Pl read

If you are visiting these writings for the first time, or have not read the entry "Why o Why",

may I suggest you read that first and then read the rest in numerical order?



Monday 13 March 2023

Silver linings (incl. Exciting Collaborative Research)

Good or bad, “this too shall pass”. This truism can be unnerving to people who prefer some constancy around them, something they can cling on to, something like a buoy, in a turbulent ocean.

But, at the end of April 2009, we were looking ahead at a roller coaster ride whose only promise was that each day would be different from the previous one.
What would it be for someone in a busy hospital bed? Something that will take my mind off from the troubling anxiety of the probable to the possible solace that I had experienced in the past and, if lucky, might experience again? I felt a sense of relief when I told myself that I should continue to do what one had been doing the last 20 or so years - teaching and doing research.
Fortunately, I was on sabbatical leave during the period of my initial rounds of chemotherapy in India and the subsequent continuation of treatment at MDA (MD Anderson Hospital in Houston). So for people back home I was just on sabbatical. This also made it easy to remain in the hospital without worrying about the day to day commitments that I would have had to take care of if I were at IITB.
So much so, many of the students I was guiding - Masters and Ph.D students - were not quite aware of my exact whereabouts. That was a blessing in disguise - because their expectations - in terms of timely response to their work-related queries and worries demanded that I devote my attention to their needs; I was too busy with that to worry about my own problems!
Even now I count myself as being very lucky to have had such a nice diversion during my treatment days. To top it all, I even managed to give a set of (guest) lectures in the course on “Embedded Systems” during this period not once but several times.
In terms of research, those were exciting, even heady, days. Prior to the unravelling of all the La (Leukiemia') related events - in the first 3 months of my sabbatical - SK and I visited Saarbrucken, Germany, working at MPI (Max-Planck Institute) and collaborating with Prof. GW (Gerhard Weikum) and his research team. Along with them I started work on a new problem - tracking and detecting dynamic events from postings in internet news sites (and later in social media like Twitter). MPI’s wonderful research atmosphere and the many winding paths through the surrounding forests helped recharge my batteries in a short time. The many discussions I had with researchers there and the visitors that passed through were invigorating. These interactions continued even after our stay at Saarbrucken came to an end, culminating in two highly cited pieces of work.
I will share with you another, brand new, line of thinking triggered during the rather trying treatment days at MDA prompted in part by my interactions with colleagues and well wishers. I have begun to call it, "A computational approach to energy management", and is the mainstay of the work at "Smart Energy Informatics Laboratory", established after my return to IITB campus. The excitement in this research area, with enormous practical implications, will be reflected in my future blogs.

2 comments:

  1. Yes. It is amazing how you managed to correct my thesis and attend my presynopsis and my defense on speaker phones! Your dedication as a teacher and a guide is an inspiration !

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    1. Can't agree more! Not only did you correct her thesis but your witty comments on some of the mistakes showed great strength :) I still remember one mistake related to a unit (she meant grams but wrote mg or something similar) and you correlated that to the power of your medicine. It's amazing how you managed to "be there" for these things in spite of all other challenges.

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