Professor Niloy Ganguly from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT) Kharagpur, is actively working with the Research and Development (R&D) team at the NetApp technical centre in Bengaluru. His area of research is based on futuristic technologies around data storage and management. It involves predictive analysis wherein predicting that information which may look junk but can be helpful in troubleshooting, especially in huge complicated systems which generate huge amounts of data and where troubleshooting can be a big challenge. “When we teach our students courses around machine learning and artificial intelligence, such kind of research helps us in giving our students a first-hand feel of things in an enterprise through case studies,” Ganguly told THE WEEK.
Similarly, associate professor Arnab Bhattacharya, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur, is also working with the R&D team at NetApp in Bengaluru to do research around areas in storage management and is trying to bring out new ways to manage data. “Over the last few years some of this research have become the thesis components of some of our Phd students and the research has become part of our curriculum,” Bhattacharya, who specialises in databases, data mining, bioinformatics, told THE WEEK.
NetApp, the data storage and management major company, is running collaborative programmes with many top IITs and other top engineering institutes in the country through its university research programme that recently completed ten years of operation.
Interestingly, NetApp is working with many government organisations, public and private sector banks such as the SBI, HDFC, IDBI, and pharma companies in India to manage and store their data, as they are in the process of expanding their digital footprint. At the same time the company is also working with different state governments like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in their 'smart city' and e-government initiatives.
“The primary criterion is to collaborate with professors of international repute doing research in areas of interest to NetApp. A dedicated team as part of NetApp’s HR function engages with universities for hiring interns and assimilating them with the company. The idea of starting such a university research programme in India is aimed at collaboration of theoretical computer scientists from top schools of India,” Siddhartha Nandi, director, advanced technology group, NetApp, told THE WEEK.
Nandi says that the company's university research programme has three primary goals—to engage with research professors in Indian institutes of repute to further their research agenda in areas of mutual interest and in the process, learn about new technological trends, to collaborate with professors on industrial problems of interest to NetApp where the professor's current work has applicability within NetApp, and to engage with the interns working with such professors on the projects funded by NetApp for future hiring within NetApp.
It is a known fact that industry-academia interaction is a must to improve the overall status of technical education in the country. “This programme enables professors, students and NetApp engineers to meet on frequent basis to go over the progress and the challenges being faced. They brainstorm, solve challenges and bring out the insights. Professors are encouraged to present their work as part of NetApp Research Corridor talks, which is a platform provided to the professors to present to a wider audience,” added Nandi.
The company also has two types of fellowships associated with the programme—the NetApp Faculty Fellowship (NFF) that is provided to internationally acclaimed professors for furthering their research agenda. The NetApp engineers work with the professor and the students for around 18 months. The second type of fellowship supports students more directly and is the central part of NetApp Student Fellowship (NSF). The programme is of one-year duration. “For this we take the recommendation from a professor on an interesting student research project, typically part of a larger project and provide grants on the same lines as of NetApp Faculty Fellowship (NFF).
“Broadly these research relationships help in identifying important tech trends on the horizon. These partnerships with reputed institutes such as the IISC Bangalore and top IITs have made advances in the area of building systems that give early warning of impending system problems, proactive problem avoidance, among othes. The research has also led to an oversizing goal of setting up self-healing, self-correcting systems using machine learning and analytics,” said Nandi.