Conducting Research: A Personal Technical Experience
-Part IX: At RIT, and IISc., Bangalore
By JIRARA
© JIRARA, September 2022, Published by JIRARA, on matrubharti.com
All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, for any commercial purposes without the prior permission of the author and/or publisher.
Disclaimer: This is exactly the same as in the previous parts of the story.
**
For my stints at the MSRIT (now RIT), I am grateful to the following persons: Prof. and head of the then IT dept. Mr. P. V. Venkatramaiah, Prof. and the then head of the E&C dept. Dr. Ms. Sethu S. Selvi, and Prof. Dr. Rajanikant, the then principal of the MSRIT; and subsequent principals.
I am especially grateful to Prof. Dr. Ms. Prabha Ravi, and Dr. VPS Naidu Sr. Scientist of FMCD (NAL) for initiating my position as an emeritus professor at MSRIT.
I am very grateful to Prof. Radhakant Padhi (IISc., Bangalore) for hiring me as a consultant to his project on artificial pancreas, and Dr. Mrs. Girija Gopalratnam of FMCD for suggesting my name for the consultancy.
***
1. At RIT (Ramaiah Institute of Technology)
Although, I had stopped going to RIT (old name MSRIT), I had continued to inspire the faculty members to do research, and register for their doctoral programs. Of course, my own DRSs still were pursuing their studies, and they had submitted their theses somewhere in 2016/17, and they all had got their Ph.D. degrees, well within the stipulated time of 5 to 6 years; whereas in most cases and at most institutes such DRSs take nearly 8 years to complete their theses work and submit.
Although, I was not fortunate to attend the convocation of my own Ph.D. degree in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, in the year 1986-87; I could attend the convocation of my own DRSs at the JU, Bangalore in the year 2018-19, and though it was very warm weather, I had put on blazer. When their names were announced from the dais, with the guide’s name in succession, for handing over the degree certificates, I experienced a sense of some achievement and satisfaction.
Each one of my DRSs, had done a commendable work in the broader area of estimation and filtering; and had validated the newly developed algorithms by them, with simulated data that were generated using MATLAB (matrix laboratory, a software tool box), and they also had derived analytical conditions for the convergence of the newly proposed filtering schemes; this latter analytical development was very crucial in giving theoretical justification and credence to the working of the estimation algorithms. And this was a novel feature, since the convergence was established via proposing new state-observers which are equivalent to the original estimators but are simpler to handle analytically. Several papers that were published from their doctoral works, in some traditional as well as open-access journals, had established this as a viable approach; one paper (by Prof. Dr. Ms. Parimala, P.) had also won a gold medal from the journal.
All the five DRSs of mine had got very good comments from the external experts (from India and abroad) for their theses.
Presently, I am technically guiding (not as their formal guide) three DRSs for their doctoral programs, one of which is nearing the submission of her thesis. The (sub-) topics covered for these theses are: Gaussian sum extended Kalman filtering, Gaussian sum extended information filter, aircraft parameter estimation using these filters as well as artificial neural networks, implementation of Pugachev’s nonlinear filters, multi-modality sensor data fusion for disaster management; analytical studies, and validation of the developed methods using MATLAB-based realistic simulations.
A few unpleasant things:
a) For a DRS I had agreed to be a co-guide, since I had already five DRSs for whom I was the main and the sole guide. I had given a topic for her thesis/synopsis, and also outlined the DRAs for her work for next 3/4 years, and also helped her in preparation of first paper that she was planning to submit. There were three authors, herself, her main guide, and me as her co-guide, when I had first checked her draft, and also in the revised one that was checked and approved by her main guide. Ironically, when she sent me a copy of the paper that was accepted and published in one particular journal, I found that my name was missing; to which she replied that in the final m.s. that was submitted to the publisher, her guide had removed my name.
