chea voice october 2006 - chemical engineering, iit b

Chea Voice, October 2006 6 1

The Future of the Chemical Industry – A

2020 perspective

By Devarun Ghosh

Bearing Yogi Berra’s admonition that “Predictions are difficult especially about the future”, the prospects for the chemical industry seem to be optimistic despite the many twists and turns between now and 2020 that the industry is likely to encounter. The chemical industry will evolve over the next decade and a half, fostered by an era of changing competitive landscapes, globalization, and consolidation. Such factors will shape the future of the chemical industry, and by 2020 consolidation in the west and the rise of new competitors from Asia and the mid-east will have produced several mega-producers with 2-5 times the contemporary volume. This consolidation will be driven by the need to spread fixed costs such as R&D, information technology (IT) and so on, across larger volumes. In such an environment, winners will be high performance businesses that deliver sustained results over time. The leading chemical companies will share a few fundamental dimensions in common like being networked, market focused & innovative. Certain present trends are likely to continue, such as the move of commodity chemicals closer to source (Middle East) or mass markets (India & China). A fundamental change likely to transform the dynamics of the industry is the strong, secular shift in energy and feed-stocks creating a sharp price gradient across the global map. The chemical industry thrives on its diversity and ability to adapt. A diverse and adequate energy supply will fuel a healthy and prosperous chemical industry within a decade. Innovation like opportunities for process intensification etc. will continue to remain a core value of chemical technology. By 2020, a new wave of innovation characterized by the growing importance of bio-sciences and nanotechnology will be ushered. Biotechnology is already influencing certain enzymes and organics used in the industry, and by 2020 bio-based production will expand to colorants, polymers, surfactants, fine chemicals, food additives, and more. Biomass will be an important raw material, and the raw materials used by the industry as a whole will be more diverse than they are today. Nanotechnology will be an important driver of this innovation by 2020.Recent research breakthroughs have led to the development of nanoparticles that are already being used as additives in sunscreens and other personal care products. Other nanomaterials now in development will be used to make materials in 2020 that are stronger, lighter, harder, self-repairing and safer. In the United States, opportunities lie with ever more complex biopharmaceuticals (think statistical genomics), with ever more subtle instruments & reagents, with neutraceuticals and “organic” (meaning higher priced) niche items, and with “leisure products” (plasma screens, electronic gadgets etc).

One may identify a list of fundamental forces shaping the global chemical industry in terms of capital reallocation, intensive international commerce, consolidation of global majors, exploring coal & biomass as an alternative energy options besides renewables. As we near peak profitability today, it stands to reason that capacity additions to the commodity chemical industry in 2009-10 could exacerbate a cyclical downturn by the end of the decade. The good news is that producers may be popping champagne corks again in 2020. Consolidation will be a priority with financial investors seizing opportunities in the chemical industry and companies focusing more on their core competencies. The countless number of mergers & acquisitions will lead to many new faces, increased competition and greater financial discipline. An integration drive fueled by risk/volatility- raising the ante for participation requiring full chain integration with greater upstream involvement is on the cards for the petrochemical, diversified chemical and polymer sectors. This could impact businesses such as engineering plastics and other larger-volume intermediate. Sustainability will become much less an aspiration and more a way of life. Its definition will have greatly broadened to require that we as an industry do our share not only in generating economic growth but in raising living standards throughout the world, and equally important, improving the quality of life for a much broader swath of people than today. Arguments over environmental issues such as greenhouse gases will largely have been settled, with much greater attention to reducing emissions and preserving natural resources, including the most precious of them all: water. Shifting technological frontiers increasingly allow for substituting products and processes where trade-offs have to be made between economic and ecological considerations by innovations where economics and ecology benefit hand-in-hand. As 5 billion people surge forward, opportunities for chemical end-use sectors will abound. Industry is likely to grow well over $10 trillion by 2020. Let me quote Mukesh.D.Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Limited as “The global chemical industry must rejuvenate chemical assets, expand on large sites, consolidate to bring about better productivity and global delivery, invest in talent, and , above all, partner with energy producers, private equity investors, and project management firms to forge a meaningful future”. What we might rejoice about is that Francis Bacon’s dreams of a science that would serve “to the glory of God and the relief of man’s estate” are coming true. (The author is a 4th year student in the department and was assigned a project at Jamnagar last summer by Reliance Industries Limited. He has attempted to assimilate bits and pieces of an enlightening thought process that he was able to imbibe during this time. The author is immensely grateful to Mr.N.S.Murthy at RIL, Jamnagar and Dr.P.P.Maitra at RIL, DAKC, Mumbai, both senior vice-presidents (Reliance Industries Limited), to whom this article is dedicated.)

ChEA Voice October 2006

Chemical Engineering Association (ChEA) The Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Bombay

Andar ki baat…

Internship experiences The “Class”ic Dilemma Biomedical Engineering

What’s cooking? An Ode to Larry, Moe and Curly

Career Blues

and lots more………..

The ChEA Voice team:

Aruna Ramkrishnan Arvind Gangadhar Avtansh Agarwal

Chetna Choudhary Amrit Jalan

Devarun Ghosh Jaisree Iyer

Omesh Johar Rachita Sharma Vartika Bansal

Vogeti Viswanath

From the Editor’s “piled up” desk:

This issue has taken more time than I had planned for or rather allotted to it. But it seems to have come out quite well in the end (or so I think and would like to believe). To say that it has taught me a lot would be an understatement. Apart from the apparent “learning” I have got to know quite a few people quite well. The process of working on the issue often brought before us conflicting viewpoints and sorting them out was no small job.

This first issue has been designed in such a manner as to make it useful to a vast spectrum of readers. The issue also offers variety in the nature of articles incorporated, some are leisure, some are critical while some have been written in a lighter vein. The technical articles have been tuned to a level such that there are minimal pre-requisites to understanding them. Both academic as well as non-academic aspects have been dealt with in the articles. The first issue has completely been an undergraduate effort but we hope to change this situation with the subsequent issues. I also take this opportunity to thank each and every one of the people who have contributed to the issue. We have tried to make the issue an informal and informative one and hope you enjoy reading it. (The short descriptions of each author, wherever they occur, have been used to provide a humorous insight into their thought process and have been supplied by the respective authors.)

-Amrit Jalan

Editor

Feedback

We would like to have your feedback on this issue. Please send in your views, suggestions and ideas as this shall help us improve and learn. Anybody (UGs, PGs, PhDs or faculty) interested in writing or contributing to ChEA Voice can mail me at [email protected]. The faculty is specially requested to send in its views and comments.

