7th Annual Research Retreat organized by Jain (Deemed-to-be University)
250 Doctoral Scholars and 150 Research Guides participated in the Research Retreat
Bengaluru, 23rd December 2020: Jain (Deemed-to-be University) recently organized its Annual Research Retreat for the 7th consecutive year virtually. The Research Retreat was a two-day program that was held on 19th and 20th December 2020. The objective of the event was to enable scholars across different domains to meet together and discuss their research work as well as major issues relating to research and academics on a common platform.
The topics and speakers for each of the general and plenary sessions were carefully selected, with an emphasis on improving the quality of output of the research retreat every year. A highly interactive set of general and faculty plenary, concurrent, and breakout sessions were conducted over the two-day retreat, which was attended by 400 eminent speakers, research scholars, and doctoral guides.
The three general plenary sessions focused on the following themes presented by the following speakers: Building a Research Culture in Higher Education by Dr. Shakuntala Katre, Former Dean of Sciences and Professor of Zoology, Bangalore University, Research and National Education Policy 2020 by Prof. MK Sridhar, Member, University grants Commissions and National Education Policy Drafting Committee, and Current Research Trends and Opportunities to Excel by Dr. V Venkateshwara Rao, Senior Scientist, TCS. The plenary sessions were dedicated to each of the four major disciplines. The speakers gave their insights and thoughts on specific themes in the domains of Engineering, Management, Science, Social Science, and Languages.
Dr. Raj Singh, Vice-Chancellor of Jain (Deemed-to-be University), spoke on the major challenges for education in today’s world, which included the consequences of online learning, remaining relevant to industry standards, and preparing for the growing economy. He also stressed the need to break barriers, work together, and collaborate across disciplines, cultures, industries, and nations to provide solutions to real-life problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Singh also opined about the technological advancements in the coming decades, like the Hyperloop, AI and Robotics, Machine Learning, etc. He also stressed the importance of critical thinking, creative problem solving, and developing technology with a humane approach to tackle any potential future issues. Dr. Singh commented that in the current landscape, research is not given its due importance and it is not viewed as a primary and vital function of academics, something which needs to change. Only 2.5% of institutions in India provide a Ph.D. program, while enrolments in the Ph.D. program were less than 0.5% of the 37.4 million students opting for higher education.
