Mentorship & Feedback

"There is a board in front of biotechnology department which says "You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself - Galileo galilei". Dr. Prasoon Kumar had been that catalyst for me for the past one year. His mentorship helped me to realise my potential and enabled to dream big irrespective of where I'm in life. His mentorship has given me a direction to navigate life with highest of values. Time and about i always found him standing by me in the face of difficulties. I'm grateful to the universe for providing me such a great mentor." ---  Kamasani Aaryasree (MTech Biotechnology, NIT Rourkela, 2021-2023 batch)

"I have learnt a lot, more than I expected. The quality of work which I did was not possible without your guidance. The thing which I liked the most was that my opinions were always welcomed and respected. I felt free to share my views about anything. You were not just a guide sir, you were a mentor for  academics along with other parts of life as well. This I told to Arya (new MTech student) as well and to quote "you are lucky to have Sir as your guide, so convert it as much as you can". Just the timing was not right, I was at most difficult phase of my life, and thus I felt I have not given my 100%. Also I got just 4-5 months l, which should have been a year. But this is not the end, hope to collaborate in future and learn much more from you sir." ---  Shikha Tripathi (MTech Biotechnology, NIT Rourkela, 2020-2022 batch)

"I would like to thank you for being my supervisor. It was an immense pleasure working with you. During last one and a half years, I found you to be an outstanding professor with immense Knowledge, easily approachable and friendly. My project work had been successfully completed because of your support and guidance. Apart from this, I would like to mention the difficulties which I have faced due to lack of your time and due to your busy schedule that is totally understandable though and also there were lack of resources by which most of the work was dependent." ---- Nirbighna Shaw (BTech Biomedical Engineering, NIT Rourkela, 2018-2022, batch)

"Sir, you are a very nice and warm-hearted person. I got a lot of useful advice on academics and career and you are always patient to help me. You gave me a lot of excellent advice and gave me a chance to ask a question and start a discussion. You encouraged me and gave freedom of choosing topics and doing research that is invaluable. You always motivate me in failure and make us more excited about our work. After getting results of any experiment you told us the result irrespective of it is negative or positive that things help to keep us calm after any negative result. You guide us at every step of the path. The most Important thing that I learned from you is patience and your saying that we learned more from failure than from success. You always help me to resolve the technical problems when I get stuck. You always spend your valuable time to talk about entrepreneurship and encourage us to develop products and get market for it. Finally, I want to say thank you for everything and you really know the most effective way to train the student."                      ------- Rohit Parkale ( MS Pharm, Medical Devices, NIPER Ahmedabad, 2018-2020)

"I gained enormous amount of knowledge and experience in the field of biomaterials during the term of the program and credits to Dr. Prasoon. There was always an emphasis on the concept of “give and take” with regards to ideas and information. Dr. Prasoon always encouraged me to work on my ideas and was extremely open to them, although I was an undergraduate. He was always open to discussions about not just biomaterials but any subject pertaining to science. His guidance and encouragement definitely made the summer internship worthwhile and I would look forward to work with Dr. Prasoon again."                                                                                                             ------- Amritha Bhat (Intern @ IISc as Bioengineering Summer Training (BEST) programme, May-July 2017) 

"You continue to be excellent in your teaching. You are a good teacher who devotes a great amount of personal effort and interest to your daily teaching activities, as well as to your students. As one would expect, student evaluations of your teaching remain very high in all categories. Above all, you remain open and receptive to comments and suggestions as to how your teaching can grow and improve. In that regard I commend you for the ways in which you have responded positively to some of the things you and I have discussed during 2-month internship, as well as in personal life. You are making an outstanding contribution to teaching and to the instructional programme in your field. Overall, in this short duration I have not only learned the technical skills but you teach me how to relate these skills with real-life problems."                                      --------- Hemant Kumar (Intern @ IISc as Indian Academy of Sciences Summer research programme, May-July 2018) 

Talking to you has provided me with great insight. Sometimes I have felt that the whole education system is such a rat race and hustle culture infused and therefore it's no point in pursuing it further. But mentors like you give me hope, that there are still people who are willing to teach students and work towards building a better future, that there are still people are willing to help and support strangers in time of crisis. Maybe it's not a lost cause after all. I really can't appreciate all the help I get from you everytime since I had never expected a prof to actually talk to me in such details but I'm glad to have connected with you luckily. I feel I'll be learning a lot under your guidance, rather learning a lot about how to learn and grow. Thank you so much for making that option available for me. I had almost believed that I cannot transition anymore and I only have to proceed in life with the work I'm doing and things won't be multidisciplinary anymore. But even seeing your journey and transition just raises hope that if someone I know can, then why not me. I will be thinking everything through now, even with the taiwan thing. When I am back from taiwan, I wanna learn from you if the option remains still available from your side. That's the current course of action that I'm thinking as of now. Also sir it'll be great if you could suggest me some resources or books that you think I should start with if you deem fit. Meanwhile I'll be collecting some materials and would like to cross check with you if I'm going in the right direction. Feedback at this stage is probably the most essential part of learning and it would be great to get some feedback from you time to time. I would again like to emphasis my gratitude towards you , not just for sparing your time, but for uplifting many more students all around the globe, even if it's through your posts. They are really insightful and truly makes people contemplate. ------ Shreya Mahapatra (KIIT Bhubaneshwar, LInkedin)