- Editor

The ideas and opinions expressed in this newsletter belong essentially to the authors and the content managers and do not reflect the opinion of The Chemical Engineering Association (ChEA). “ChEA Voice” is the students’ newsletter of the Chemical Engineering Association (ChEA) and does not intend to malign any individual or group. All images used in this issue have been reproduced with permission from the concerned authorities, wherever necessary. Grievances and demands for apologies, if any, may be addressed to [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Chea Voice, October 2006 6 2 What’s Cooking? By Aruna Ramkrishnan- ‘Kalam Wali Bai’ Cooking, and difficult? Not for us chemical-engineers-in-the-making! Not many of us realize that cooking is engineering too, cooking processes being very similar to chemical engineering operations, like filtration, agitation, transportation of fluids, evaporation, heat transfer, mass transfer, kinetics, fluid-solid operations etc. the list goes on and on. Cooking has its own set of 'laws' and 'theories' and woe betide you if you mess with them! The final product will be of an inferior quality and will have to be discarded off with the wastage of raw materials and energy. Let’s consider the average man’s daily food intake. We generally begin our day with coffee or tea. Then comes breakfast which typically depends on which part of India you belong to and varies from idly-dosa to bread to paranthe, cereals etc. Next come lunch, snacks dinner and the menu again varies from place to place. Rice, lentils, rotis, naans, curries, sambar, rasam, the barbeques and grills of the elite, the pastas and pizzas, the wine sautéed chickens, the Pepsis and Cokes and what not!! Quite surprisingly, every one of these meals relies on various chemical engineering processes. Think of the different chemical engineering concepts involved in these steps : coffee brewing, milk preservation, carbonation of soda drinks, the enormous surface to volume ratio that activated charcoal has leading to easy production of ‘self lighting’ charcoal, the boiling and straining of pasta, the distillation-like process involved in sautéing the mixture of wine(alcohol) and water………. To many, chemical engineering is a vague subject. Most people might only be able to describe chemical engineering as the science of making chemicals. Its now time to brush up on some definitions we once mugged up as kids. So, what is a chemical? Surely, petroleum and pharmaceutical compounds are chemicals, but can this category be expanded to include cooking? Webster’s Dictionary defines a chemical as “a substance obtained by a chemical process”. A “process” in this sense is any chemical mechanism that is implemented to transform raw materials into desired products (Felder, 2000). Food is a chemical in this sense, since one makes the final product by combining and changing various raw materials. And cooking therefore is a form of engineering because it involves the use of materials for the benefit of mankind (Gunn, 2000). Hence proved!!

Your morning cup of coffee: (Of course, when you get up in the morning and start making coffee, you might be too busy trying to keep yourself awake to worry about the science that is

about to transpire☺) Coffee making is a prime example of one fundamental chemical separation process: solid-liquid extraction, which is also known as ‘leaching’ or ‘washing’. Water is the liquid used to extract coffee particles from the mixture of solids contained in the coffee grounds. Consider what happens when you reuse coffee grounds several times: with each brewing, your coffee becomes more dilute due to the decreasing concentration of coffee particles left in the solid mixture. The filter is a convenient means of separation; it allows solids dissolved in a liquid to pass through, while keeping the undissolved solid behind. For a solid to dissolve in a liquid the two must have similar polarity. Fortunately for coffee drinkers, coffee particles dissolve in water because both the solvent (water) and the solute (coffee) are polar, that is, both have an asymmetrical arrangement of electrons. If

coffee were non-polar, it would require a non-polar solvent such as vegetable oil, an unpleasant prospect for your morning caffeine rush.

Out of popcorn and need to whip up something quickly to satiate those taste buds while you

watch a movie? I found this while surfing the net and found it rather nicely put... Masala Papad: “Raw Materials”: papads, tomatoes,

onions, green coriander, red chilly powder, salt, chat masala powder, oil/Butter. The “Chemical Reactor”: Preferably a microwave oven else kadhai will do. If cook is a good juggler, none of above is required. Total “batch time”: Few minutes (especially when you are watching a movie, what are breaks for anyway!) “Process Engineering”: Remove papads from their storage vessels and transport directly to microwave oven reactor. Generally 3-4 at a time can be roasted (good energy utilization + time optimization practice!). Operating conditions of reactor: 40 seconds, full power or whatever time your microwave is used to. Apply oil/butter to one/both sides of papad if you can allow a few calories. Else, transport cooking oil to pan/kadhai and fry the papads. Jugglers can try directly roasting papad on the furnaces (read LPG burners). Using Size-reduction equipments (got this one? knives!) reduce size of your organic raw materials - tomatoes, onions, coriander. Disperse the organic chopped raw materials over the fried/roasted papad, Sprinkle red chilly powder, salt, chat powder as per your requirements. And Masala Papad is ready! The Phenomenon that was Harvest Gold: What follows is a classic success story on the use of good chemical engineering practices in the food industry. Read on………. One fine day in October, 1991, the Delhi Administration decided to decontrol bread prices. That opened up opportunities for new entrants since price became a factor of what the customer could pay. So, in 1992, Hassan, a chemical engineer from IIT (Delhi) sold his stake in a partnership firm making telex-interfaces for PCs, deciding to bake bread instead. Along with his wife, he invested the sum he obtained in setting up a Rs.1-crore unit at Rewari (Rajasthan) to supply 1,000 loaves a day to Gurgaon (Haryana). That marked the beginning of the couple's travails. The first problem was to produce a quality product since most customers complained that the bread they purchased would turn green within hours, or had huge holes in the slices. When Harvest Gold was launched, both Modern and Britannia were not producing quality products. However, ensuring quality was impossible with the then-available bread-making machines that were either imported (read: unsuitable for Indian conditions) or mere design copies of foreign machines. Using his skills, Hassan re-engineered the machines--part-by-part. The rack-ovens did not provide for the rotation of the racks. Hence, the loaves, often, used to get burnt on

one side. With a little ingenuity, Hassan managed to change that. Now for the next hurdle. Since loaves were packed in wax-paper, buyers complained that they had no idea whether the bread was fresh or stale. So, the gold-diggers experimented with transparent polybags. But, these changes added to the costs. For example, the transparent polybags added Rs.1.25 per standard loaf to the selling-price. Therefore, Harvest Gold had to position its product in the premium segment, priced as it was at Rs.7 per standard loaf compared to Rs.5.50 in the case of Modern, and Britannia's Rs.6. Fortunately, the Gurgaon launch proved to be a success. As sales increased, they were confronted by distribution-related glitches. For one, most of the distributors had profitable relationships with the large players and, hence, demanded commissions which were 4 times as high as the 25 paisa per standard loaf paid by Britannia and Modern. Even when such high commissions were paid, many of the distributors agreed to pick up only small quantities. So, Harvest Gold was forced to set up its own network. To prevent damage to the bread carried in the traditional iron crates--where loaves are stacked vertically on top of each other-Hassan also designed smaller, plastic crates, where each loaf is laid out horizontally. Well, not only did the strategy work, competitors were forced to copy Harvest Gold's technique. All this had still to be backed up by effective advertising. That's when Siddiqi and Hassan met Suhel Seth, the 36-year-old CEO of Equus Advertising, who was given a brief to convert a quality product into a brand. And Seth did that when he launched a snazzy campaign with the punch line, ‘Bakwaas Advertising--First Class Bread’. In his words: "The campaign had to appeal to the common man. Therefore, it had to be humorous and in Hinglish." It worked. Easy though something as ‘trivial’ as baking bread may have sounded earlier, the story above demonstrates the nittigritties involved in the processes involved in the food industry, right from conception to marketing and distribution, more so because of the strict quality control needed due to the nature of the industry (as food is something humans consume directly). If you like problem solving, being creative, playing with your food, and can feel the vibe of the consumers, then you might actually enjoy “Food Engineering.” Food engineers apply the concepts and principles of engineering to the conversion of raw food stuffs into safe consumer products of the highest possible quality. They work in the areas of food handling, processing, packaging and distribution. They are involved in developing ways to preserve food longer, inventing new cooking technologies such as high-tech ovens, improving food transportation vehicles such as ice cream trucks and a whole range of other activities. With the sky rocketing world population, there will always be an increasing number of mouths to feed. With rapidly changing lifestyles, there will always exist the need for product and process innovation in the food industry. Given the diversity in packaged foods penetrating the world market food engineering is indeed an appetizing career possibility! Aruna Ramkrishnan is a third year student of the department and is fierce and dreamy eyed at one go. (Paradoxical, you say?). She also seems to possess a strange kind of fervor and energy which generally reflects in what she does. She is known to spend time in class contemplating about the universe in general and is grateful to the nudging and poking from friends that keep her from dropping down in class. She seems consistent and contradictory at the same time and hence she is ‘Kalam Wali Bai’. (Email:[email protected])