b) For another DRS for whom I was a co-guide, continued for some time and cleared his 4 papers that were required to be passed before his comprehensive oral-examination was to be done. By this time I had guided him to publish three papers in some reputed online-open access journals where some nominal fees were to be paid, and I was preparing him to face the oral presentation; he had just then retired, so he had lost interest in pursuing his doctoral research studies, and despite my calling several times on his mobile, and writing several emails, he never picked up his cell phone, and never replied my emails; he cut off his relation with me for no fault of mine; may be he was scared that I would force him to continue with his Ph.D. program.
c) Another lady assistant professor for whom I was a co-guide, had failed in one paper, and then she again attempted and then also failed; so when it was last/third attempt to appear, she had approached me and sought my help; for which I devised a quick and sure approach to study and approach the question paper; then she cleared the paper, and also had cleared other three papers; but subsequently she quit the program, even though she had continued to be in her job-position.
***
2. At IISc (The Indian Institute of Science), Bangalore
Prof. R. Padhi of the dept. of Aerospace Engineering of IISc. was working on the govt. sponsored project on the ‘development of artificial pancreas for type I diabetes patients’; and there was a need to develop a mathematical model for the patients’ real-life-data: glucose/sugar versus insulin, from the real type I/II subjects. Since, I had done lot of work on parameter estimation from aircraft flight test data, I was appointed as a consultant for three months for this work (in the year 2017-2018); and I was supposed to go there for two days in a week.
The project was jointly (to be) carried out by: Prof. Padhi’s team, the electrical communications dept., design dept. and MSRIT hospital; and the data were to be collected from the patients in the hospital.
My role was to guide two project assistants for this work to analyse the collected sample time histories of glucose/sugar in the blood, and the insulin produced and to fit a two-state parametric mathematical model using the known parameter estimation methods, which were mainly available in my book: Modelling and Parameter Estimation of Dynamic Systems (2004, IET/IEE, UK).
More than one dozen data sets of real patients and normal subjects were collected and analysed by the team. Based on the consistent results generated a paper was presented to a conference held in Pune, and it got a cash award of Rs. 100,000 (*); which was divided as: 50% to the presenter, and 50% to the a/c from which some money would be given (in the form of a gift, or useful devices) to the patients who would participate as subjects for collecting the data needed for the modelling and analysis.
(* The Chellaram Foundation Diabetes Research Award-2018 for the best paper presented at the 2nd International Diabetes Summit, March 2018, Pune, India; all the five authors had got a certificate each from the Foundation; the paper is listed as: QUANTITATIVE ESTIMATION AND COMPARISION OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PARAMETERS IN HEALTHY INDIAN AND CAUCASIAN POPULATION. By Shivanagouda Biradar#, Archana Balan#, Radhakant Padhi#, Mala Dharmalingam+, Jitendra R. Raol$; # Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India; + Department of Endocrinology, M.S. Ramaiah Medical College, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India; $ Emeritus Professor, M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Consultant to Department of Aerospace Engineering, IISc, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.)
***
Subsequently, two/three trial runs for validation of the artificial pancreas developmental-scheme were conducted at the RIT hospital with real patients for a period of nearly 6 hours, and the results of this were very satisfactory and encouraging; and during one of these experimental trials, I was present for the full duration of the trial; despite the fact that I had just then recovered after 7 months of my bone-operation of multiple fractures.
***
When fully developed (to be done as yet another project?), this artificial pancreas will be a smart-phone like device, of the similar size with gluco-sensors stuck/pasted to the arm of the patient, and a thin long tube from the insulin-delivery-pump (like an injection syringe), with its end inserted to the patient’s lower body part as convenient to the patient. The device computational unit would do the following: i) receive the glucose/sugar readings from the sensors, ii) feed the data to a mathematical model, iii) this model will decide a proper dose of the insulin to be administered, iv) this will feed to control algorithm, vi) which will initiate pumping action, and vii) the calculated dose of the insulin, from the stored dosage, will be delivered to the patient via the thin and ling tube to the body of the patient.
The present cost of the imported device is ~Rs. 100,000/-; whereas it is expected that the newly developed device made in India might cost much lesser. This will be a boon to the diabetes type I patients.
***
I personally feel greatly satisfied that my expertise of parameter estimation for aircraft was very useful for the social and health related application. *****.
