them that I would support them to [the] hilt. If don't like him, I can replace him, but as long as he's there, his word becomes the law for that particular laboratory.
I started as an academician, then became a technologist, now [I] became much more than a technologist. How do I keep abreast of technology? Fortunately, I have a reasonably good memory, so I remember and retain a lot of things which I read. I used to read, read, read. The reports, the project reports, and details of the projects. How much have I absorbed? I don't know. But many of them lingered in my memory, so that I could do the things. So, I succeeded, of course. In 2004, [the] Vajpayee government left, and Pranab Mukherjee became the defense minister, so I worked with Pranab Mukherjee for about six months before I retired.
Hari:
Again, this sort of expanded your horizons and your whole journey. On the way you have been honored by the government of India for your contributions
Aatre:
Can I go back a little--one small thing. You said, how do you come into the new areas of technology? I would like to go back, if you don't mind. In NPOL, I was looking at reducing the so-called sonar cross-section of submarine, like the radar cross-section. Lots of people were working in this area, so I located one such person, and we went to visit him at his U.S. university. There he introduced me, sometime in 1988 or 1990, I forget, to what are called MEMS. I didn't even know what it meant. Then he showed some smart materials. Somehow, I felt this was something that was going to be useful for the application in several fields. So, I convinced the Government to sanction a program on MEMS and smart materials. This is the only area after signal processing [that] I did in-depth study. Later, [I] went on [to] write a book along with professors Ananthasuresh, Gopalakrishnan, and others because somehow, I felt that this was a very interesting technology. If you take your cellphone, there are already several MEMS components and so on. My view of looking at technology has grown like this. When I came to the Institute as a visiting professor in 2005, in the first few months, along with Professor Rajesh Sundaresan, I ran a workshop on Cognitive Radios. I thought something would be useful [and would] come out of this. These are the kinds of things a technology leader should do. Sorry, I interrupted your question.
Hari:
Yes. That's perfectly fine. The Institute of Smart Structures [ISSS, the Institute of Smart Structures and Systems] honored for your exemplary contribution to the public by way of your positions as policy and R&D leader. [You also received] the second highest citizen award of India, the Padma Vibhushan. How did you feel at that time? Were you aware that you were being nominated or was it a surprise?
Aatre:
In Padma Bhushan it was a surprise. I didn't even know that Kalam had nominated [me]. I had just taken over as Scientific Advisor, and then, suddenly within a month the award was announced. When I met the home secretary, he told me that Kalam had nominated me. The award was announced on 26th January. With the Padma Vibhushan, I was contacted and told that I was nominated. Yes, it's a great honor; but I must be honest. If I had technically achieved something in DRDO, it is not because of just individual brilliance. I had hundreds of people working with me and for me. All and each one of them contributed to the award in some form or the other, and the fact was that I was able to put them together as a technical force to reckon with. On the other hand, among the awards which I honor most, other than [the] Padma Vibhushan is being a Fellow of IEEE and the Distinguished Alumni award from the India Institute Science. These are recognized for my technical contribution by my peers. You know, getting honored as an IEEE Fellow is not that easy, and the same for the other awards. When I was at NPOL and as Chief Controller I was involved deeply with certain of the materials for various applications. Even then, the gold medal from the Material Society of India was a surprise. These awards, in some sense are very satisfying.
Smart systems
Hari:
Then along your journey, you are so excited to think of smart systems and structures. Can you tell us how that came about and what was your vision?
Aatre:
Oh, okay. Sorry that I short circuited you. As I said when I visited a professor in the U.S., he talked lot about MEMS and smart materials. I finally asked him to give me a book. I came with the book and understood because of [my] reasonable theoretical physics knowledge. The only thing [I]didn't know was some [of]the mechanical aspects like FEM techniques and a few other things. Those were the only things which I didn't know, which I had to learn. By the early nineties (1990s) I had a workshop conducted on MEMS and its applications. Following this, in collaboration with [the] U.S. Army Pacific research wing, we conducted an international conference in 1996. We had invited many experts in MEMS and other things. Then, I decided to look into this area, a special field as it was applicable in many areas, in defense application and much more outside defense. As I was with the government, I got a national project sanctioned, and we got a special project. We ran it as a project at ADA and formed a separate group in ADA. As usual, as soon as we decided to do it, the first thing was a visit to IISc and [to] bring in all the Professors to join us, [including] Ananthasuresh, Navakanta Bhat, Mohan, Vinoy, and many more people. Vinoy had done a Ph.D. in that field. I told them, “You are the experts. Tell us what is to be done.” My job is finding the money and running the program. As we had very few people working in that field, one of the first things we did along with Navakanta Bhat, was to start design centers across India to train manpower. We started sixty-five design centers even in small universities and in the northeast and southeast and east to west. So, the number [of] people trained, which was about fifty in 1999, is more than 5,000 now or even more. Then we also got industry to be involved otherwise, we cannot develop the best technology. I also started a society, ISSS [Institute of Smart Structures and Systems] to promote this field. Again, more than seventy five percent [of the] members were from the academic world because I firmly believe, if India has to succeed in technology, it has to build outstanding academic institutions. If you don't build such institutions, we cannot dominate technology. We brought in people like Professor Ramgopal Rao, [who] worked for a long time in this field from IIT Bombay. Sanctioning projects was made much simpler. We formed special committees and empowered them to sanction projects. So, we initiated emerging technologies. Now I think it's fairly widespread across India. To some extent the concept of [the] Nano Center perhaps emerged from this.