“I am in class and a professor is carrying out his chores. Things seem to be going on pretty smoothly when I am struck by something. Things around me suddenly start moving very slowly. I cannot hear the professor, for that matter I can hear nothing. All I see are faces: faces of students and the professor. The students faces seem bland and spiceless: one has just woken up, another about to drop down, one looks at the clock, another appears as if he is in prison, one is listening, another is trying hard and failing, one is smiling, and another enjoying the sight outside, each one different in a pool of indifferent ones. The professor seems aloof and distant, in a different world altogether. Is this what we had in mind when we came here? Was this foreseeable? Have I made a mistake and realized it when there is no looking back? Or is it just that I am taking small things too seriously? I am now thinking through words.” Clap! Clap!! Let’s step out of the trance, assign some variables and build up a typical classroom atmosphere. GS= motivated student who believes that the sole cause of his bad CPI are the professors who can’t generate interest in their respective subjects. GS in general has a good brain (by the way which person in this place has a bad one?) but refuses to use it when the occasion demands it. GS has interests in other activities that seem to have diverted his attention from mainstream academics. Prof A = Great professor. The students’ favorite, who maintains a “lively” environment in class. This particular person can mock at students in their faces but does so with an unbeatable attitude as a result of which students enjoy laughing at themselves. Plus, he teaches well. Prof B = routine professor. Can be described by the following lines: He came. He taught. He left. No attitude and hence not popular. Teaches reasonably well but is a stickler for rules. SS- carefree student who is least bothered about what goes on in class and also what doesn’t. Level of maturity (?) and motto-cum-philosophy of life can be summed up by the statement “I own a watch and therefore I own time.” HH= hot headed student with decent CPI who does not know who is at fault and is of the opinion that something is wrong on both sides. Another thing, HH is a little hard of hearing. HH also has a major deciding disorder and can’t reach conclusions with ease. VS= a student, academically backward, once believed that the problem lay with him and that he could improve if he tried, but two years closer to graduation, he has been endowed with the enlightening view that there never was anything wrong with him and it is the profs who are to blame. Now welcome to class!! Its 9.30 a.m. and Prof B is at the blackboard. As a mark of respect students in the back benches make sure that the commotion they create is homogenously distributed and that no person in particular lands in trouble. HH is sitting in the second row of the class, fists clenched, ready to thrash the chocolate out of the first person who manages to provoke him which as a matter of fact is an easy job. SS and VS are within a hair’s width of provoking him. The microphone doesn’t work properly and as a result HH has a hard time listening. SS, VS and gang are deeply engrossed in their daily routine of nothingness and gossip which is why HH’s head is spinning madly with rage. Prof B continues teaching rather indifferently……..

Scene 2: Prof B has left. The class has refreshed itself with tea and samosas from the canteen above. Enter Prof A. Silence. Roaring lions and buzzing bees are replaced by attentive camels and dead fish. And why not? After all, the dragon stands before them. The thing in his class is that if you sleep or talk, he never scolds or mumbles like a hag. All he does is to ridicule you in such a wise manner that you end up laughing at yourself. It serves to lighten the mood in the class and of course students enjoy seeing someone being ragged every other day (a very mild exaggeration).

At a technical level A and B are equally sound. Both know their subjects in good detail. Then why are they treated so differently? Is it just because one has a loud personality and the other is soft spoken? Well, this is “the” reason for a large number of students; mainly SS and his likes. But the seemingly more rational GS and his cult have, according to them, a far more serious reason: feel factor. Feel factor is defined as the level of interest a professor imbibes in his class. So Prof B has a low value for feel factor while Prof A scales peaks in feel factor. We agree with this. But what we don’t understand is what the big deal is? Is our level of interest governed solely by the capabilities of the person teaching the concerned subject? Is there nothing like inherent liking for something? In addition, the way this is linked up with poor performance is preposterous to say the least. For your information students perform equally badly in both professors’ subjects. And how does one justify a motivation as baseless and inexplicable as a teacher’s competence? If one were really interested in something ideally nothing could stop one from excelling in it. And if Prof. B does not bring out the “feel” in a subject, believe me, even Albert Einstein wouldn’t produce any different results. And the feel that we talk of in Prof A’s subject is merely an illusion lit up and decorated by his voluble methods of teaching and interpersonal skills. And we are quite sure Prof A is well aware of that.

So where exactly are we heading with all this? We are now treading dangerous waters. The problem happens to be a rather simple one: of having your cake and eating it too. What GS, SS, VS etc. want is that all Profs should fulfill the following conditions:

1) should be very enthusiastic in class and offer varied kinds of entertainment

2) should teach their subject with chutzpah and feel factor should be high

3) should take students lightly and let misdemeanors go unnoticed

4) should enable students to clear the course with “flying grades” irrespective of the kind of efforts they put in: which translates into setting simple papers and leniency in grading.

In short, either the professor, poor chap, has to be specially manufactured by God, or must be ready to part with every last vestige of pride in him. Anything amiss and the professor is instantly labeled “bad”. Mind you even after this rather stringent quality control on professors, GS and gang want CPI to be the last thing on a prof’s mind while judging students. What will the students do while professors try idealizing themselves? Well, there are scores of things to do: F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Sabbath, Lucky Ali, Omkara etc. happen to be a few of the activities that the students shall engross themselves in while professors do all the slogging. So at the end we have GS, SS, VS all satisfied that they are genuinely interested in what they have learnt and reproduced on exam papers. The world is good at last!!!! But there is just one small problem with all of the above: the world for the most part is non-ideal and everyone’s wishes cannot be fulfilled and here is where the concept of “striving for your aims” comes into the picture. “Striving” is something that most of us are acquainted with (because of JEE) and unfortunately involves the following activities:

1) Finding a motivation that rises above the competency levels of a professor.

