IIT Roorkee organized the annual Cognizanceon festival on the theme of Robert Frost's 'The road not taken'.
It is with this festival that the events and competitions on encompassing robotics, coding, biotechnology, chemical engineering, chemistry, civil engineering, architecture and planning, earth sciences, electronics and communication have received a common podium. The festival brought home UNESCO patronage partnering with the adherence of 2015 as International Year of Light and Light based Technologies as has been propagated by the United Nations.
CNR Rao is a prestigious and eminent scientist who received India's highest civilian honour Bharat Ratna. Here at the event Rao describing his own past experience encouraged the students to adopt different and innovative techniques hence adopting the road less travelled to be successful. The students nowadays are urged to go in the information technology industry.
Quoting the incidents in his life and his struggle he told that he used to build every furnace and had to borrow wire from his friend in America. He did a bootstrap operation as he has less equipment and building.
Expressing his hardships he told that it took him 30 years for him to do what he exactly wanted to do. For making a balance he had to make parts of his own like making a spring and all
He expressed the disappointment for the usual and standard options the students are adopting.
He told that the institutions and scientific departments need money to be more innovative saying that to be like the MITs IIT-Roorkee and all other IITs need more money
He advocated the prime minister and the government to look into the aspects of the various departments of the institutes as a large number of director posts are vacant.
A book on ultra violet spectroscopy was written by Rao when he was 26 years old.
His book in infrared spectroscopy altered everything and was highly approved by CV Raman.
The national policy allocates a six percent of GDP for education but only two percent is actually utilized for the education sector.
Given confidence to the researchers he advised them to never give up whatever the problem may be. Dedication, doggedness and tenacity are important qualities that must be instilled.
Propagating the power of knowledge and learning he said that he is still an eternal student.