President, NIIT University
Dr. Shorey received his Ph.D and MS (Engg) in Electrical Communication Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India in 1997 and 1991 respectively. He received his B.E degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IISc, Bangalore in 1987.
Prior to joining NIIT University, Dr. Shorey was in General Motors India Science Laboratory (ISL), Bangalore. He was the Lab Group Manager of the Vehicle Communications and Information Management Group at GM ISL. Prior to joining GM Research, Dr. Shorey was a Research Staff Member at the IBM Research Laboratory, New Delhi from 1998 to 2005. From 1996 to 1998, Dr. Shorey was at SASKEN Technologies, Bangalore as a Project Lead of the Wireless Systems group. Dr. Shorey was an adjunct faculty in the Computer Science Dept at IIT, Delhi from 1998 to 2005. He was a faculty in the Computer Science Dept at the National University of Singapore from 2003 to 2004, while on leave from IBM Research Labs in New Delhi.
Rahul: NIIT University formally started last year and has already gained prominence. Now the University has also launched the MBA program. What is your assessment of the University so far and what are the key priorities for next three years?
Rajeev: NIIT University (NU) is based upon the four core principles of Industry-Linked, Research-Driven, Technology-Based and Seamlessness. It is these 4 core principles that define the ethos of NU and in everything we do, from faculty hiring to admitting the students, we keep the core principles in mind.
The Key priorities for next three years at NIIT University are to continue to recruit reputed faculty members from all over the world, to build strong ties with Industry and R&D labs in India and abroad, to inculcate a culture of research at all levels in the university.
Rahul: Warren Bennis, chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California notes that "...running a major research university today is far more complex and demanding than running any large, global corporation." You are also building a higher education institution of eminence, what are the key challenges you faced or are facing in institution building process?
Rajeev: Some of the Key challenges faced by any *quality* driven institutions are:
(i) Attracting world-class and global faculty to the university. This is particularly challenging in India since salaries in Industry and R&D labs are typically higher than that in educational institutions. Thus, only the highly motivated people join a university environment.
(ii) Ensuring *self sustainability* of the university. This means that in the long run, the university should ideally be generating funds from private companies and government sources. This again will only happen when the faculty are research oriented and driven by excellence.
(iii) Ensuring a Global nature of the university. This is a huge challenge since attracting foreign nationals with excellent credentials needs a lot of work and convincing on the part of the university.
(iv) Adaptability: in curriculum, policies and practices. The curriculum needs to adapt to ever changing knowledge/technologies.
Rahul: Based on your experiences, what are the top two competencies required to lead a higher education institution?
Rajeev:(i) Outstanding leadership skills in addition to being highly focused, energetic and goal oriented.
(ii) Being Research Driven and Industry-Linked. These two are so essential for any university that wants to make a mark in today's Knowledge Society.
3 comments:
Quite impressed that NIIT has started this university. I did not know about this before. NIIT was the first institute to deliver quality IT training (but they did charge very high fees for students during my college days). They do have an excellent track record in bringing quality IT teaching practices, and has always taken efforts to make their curriculum apart from their peers. They did set a very high standard in IT education. I hope and wish that they can achieve the same in university education and research. On a side note, I appreciate NIIT's association with Vishy Anand in bringing chess learning to a wider community and also their mobile science lab project.
Nice article. Niit offers niche tech education for the students
Looks like NIIT has got a good head start with you in its helm. All the best to NIIT University and you Dr. Shorey.
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