2) Staying focused irrespective of external agents like CPI, Profs again and peers.

3) Working hard to keep one interested. We as students have either failed to find suitable motivations in life or are caught in a web of conflicting motivations. And since accepting this fact is tough we decided to make scapegoats out of the next in line, namely professors. And since “practice makes man perfect”, we have over the years mastered the art of “scaping” goats to professional levels. We forgot another point, in order to make sure that the “scaping” process is complete we also require professors to expect no morality or ethical behavior from the student. Although our experienced and established professors don’t really expect much related to ethics (though they hope, time and again), we as engineers should be prepared for exceptions. In short, from a typical student’s viewpoint, the professor does not reserve the right of expectation. He either tackles the students with the right type of connivance or suffers the brunt of being unpopular. We generally go around thumping our chests that we belong to the best chemeng department in the country. Little do we realize that a substantial chunk of this reputation will have to come from us, if not now then definitely in the future. And if this is the way things are to proceed then it is perhaps time for some introspection: both on the faculty as well as on the students’ sides. The blame game has been played far too long and it’s time we understood that there is scope for improvement on both fronts.

Amrit Jalan

Aruna Ramkrishnan Avtansh Agarwal

Vartika Bansal


Chea Voice, October 2006 6 4 The Industrial P.T. By Omesh Johar- ‘Dr. O.J.’ Come 5th semester and we all start looking for internships. Almost all of us are on a look-out for “foreign PTs”. So much so that even those who get placed in one of the companies that visit the campus, keep sending emails to professors (I was also one). It seems that the industrial training falls short of the glamour of going abroad unless it pays heavily. If I appear to be against the research PT, I would like to clarify that it is not so. However, the industrial PT has so much to offer which may help one more than its more popular counterpart. Why an industrial experience is important needs no testimony. It enables one to acknowledge how the process fits into the picture of manufacture. Issues of control, flexibility, safety and optimization become clear. There is a small thing which I would like to share with you. In the factory where I worked, a piece of glass had been fitted on the curved surface of a pipe that carried steam. Thus, the operator could see whether steam was flowing. Just before this piece of glass was a valve. Why should the valve be placed before the piece of glass and not after it-any ideas? If the valve lies after the glass and it is required to close it, the glass would not be able to withstand the pressure. This is but one of the many insights which one gets from experience. I strongly believe that an industrial PT complements one’s theoretical knowledge.

The next point: learning is alright but does it make our future prospects any better? It seems that the training impacts prospects of a core job, an MS and a PhD differently. Thankfully there is a very thin line of demarcation if at all there is one. Let us consider each of these. It is intuitive that chances of a core job are better with an industrial PT at hand. Surprisingly, according to Prof.Bellare, chances of an MS improve too. But it does not mean that you would not get a core job or an MS just because you have a research based PT. As far as the PhD is concerned, a research based training helps twofold. Firstly, it enables exploration of the field of research. Secondly, it may lead to a good letter of recommendation. However, neither of these benefits are limited to a research PT. Exploration of an area is possible in IIT also and good letters of recommendations can be earned here as well. So how should one decide? I would recommend choosing on the basis of the kind of experience that the training provides. When I choose a job rather than further studies or vice versa, an experience of both would enable a sound decision. As mentioned above, research experience can be acquired in IIT as well. Unfortunately, this is not so with industrial experience. Hence, to gain that perspective, I would recommend an industrial PT. Assuming that you are considering an industrial internship let me tell you what you should expect out of it. Normally, a project is assigned to a trainee, as was my case and that of some other class-mates. Yes, you would

have to run around the plant to understand the process completely. But that will be only for the initial period. The good part is that the more you roam around the better. Ensure that you loaf in the cash, dispatch and the stores sections also! About hours of working: I was in the factory from 9 am to 6 pm. But you don’t have to be on your toes all the time. One is free to work at his or her own pace. Besides, one gets to work independently. What else? Is the stipend a concern? Although it does not appear in any of the issues considered above, it would definitely make life easier. The higher the stipend the better it is. That goes for facilities too. Will they pay for air travel, accommodation, food and will you be able to access the internet free of charge? You may like to request the company for these things if they are not provided but their absence should not deter you. Besides, the scene is not bad in any way. Normally it does not tax you to do an industrial PT! All said and done, I would end this with a piece of advice. Take some time out to decide what you want to do. If you are too hard pressed for letters of recommendation, a research PT may help. But if you are weighing careers in research or industry, you might like to look on the other side of the wall. I wish you all the best in your endeavors. (Omesh Johar is a 4th year student of the department and did his PT at Hindustan Lever Limited. He can be contacted at [email protected] and yeah, “Dr.O.J. knows it all”.)

My lab mates were quite amazed that I didn't eat meat, or smoked or even drink. They used to ask me questions like how did I enjoy life by not indulging in such activities and if it was a religious constraint. Vegetarians there were allowed to eat fish and I had to explain to them that even fish wasn't part of my diet. They were quite surprised; if not more than I was, about the stark differences in our eating habits.

- Jaisree Iyer

“It is believed that the training impacts prospects of a core job, or an MS and PhD differently. Thankfully the line of demarcation, if at all there is one, is very thin”

-Omesh Johar

The Research P.T.

By Jaisree Iyer- ‘Cribber’ Coming into the 5th semester, the most popular talk among junior undergraduates is no doubt about their practical training (PT). From electing PT representatives and laying down PT rules to attending various talks by companies and PT ‘fundae’ sessions by seniors in the hostel and the department, the 5th semester is packed with events related to the PT. Like a few of my colleagues, even I was interested in doing a research PT as I was quite sure that I wanted to pursue further studies after my B.Tech.. As I had a bias towards the US, I had applied to US universities only and was fortunate enough to get a positive response from a Professor at Purdue, the place where my parents were staying for a year. So apart from the opportunity of working in a research lab in one of the better universities in the US, I also got the chance to spend most of my stay with my parents. The experience at Purdue was one of a kind. My stint in the lab began with an orientation by my guide who introduced me to everybody in the lab and the department office, the people with whom I would be interacting during my stay. Most of the graduate students were Koreans, Chinese, Americans, Indians and few from the Middle East. The lab tour was filled with instructions including directions to the places where one was supposed to go in case of a fire or tornado. Even the most obvious of things were explicitly stated which at times was quite amusing. As part of my internship I had to assist a PhD student in collecting and analyzing experimental data from a horizontal tube bundle heat exchanger with condensation in the primary side and boiling in the secondary side. Working on fine tuning the test facility

helped me learn about quite a few pieces of equipment and instrumentation. Throughout the course of my work we had frequent meetings with my guide where we briefed her about our progress and had a discussion about the data and the future course of action. Though we were able to finish all the tests, we weren’t able to check for the repeatability of a few runs as a part of one of the equipment broke during experimentation.

All around the lab there was an

atmosphere of sincerity and punctuality and the same was expected from me. I was expected to put in 40 hours a week but the timings were quite flexible. There were students who came in early at 7 while there were others who would come in only at around 12. Also people in general were very courteous, friendly and helpful. In a short time I was made to feel at home by my lab mates.

