Joint PhD Programs in India

This post came about as a result of several interactions with many of my friends doing PhD around the world. Quite a few of those misfits wanted to do a PhD in India but did not know about all the amazing opportunities available here and ended up making an un-informed decision. So here's a series of posts dedicated to:

1. Making the Indian PhD scene a bit clearer

2. Helping others riding in the same boat to make a more informed decision

3. Helping Indian research community in whatever way I can

What is a Joint PhD?

Quite simply, you enroll in two institutes, have two advisors (one from each institute), spend time at both the universities and finally earn a degree containing both of their names.

Why Joint PhD?

Well there could be many reasons:

• Two different advisors with each bringing their own expertise and ideas

• Two different research cultures

• Experience of living at another place

• VISA (if one of your universities is in another country)

  • This sometimes makes applying to internships, jobs and grants much easier

• Greater choice of courses

• Benefits of both the universities combined in a single program

• Stay with the family during a part of your PhD and its associated benefits (like food, lodging, etc)

Downsides

Not much in my opinion but here are some which I observed:

• Hassle involved with going and staying at the other university

• Managing relations between the two advisors

• Double the university paperwork

Why a PhD from India?

The only thing which stops people from pursuing higher education in India is the common myth that one does not have enough opportunities here. While it might have been true a few decades back, it is exactly the opposite now.

In the last decade, both the Government of India (GOI) and the private sector have brought many opportunities for Indian graduates. For instance, I have been awarded both the Google PhD fellowship (private sector) and the Prime Minister Fellowship (by the GOI). Many companies, including the likes of Google, TCS, and IBM, give fellowships to Indian graduate students. On the other hand, I have seen my amazing friends in US and UK, who are much smarter than me struggling to bag any such opportunities there.

There is also a lack of awareness of sponsored PhD programs which allow one to pursue a PhD while working in industry/government. While a decade back, India didn’t have many AI labs. This has drastically changed in the last 5 years. Today almost every big tech company has an AI lab here. Some examples are Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and IBM. Similarly, GOI has also ramped up its own AI centres. These laboratories allow one to choose one’s topic, do research, publish, patent, attend conferences, give talks, roll out courses, collaborate, organize workshops, and so on. Adobe MDSR has a very strong mission statement in this regard, “We will help buy your vision and see it through to production”. I have seen this first hand and know that even tenured professors don’t have such free hand in implementing their own vision on a billion plus customer base. In addition, in the last 2 years, software labour market has been very gracious and seen high growth providing more high-paying opportunities than ever before.

Similarly, while a decade back, university grants were too restricted to a few top institutes. This has also changed completely in the last few years. I myself have been part of multiple grants to the MIDAS-IIITD lab. For instance, in the last 2 years, with the help of two grants, I have cofounded two projects: Project Vidhaan for legal language processing, and Project Vaani for Indian Spoken Languages. In Project Vidhaan, our core task is to work on legal sublanguage. We have 1 PhD student with 4 research assistants, 3 professors, and a few industry collaborators, all spread across the world, collaborating on this project. We started out this project with the help of a Technology Innovation Hub (TIH) grant, a GOI grant. In Project Vaani, we want to build open-source Indian spoken language corpora. Government of Singapore, Adobe, University of Jaffna, and many companies and non-profits have expressed their commitment for the cause.

So, today, I don’t think there is a lack of opportunities in India. If one has will, one definitely has a way here. The only thing stopping you is yourself and not something outside. Opportunities are abundant here and the time is ripe for innovating and putting something out there.

Options in the Indian context

Quite a few universities in India offer this option. I am going to name a few of them here. Details of the program can be easily obtained after reading through the MoU or contacting the respective universities.