Hari:
You also supported the mathematical engineering program, the DRDO program. Many faculty members are required to interact with the labs. Can you tell me how that connection was established?
Aatre:
Sorry, I forgot that one. On some occasion when some of the directors of the labs, a few others, and I were discussing funding projects and related issues. I think Dr. Shenoy was also there, I was indicating that DRDO should become a kind of DARPA to look at triggering technologies and the idea of a Mathematical Signal Processing (MSP) came up. It came from V. U. Reddy, the head of the department of ECE. I said, “I will push the program.” The first program was sanctioned when I was in Delhi. We conducted the first workshop. I recall giving a talk on short term spectrum analysis. On conclusion of the workshops, some projects were sanctioned in the MSP program. In the first program, I said the projects were free in the sense that the professors were not asked for any specific deliverables. There are no deliverables, but knowledge was generated. But slowly the DRDO started insisting that labs should be getting involved giving a lot of confidence for many of the professors and departments to look at products. Some of [the] projects triggered other projects, like the one on wireless sensor networks. I wish this kind of programs are run by government of India. This is where I think our government is shortsighted. In technology, you must give twenty-five years from its seeding to look at productization. We are slightly impatient with industry, and hence cannot generate technology.
DRDO doesn't need that kind of technology because the DRDO has already established technologies. In fact, I tried to get a photonics program sanctioned, but to no success. The national programs should continue until the technology reaches a level that industries can use it. You can't go to industries and say, supply by new technology. They won't.
IEEE and standards
Hari:
I now come to the question, you have been an IEEE member since 1965, what was your motivation to continue to be an IEEE member?
Aatre:
If I start something I stick to it. I don't easily quit. When I went to Canada, I stayed there for twelve years. When I went to Cochin, [I] stayed there for eleven years, and in Delhi for fourteen years. When I was in Delhi a lot of other jobs were offered to me, very lucrative financially, but I said, no, I will only serve DRDO or do teaching. I, as a young student going abroad for the first time, became an IEEE member, I have not found reason why I should get out of it. But that's not the main reason.
When there was no internet and these kinds of things and when I wanted to learn something new, IEEE Transactions were there, but sometimes I found that understanding IEEE Transactions was difficult. So, when IEEE started producing special books, I think I brought most of the special books, starting from image processing. I want to know more, not just one technology. So, I still have all those books with me to read. When I studied Mitra (S.K. Mitra) on active filters, I tried to do something in that field. That's how I get into new fields. So, I used IEEE as a source for me. Today, perhaps I don't need that [because the] World Wide Web is there, but I'm of the kind who cannot read too much from a screen. I have to have a hard copy reading [from a screen]. So, in that sense, IEEE did that.
The other thing which IEEE does, which India should follow, is it sets standards. IEEE has built such a phenomenal group. You don't build a communication standard without IEEE being a part of it. In India, we don't do that yet. In fact, I keep telling ISSS people (I named it ISSS so it would do something similar to IEEE later on) setting standards, writing codes, etc. [are important]. In India, none of the professional organization have that kind of standing. So that is what we must do with ISSS.
Hari:
Let's come to the part where your family was supportive throughout your journey.
Aatre:
We had difficulty earlier on. They will tell you. When I married, I was teaching in Halifax. There was not much leisure time. I used to go [to work in the] morning at 9 o'clock, come back at 6:00, and occasionally I came back late at night, and so on. Once I came to NPOL, and then at Delhi, I hardly used to be home. I used to leave home at 8:00 [in the morning] and come back at 8:30 in the evening. Every week, I traveled to visit a laboratory. There were fifty-one laboratories. I used to visit one laboratory a week, so fifty-one weekends. And I don't know how my wife managed it. Most of my children used to get sick when I was not there. She managed it, and without that kind of support, I could not have done what I did. The amount of time I spent with my children became less and less, but with my eldest daughter, I shared more time because I was not that busy at Cochin. With our second daughter, there was less time to spend. My son, almost no time. [It was] probably effect of becoming a leader or a group head.
As I said, my grandfather was the headmaster, and my father was a project officer for many of the projects. Some things got implanted genetically. Organization and punctuality I learned from my mother. Twenty-five years in DRDO, facing success and some failures, failure will be there, but without the kind of family background and support I would not have been here.