My life outside the lab wasn’t as

exciting as that of my colleagues doing their internships abroad. Staying with my parents during a major portion of my stay meant no cooking and grocery shopping. Most of my weekends were spent indoors, meeting my relatives living nearby, roaming around the Purdue campus with my friend or sometimes working in the lab. Roaming outside the campus was possible only if one is accompanied by someone having a car. Public transport was as good as non existent. The only mode of public transport was a bus service going till the supermarket which more often than not had only 5-6 passengers. A people abiding traffic rules was probably one

of the most appealing things I came across. Throughout my stay at Purdue I hardly ever came across someone breaking traffic rules probably because the large sum of money they would have to cough up in the form of fine and insurance premium if they did so. Another pleasant feature was that as far as possible, most things were made with consumers, including the physically disabled people, in mind. All footpaths would have ramp at its two ends. Buses also had ramps to enable passengers with wheel chairs to alight and get down. The whole bus went down to let elderly people alight easily. Supermarkets had small vehicles so that people who can’t walk long distances can shop comfortably. But still there were things I wish would have been different. One of them was amount of waste created and the amount of resources used by people in the US. Paper was wasted like water. And in spite of repeated appeals on TV to use less gas, finding more than one person (the driver) in a car was a rare sight. On the whole the internship at Purdue was an enriching experience both on a professional and personal front. Apart from gaining first hand experience on the research activity there was a lot to learn from their work culture and ethics. (Jaisree Iyer is a 4th year student of the department and is famous or probably infamous among her batch mates for her constant cribbing about everything under the sun. Though she has kept the cribbing at a minimal level in this article, you can get a dose of the same by just exchanging a few mails with her

at [email protected])

Note: While interested third year students are busy applying to universities and laboratories in India and abroad, sophomores who aspire to do the same in the upcoming summers are advised to start hunting for contacts and submitting their applications.




Chea Voice, October 2006 6 5 Career BLUES-- Part I

By Vartika Bansal- ‘Bindaas’ Avtansh Agarwal- ‘The wall’ Amrit Jalan- ‘Facad’ Entering the last year or two of your stay in IIT Bombay can be taxing in more ways than one. Apart from academics, the issue of the career ahead takes up a lot of a student’s time and thought. Mysterious or rather unpredictable as most of our futures are, youngsters generally have a hard time weighing out options and considering pros and cons. A majority of them, still in a state of self-denied indecision, then generally go with the flow, sit for interviews and eventually end up getting selected into some place or the other, all this while never having really asked themselves what they want out of their lives. Answering this particular question is part of life and it is a matter of time before one encounters it. The more you keep delaying, the farther you are from the answer and the benefits of realizing it and moreover you keep running out of time to come up with an answer that you shall be satisfied with. We hope whatever little information we have managed to put together is deemed useful by the concerned parties. The IIT Bombay placement scene has always been revered and if anything has only got better in the years following the dot-com bubble burst thanks in part to the booming economy & recognition of India as a world destination for business. Another lucrative option (esp. in terms of creative satisfaction) that is catching on is going for a PhD abroad. In Part I we look at the fields not related to chemical engineering that have been popular among students. Apart from the statistics we will also have ex-students share their experiences here and how (if at all) engineering has helped them get a foothold in the field/company they are in. Job distribution in the batch of 2006::

(Data obtained from Avinav Nigam) A very simple analysis shows us that while the number of core jobs was 45 (mostly M.Tech. and PhD students) the number of non-core jobs happens to be 57. Of these 57 a major share has been taken up by software, analytics, consultancy etc. There generally are lots of things said and unsaid about this “class” of jobs and the final picture painted in the mind of a typical student is generally an obscure and hazy one. We asked two of our pass outs (batch of 2006) about their job profiles and this is what they had to say:

1) Pranav Choudhary: Pranav is into investment banking and has a job as a junior analyst with Bank of America. This is how he responded when quizzed about his job profile…..

“It’s a typical I-banking job, only thing being that it’s a support for the US centre (crudely speaking, it’s a BPO - like Lehman, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and UBS). Chemical Engineering (or Engg.) background hardly makes any difference. Work in investment banking is a lot about doing monotonous things with accuracy, meeting deadlines and long shifts. Things aren’t as bad in India as abroad (which is compensated by low pay-packages here). One thing about job – IITians are highly respected. The fact is that quite a few IITians (not all) do perform better than non-IITian guys. The job is a pleasant break from the IIT way of learning. For the first few months there is a lot one can learn from the job - handling people, getting aware of career

options, learning quite a few things the hard way. But more importantly, no matter how routine the job is, if one wants to learn something - there is oodles of Gyaan waiting to be devoured.”

2) Saurabh Gupta: Saurabh is into consultancy and has given a good insight into the field by way of the questionnaire answered below:

What is consulting all about?

A consultant is a professional who provides expert advice in a particular domain or area of expertise such as accountancy, technology, the law, and engineering of different kinds, scientific specialties such as materials science, instrumentation, avionics, and stress analysis.

What does it take to be a consultant?

Consulting is good for people who like to combine their analytical business capabilities with knowledge of science and technology. Consultants gather information, shape it for a particular situation, and educate their clients.

In the chemical industry, consultants study products, markets, manufacturing processes, environmental regulations, and patents. With this information they assist executives in making business decisions concerning new products, acquiring other companies, or reorganizing internally.

Key skills to be successful in a consulting environment:

• Contacts and the ability to work with others.

• Good interpersonal skills and ability to present information clearly and persuasively.

• Good time management skills. ⇒ Good analytical skills.

What is the typical job profile offered in the consulting firms to the fresh IIT graduates?

Fresh graduates from engineering colleges like IITs, NITs, start at the Associate/Analyst level wherein they are involved in the implementation of the business rules at the ground level. Depending on the firm, they are exposed to various challenges, and in the process they learn various skills required to have a sound career in this field. Responsibility, if given at early stages, helps a lot to smoothen the career ahead. This parameter should be taken into account while choosing the firm.

Does Engineering background help in a Consultancy?

Engineering colleges like IITs help in building skills required to succeed in this field. Sound analytical skills, great inter-personal skills and working in a team to achieve great results are

some of the attributes that good engineering colleges inculcate in the students. Consulting firms operate in various fields and domain knowledge is a must to be able to advise the client.

In the second part of this of this article we shall shift focus to the options available to students related to conventional chemical engineering. We shall try and look at the nature of core jobs offered and also explore the prospects of higher studies.

Vartika, Avtansh and Amrit are 3rd year students of the department. Avtansh is known as “the wall” for the simple reason that it’s tough to get across him given his sheer size. He also seems to possess the mental resilience of the other “wall” known to Indians. (Email:[email protected])

Amrit is widely regarded as a disgrace on the race of IITians and is quite unpopular for his habit of digressing into long sermons in the middle of “normal” conversations. Moreover he doesn’t practice what he preaches. He is known as “Facad”. (Email:[email protected])

Vartika is a self confessed weirdo but also claims to be funny, witty, humorous and the like. She can be caught humming songs in class quite ‘un-bothered’ about the disturbance it can create. And as the habit suggests she never has any worries in life, come what may. We therefore call her, in local language, ‘Bindaas’. (Email:[email protected])

Core Chemical (B.Tech.+M.Tech.+PhD) 45Consultancy 7FMCG 9Marketing 6Software/Analytics/BPO 26Others (IPR etc.) 9

Chemical Engineering Laboratories

By Chetna Choudhary- ‘Notes’ Rachita Sharma- ‘Gupchup’

Anyone who has been in the department for two or more years knows the nature of the Chemical Engineering undergraduate laboratories. A typical lab routine involves reading up procedures written in lab manuals followed by literal spoon feeding from the experiment-in-charge (read TA) as to the working and functioning of the experiment. This is followed by an analysis session where students are seen trying frantically to fit data, look up constants, understand theories for the viva etc. What’s left at the end is a lot that has probably understood very little and that too for an amazingly short span of time. As a result, when the endsems arrive students are seen mugging up whole experiment procedures and formulae, and this too often turns out to be insufficient. We understand that there is little that can be done because of the fundamental nature of the experiments involved. Nevertheless we have, based on informal discussions with batch mates and seniors, come up with a point wise list of possible changes in the current lab regime that might help making it more effective. We hope that at least few, if not all, of these provide the lab instructors with some food for thought. 1) There can be “extra lab-hours” when students could go and perform experiments on their own (or with assistance of TAs if required). This might help students get better acquainted with the apparatus. 2) Group size could be reduced (to 3), so that each student remains engaged during the lab hours. This would also prevent students from indulging in activities unrelated to lab work. 3) Each group could get manuals with experiments differing slightly in their objectives (wherever possible) .This will discourage copying and discussion amongst different batches and will help the students gain more from the course. 4) Lectures could be held on experiments that deal with topics not at all taught in class so that students have a little theoretical background before the experiment is performed.

Chetna is a third year student and specialises in ‘notes making’. She is the sole reason why people have stopped worrying about attending classes. One could write an entire text book from her notes and therefore we call her “Notes”. (Email:[email protected]) Rachita is a third year student and is scarily quiet at times, likes eating gupchup (Pani Puri, for the uninitiated) and comes up with brilliant, perfectly timed one liner descriptions. She therefore is “Gupchup” (Email:[email protected])


Chea Voice, October 2006 6 6 Biomedical

Engineering By Vogeti Viswanath- ‘You know’ Alexander Fleming inadvertently discovered that the common mould Penicillium produced a powerful antibacterial agent. The active agent produced by the mould, penicillin, worked wonders for treating human infections, but was difficult to produce in sufficient quantities. Mould cultures were grown on the surface of solutions contained in milk bottles; however, it was determined that a row of bottles stretching from New York City to San Francisco would be required to meet the penicillin demand of wounded soldiers during World War II. To help meet this war demand, chemical engineers worked with microbiologists to develop a process for culturing mould in 10,000 gallon tanks called fermentors. Significant engineering challenges were associated with this tank process: aeration, agitation, heat removal, and sterility issues all had to be dealt with. The successful engineering of these tank fermentors was a major breakthrough in medical science. It gave us the capacity to mass produce penicillin in required quantities. This historic development was based on knowledge from both microbiology and chemical engineering, and ushered in a new discipline known as bioprocessing or biochemical engineering. Biomedical Engineering combines the mechanical and mathematical expertise of engineering with the medical expertise of physicians to help improve patient health care. Broadly speaking, this discipline involves the application of chemical engineering principles to biological systems. Important progress has recently been achieved in many biomedical areas with essential contributions coming from engineering. Examples include computational biology, tissue replacement production, drug delivery and genetic engineering. Computational biology has made important contributions to the human genome project. New development in stem cell research calls for advanced engineering methods to coax these cells into effective tissue replacement to alleviate organ shortages. Genetic engineering allows us to transplant human DNA encoding for insulin into an E. coli host cell. These bacterial cells can then be cultured in large fermentors similar to those used for penicillin, producing true human insulin in the process. While biological discoveries in these fields bear much promise, significant engineering challenges must be met to bring these products to the people. Thus, this explosion of discoveries in the biological sciences will require knowledgeable biochemical engineers to make them a household reality. Firmly rooted in biomedical science and engineering, biomedical engineering is emerging as a leading option for chemical engineers. Examples of areas of biomedical engineering where chemical engineers play a major role are:

• Bioprocesses (biochemical reaction engineering; bioreactors with associated bioseparations). Bioprocesses produce pharmaceuticals, chemical commodities and energy products.

• Bioseparations have important medical applications such as cell separations (e.g., stem cell recovery) and proteomics (e.g., total analysis of protein content in a cell).

• Biomaterials (particularly for controlled release of bioactive compounds or surface modifications to become biologically compatible or to actively direct biological activities).

• Drug delivery is an area in which chemical engineers have had a major

impact, particularly for controlled delivery of pharmaceuticals to specific target sites (e.g., a tumor).

• Drug/chemical metabolism can be predicted using physiologically based pharmacokinetic models as well as cell culture-based systems for in-vitro studies. These efforts link chemical engineers to the toxicology/pharmacology communities.

• Drug design and discovery. While many disciplines play important roles in drug discovery, chemical engineering contributions are of increasing importance. For example, computational tools developed by chemical engineers for understanding protein-ligand interactions and chemical signaling in cells can be used to search for potential drug leads.

• Nano-biotechnology (e.g., "lab-on-a-chip" type devices; chemical engineers have played key roles in development of these devices which are basically small-scale chemical plants).

One subfield of biomedical engineering which shows a lot of promise is the use of nanoparticles for the treatment of diseases.

Cancer is a disease which is conventionally treated with chemotherapy or surgery, both very painful options with debilitating side effects. But researchers believe nanoparticles should provide the one-shot therapy advantage of radiation without the side effects.

According to researchers at MIT and Harvard, a single treatment of drug-bearing nanoparticles effectively destroys prostrate cancer tumors in mice. “This approach could lead to powerful methods of treatment”, say the scientists.

"We did a single injection of the particles, and then followed the tumor for the next 109 days, and showed that we basically had complete tumor elimination," says Omid Farokhzad, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, who, along with Robert Langer, Chemical Engineering professor at MIT, led the research.

Nano-particles can kill cancerous cell, but without the side effects of conventional therapy, in part because the particles deliver drugs specifically to the inside of cancer cells, avoiding damage to healthy tissue.

To make the nanoparticles, the researchers mixed together a prostate cancer drug (docetaxel) and polymers that are FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved. The polymer formed spheres with the drugs trapped within. The researchers then chemically attached pieces of RNA, called aptamers, to the surface of the spheres. The RNA folds into shapes that fit into complementary structures on the surface of prostate-cancer cells.