Hari:
Before we conclude, we would like to know if you have anything which we have not covered. Do you want to say something, it could be concerning the government policies or anything? What do you think about the future of technology?
Aatre:
Yes. There are two or three issues India has to settle. India has a huge amount of talent. Indians are doing extremely well all over the world. Looking at the standards that are set outside the world, if you compare what's happening inside the world, India is not doing well. We have still not realized, at least I think we have not realized, that building outstanding academic institutions is a must. Once I had a long discussion in a high-power committee - Kalam had a committee as PSA - that top five or ten institutions like the IIT’s and IISc should be freed from all restrictions, including reservations. These are the institutions we should support fully. We should also identify unique institutions. Free them from all interference, especially government interference; but telling them in no uncertain terms, 'we want you to be the top of the list and tell us what you want? We cannot give millions, billions of dollars, but we can give you sufficient associate funds. I'm convinced that industry is also similarly built. On the other hand, if you want to build outstanding academic institutions, you must build the base. Our school educational system, well, it produces good students, despite the system. Good students are there everywhere.
I am involved in an NGO called Agastya, which is a support system for government school educational system. It so happened somebody introduced me to the chairman of the Agastya Foundation. He was interested in what I could do for it. He said, “I was building a mobile (educational) van.” So, I got one of the laboratories to build the mobile van which still goes around. Now, Agastya has over 200 mobile vans and a number of science centers.
We must look at the kind of respect we [give] our teachers and professors. There was a time when somebody who said he's a professor in India for science, I would feel like standing up and applaud. Today, that kind of respect is gone. Respect is an acknowledgement, well at least the respect you pay for education and superiority in technology and knowledge. The third thing which you had to do is, you can't be impatient with technology. Technology is sometimes unkind. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong. I have seen scientists at NPOL spend a lot of time identifying soft-soldering and faulty PCB (printed circuit) board. It cannot be considered a waste of time, so buckle down and be patient with technology.
You cannot be masters of all technologies. Identify a few technologies. Support them with sufficient funds and time and demand results. We start a program and produce certain preliminary results. Just when we reach the stage of technology, we stop funding the programs. We have not done so with several programs like superconductivity and micro-systems, etc. India has many other problems, but technologically, Indians are very capable people. If we were incapable people, we need not bother. I have gone to many village schools and met their students over the last few years. These students are as intelligent as their urban counterparts. If only we can allow them [to]blossom. This is what Agastya is trying to do.
Hari:
Enthusiasm.
Aatre:
Enthusiasm. Curiosity. It is actually curiosity. We are doing it, but not enough. One of [the] other things in India, [is the] fear of failure. India will not fail. It will not collapse. It is going to be slow progress. It cannot be an exponential progress. Lots of our universities should look at something else -What [Frederick] Terman did to Silicon Valley. If Terman was not there, would the Silicon Valley have been there? Are there no such people in India? There may be. We have to find them and identify them. Can we do that?
Also, the present-day youngsters, certainly they are far more knowledgeable, far more articulate, and far more confident than we were, but they seem to lack a certain amount of direction. Whenever I talk to school students, I say, “well, don't say your goal is to earn money. You will do that anyway. You decide what you want to be ten years from now, twenty years from now. What's your vision?” The numbers are so large, even a small percentage makes a difference. Can we use the large base to build the kind of knowledge society that we are capable of doing?
The other thing is the recent national educational policy. Now, it looks at multi faculty-led universities. In fact, when VTU got started, I was one of the guys who reacted against a single faculty university. A university must have many faculties. There must be a cross-pollination of ideas coming together. Give students freedom, if they want to take a course on the appreciation of music as a part of their course work, why prevent it? The Indian technical education has to change. I have a feeling even in the world, within the next thirty- forty years, education systems are going to be quite different.
One last thing I want to say and [then I will] stop. My daughter is in Michigan, so when I go there, I have witnessed the Michigan STEM program. There were many projects given to school students. One of the projects given to middle school people was to build a tower with household available things, but not steel rods. The tower's weight was to be no more than some grams. It must carry a load of 5kg. I saw my grandchildren building this with reeds/ straws with the right kind of structure and stick them together. I noticed how good a structure it was and [it] did not buckle at all. I am sure they did not really know what buckling was or why does it bend and so on. I saw how the structure was tested at the school. They attached a bucket to the end of the structure with a thread. They kept pouring sand into the bucket until it crossed 5kg, and the whole weight of the tower was five hundred grams. We should target programs like that in our schools. So, that is what India should do. I have a feeling India will do by 2070 but I want it to do by 2040. That's the difference, 2040 rather, not 2100, or even 2070.
Hari:
Great. It has been an honor for me to be part of this very illuminating discussion and interaction and, on behalf of the [IEEE] Signal Processing Society and IEEE, I wish you and your family a very safe, healthy, and happy life ahead of you. We hope that you will continue to contribute to the inspirational part of your journey for others to at least emulate a part of your life. Thank you very much.
Aatre:
My pleasure. Thank you.