The key to the nanoparticles' effectiveness is the ability of their RNA strands to bind to a cancer cell membrane. The cell then pulls the particles inside. Having the particles inside the cell has two advantages: it gets the drug where it needs to be to kill the cells, and it decreases the concentration of the drug outside the cancer cells, thereby decreasing toxicity to healthy tissue. The fact that the polymer releases the drug gradually also helps. The drug is released over the hours or days it takes for the particles to be pulled into cells, where it continues to be released, killing the cells. Eventually, the MIT-Harvard researchers hope to design nanoparticles that can be injected into the bloodstream, from which they could seek out cancer cells anywhere in the body, making it possible to treat late-stage metastasized cancer. "Even though this represents a small percentage of patients that actually have the disease, these are the ones that have no therapeutic option available to them," Farokhzad says. "So the idea of having nanoparticles that can circulate through the body, find cancer cells, and kill them is very attractive."

Robert Langer, a chemical engineer from MIT himself, helped develop the drug delivery system in the nanoparticles. He devised a process for trapping the drug in spheres of the polymers and for chemically attaching RNA to the surface of the spheres.

This is just one example of the potential and promise of biomedical engineering. Successfully getting bio-products into the clinical market where they can benefit patients will require collaboration from a variety of professionals who in the past may never have worked together. Chemical engineers may need to work with biologists and material scientists to successfully formulate a method of treatment for previously untreatable diseases. The traditional areas of expertise of chemical engineers, that is, methods of drug delivery and designing process systems for mass manufacture of drugs are proving invaluable to the ongoing fight against diseases and the scope for further involvement is ever expanding.

Viswanath is a sophomore in the department and is known for his irritating habit of saying 'you know' after every sentence in a conversation. This habit has, you know, been a topic of, you know, other's conversations for, you know, a very long time now. Hence he's called "you know" and can be contacted at [email protected]

Laughter Lines:




By Arvind Gangadhar- ‘Mutley’ It's just another lazy, quite expectedly uneventful 8:30 a.m. lecture in the department. You've just completed your daily routine of waking up at 8:35 and swearing all sorts of ghastly curses at your alarm clock that your mind can possibly think of that early in the day. Feeling quite content after having told your alarm clock to drop dead, you proceed to getting out of bed and actually going to class. Five minutes into the lecture, you find yourself looking skyward, deep in argument with God, begging him to tell you why it is that you have to endure this nerve-grating, mind numbing, would-put-a-polar-bear-just-out-of-hibernation-back-to-sleep ordeal every single day. You look back into your life to see when you could have committed so great a blasphemy, so outrageous a sin as to deserve this. You expect God to put on his usual benign smile and tell you in his calm, soothing voice, "Be patient, my lad. Only a couple of years more to go! I shall be there with you," or something of the sort. Instead, he slaps his thighs hard and lets out guffaws of laughter louder than you've heard any man produce before. It's almost as if He's sitting up there on his golden throne amidst the puffy clouds watching the latest episode of Seinfeld. This, folks, is his idea of a joke. Well, God needs his dose of humour too, and if it's at the expense of the average IITian, so be it. You say you understand and silently leave just when tears of laughter are about to start rolling down his cheeks, but not before leaving a little note with Gabriel, reminding God about the tiny matter of midsems lurking round the corner. Would he be so kind as to slip Him the note when He is in a particularly generous mood? Thank you. Right, so having nailed the nagging problem of midsems, we are back to the same old question of everyday, "How do I pass the remaining 45 minutes of class?" The atheists in the class have chosen to forgo the daily ritual of groveling for mercy in front of the Almighty and gone straight ahead with business, meaning that they've blissfully gone off to sleep. Sigh, the angelic look that some people have on their faces as they doze in class, their peaceful, rhythmic breathing brings to mind images of a new born child resting in its cradle. Almost makes you want to believe that there can be no purer act than this in the world. Sadly, you've just finished counting your eight hundred and seventy sixth white fluffy sheep jumping over the fence but sleep still eludes you much like the topic being currently taught in class. Meanwhile, you notice the door open and shut briefly although visibly no one entered. You dismiss it as possible after effects of last night's excessive boozing. A few seconds later, a couple of shrieks go out from the ladies on the first bench. They pull up their skirts and jump onto the benches yelling that something large and hairy just scraped by their feet and nearly half scared them to death. The backbenchers’ interest is stirred and like valiant knights rushing to save the damsel from the fire breathing dragons of yore, they arise by the dozen from their sweet slumber and begin hunting for the intruder. All through they assume a completely innocent and indifferent look on their faces. It is the same look an IITian sports when faced with the difficult situation of having to explain to the local traffic havaldar why it is that he is riding a bike back from "Anita wines" at 3 in the morning holding a black bag which is producing sounds much like the clinking of multiple beer bottles inside, and how it is that

he lost both the bike papers and his license in the torrential rains of last week. However, on the inside, everyone in the class knows that 'Larry' is in the house, right on time to provide some much needed entertainment for the masses. Larry, Moe and Curly, fondly named after the Three Stooges are amongst the oldest members of the Chemical Engg. department, highly revered by students of all years. They've been here before you managed to clear the JEE by some mystical quirk of fate and they'll be here after you've managed to get your B.Tech. and pass out (again, by some mystical quirk of fate). How do you explain their being furry and walking under benches scaring the life out of people? Well, that's because they are the oldest canines on campus, or rather what we call, department mutts.

These flea-infested, hair shedding, butt scratching, perpetually drooling creatures brighten up our dreary mornings by providing a few minutes of entertainment that help us get through the whole day. They know the department timetables even better than we do! You can bet your brand new, 180cc Bajaj Pulsar with attached spoilers and boosters (bought against institute rules☺) that, come 8:45 a.m., one out of Larry, Moe or Curly is going to walk through that door, make a few circles around the class, shed a hair or two, choose the spot in which he would cause the most amount of unrest and peacefully go off to sleep. There are few joys sweeter in this world than watching a professor (laureate and winner of multiple academic laurels) be completely stumped as to how to get a smelly dog out of the class. It’s almost as if the three dogs, while rummaging for scraps through garbage cans kept outside the canteen, had a revelation one day. Larry, "Yo Moe, evah wunder why the big G man gave us birth in IIT and not on the streets like 'em other strays?" Moe (after much pondering and head scratching), "D-uhhhhhhh, cos the mess food sucks and we gets to eats it all?" Larry (groaning), " No, you dumb mutt, it's coz He has a bigger 'poipus' for us in life. We gots to makes them lectures fun so them students don't kill 'emselves outta boredom! *Woof*!" Moe, "D-uhhhhhhhh, cant's we just continue searching for bones instead?" Well, at least that's how I'd like to believe it all began :) So, ever since, the three dogs each take a pick out of the second, third or fourth year classrooms (depending on how intelligent they are feeling on that day) and go about spreading a little unrest, a little chaos, so that we aren't drowned in a sea of batch reactors, fractional distillators or unrefluxed, agitated, quasistatic, multipassed... errr... thingies! Kindly note that the extent of their skills is not

limited to just sleeping off in class (although that's about all that you would expect an IIT dog to do), but they are undergoing training provided by... ahem... certain enthusiastic backbench punters to possibly perform novel and much more entertaining tricks like pulling the plug on the computer when the Prof is in midst of a presentation, or bringing decaying, grotesque objects found on the streets and proudly depositing them in class, or the surely to be a hit feat of running off with the recently corrected batch of midsems papers while they are to be distributed. The possibilities are endless!

So people, let's remember to keep our bags loaded with doggie treats at all times so that these benevolent canines may always know how much we appreciate their heroic acts. Meanwhile, its 8:45 a.m. again, time for Larry, Moe and Curly to go to work... Arvind is a third year student of the department and takes no responsibility for seemingly outrageous ideas or plans mentioned in the article. The fact that he is a highly skilled dog trainer with many years of experience and a true veteran in the field is mere coincidence. It is because of his affinity and love for dogs that he agreed to write the article and the reason why

he is called “Mutley”. (Email:[email protected])

And if this wasn’t enough………. Ever wondered what Newton would have to say if he were to postulate laws on human abstractness……….presenting to you the first of The Newton’s Laws of Graduation.

(Disclaimer: This message is not intended to poke fun or hurt the feelings of any individual or group and is meant to be taken in a lighter vein)

ChEA Symposium 2006The symposium this year was organized on the theme “startups in chemical engineering” and included, among other things, a business plan competition called “Kickstart”. The speakers at the event included Mr.Sanjeev Pathak (President, Reliance Industries, Patalganga), Mr.Shashank Inamdar (Joint director, Praj Industries) and Dr.R.K.Lagu (Director, SINE, IIT Bombay).



THE GRE

By Amrit Jalan- ‘Facad’ GRE is the acronym for the Graduate Record Examination. To cut long stories short this is the exam you as an IITian should treat as a ticket to the American universities for higher studies. Though the term “ticket” might sound an exaggeration I suggest you write the exam with this attitude because unless you are naturally inclined towards the English language and its intricacies, the preparation for this particular examination can often take you to your extremes (I speak out of experience). The GRE has three sections namely:

1) the verbal section 2) the quantitative section 3) the essay writing section

As has been the case for several years now, the GRE as an exam has carried different connotations for an IITian compared with what students all over India generally have. And mind you these connotations seem pretty well justified and rational (?). The main problem that the GRE offers to an Indian is the level of vocabulary tested which barring certain exceptions is quite low in Indian students. While the rural lot cannot really be blamed for this apparent ignorance of “words”, the urban crowd fares only marginally better. Typical GRE preparation involves the use of the Barron’s guide to the GRE (to be referred to as Barron’s hereafter). Barron’s carries 50 wordlists alphabetically arranged and classified. It is widely accepted that the words in these lists are among those that occur frequently on the GRE (but its better not to rely too much on this fact because “English is a phunny language”☺.) The task of memorizing word meanings might sound trivial and easy at first, but it is only after one undertakes it that he/she realizes the truth. It is suggested that preparation be taken slow and steady as opposed to hoping to improve your vocabulary over the span of a few weeks or days. In addition to the wordlists it is suggested that a lot of general reading be undertaken in the course of the preparation for the exam. Not only does this help improve vocabulary but it also improves your chances with the reading comprehension questions. Another method that is used to mug up the wordlists more efficiently is that of using flash cards. These come in packs of 30 little boxes, each containing 100 odd “chits” of paper carrying a word on one side and its meaning on the opposite side. These can also be self made if one is patient and hard working enough. The other sections on the GRE are the quantitative and the essay writing sections. The quantitative section has problems in math that are simple and handling these shouldn’t generally be a problem. The essay writing section requires students to write short essays on listed topics. There are two types of essays that test takers are required to write- an issue essay and an argumentative essay. The issue essay type offers a choice of two topics. The issue task requires the test taker to respond to a particular issue and support his position with reasoning and examples. This task is intended to test a student’s ability to write effectively. The argumentative essay offers no choice and requires you to analyze a given line of reasoning, clearly pointing out the argument’s strengths and weaknesses and supporting your position with reasons and examples. But come October 2007 the GRE pattern is due to undergo a major overhaul. The table alongside gives a section by section comparison of the old and new patterns. Of the proposed changes the ones in the verbal section are considered as a blessing for those who are particularly weak in the existing analogy/antonyms section and strong at critical reading / grammar/ writing.

The changes planned for the verbal measure include (data obtained from www.achieverspoint.com):

Greater emphasis on higher cognitive skills; less dependence on vocabulary

More text-based materials, such as reading passages

A broader selection of reading passages

Emphasis on skills related to graduate work, such as complex reasoning

Expansion of computer-enabled tasks (e.g., highlighting a sentence in a passage that serves the function described in the question)

Test Sections and

parameters

Current GRE

(Through September

2007)

New GRE(Starting October 2007)

Verbal

One verbal Section: 30 Questions, 30 Minutes section includes analogy and antonym questions

Two Verbal sections* 40-minute each No more analogy and antonym questions, will include more >> Critical reading >> Sentence equivalence questions

Score 200-800 120-179

Format

Computer Adaptive Test (CAT)—the difficulty of each question is based on students' performance on previous questions

Computer Based Test (CBT) —each student taking that administration receives the same questions in the same order

Quantitative

One Quantitative Section: 28 Questions, 30 Minutes

Two Quantitative sections 40-minute each 1)quantitative reasoning skills tested more thoroughly 2)fewer geometry questions 3) more “real-life word problems ” and data interpretation questions >> New on-screen calculator

Score 200-800 120-179

Analytical Writing

2 essays: one 30-minute and one 45-minute, One Issue essay, one Argument essay

2 essays: 30 minutes each for the Issue and Argument essays >> More specific essay questions >> Grad schools can see actual essays

Score 0-6 0-6

Total Time 2 Hours 30 Min 4 Hours

AdministrationMost weekdays and weekends

Year-round 30 fixed test dates per year

Manudhane Awards 2006

ChEA congratulates all the winners of the Manudhane awards 2006

RG Manudhane Student M.Tech

excellence award

Diwakar Shukla & Vishal Agarwal

RG Manudhane Student PhD excellence award

Dr.Vivek Mutalik

Indira Manudhane B.Tech. Student

excellence award

Abhinav Akhoury & Prabhdeep Singh Bedi

Indira Manudhane Best UG teacher award

Prof.Sanjay Mahajani

Indira Manudhane Best PG teacher

award

Prof.U.V.Shenoy

Department T-shirt

People!! The department T-shirt is in its designing stages and we are looking for catchy phrases and designs. All interested people are requested to rack their brains and come up with suggestions and ideas. There are incentives waiting for the best design and best tagline. Please mail your ideas and suggestions to [email protected].

ChEA Executive Committee

FACULTY

President &

Head of the Department Prof. A. K. Suresh

Vice-President

Prof. Jayesh Bellare

Treasurer Prof. R. D. Gudi

STUDENTS

Vice President

Girish Bajaj

General Secretary Ankit Dixit

Web & Alumni Secretary

Pankaj Verma

Social Secretary Rishanth Reddy

Seminar Secretary

Piyush Bhargav

Editor Amrit Jalan


chea voice october 2006 - chemical engineering, iit b

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