Little Pleasures From the Past

Today my day started on a very high note.  My dear friend Jacob, Professor at Georgia Tech University at Atlanta, USA sent me some info, which made my day; not just a day, but many days.  The info was regarding the publications on my research work (part of my PhD program), that I did many many years back, when I was at IIT, Madras. 

The essence of my PhD work was published in the form of two papers in the most coveted journal for Structural Engineering, viz., Journal of Structural Engineering, from American Society of Civil Engineers.  In three to four years of those papers were published, I left IIT and forgot all about that.  

This morning my friend sends me a piece of info that he stumbled up on that indicates that the papers that I wrote based on my PhD work are well referenced and well-cited, even today, i.e., after almost 25 years of their publication.  What else do I need to feel delighted!!   In research field, number of quality citations of published papers are considered to be the supreme measure, that reflects the quality of the research work.  So, I thought let me flaunt it.

Within the general IIT community, I didn’t get much appreciation or support for my work, except from my guide and couple of professors.  Different opinions I heard were: "I should have chosen mathematical algorithms to solve the problem", "My focus is not in solving the problem, but the tool I chose", "Findings of my research will not have any mathematical underpinning" etc. etc.  In those days there was a general perception among many that a PhD thesis from IIT should have many complex and lengthy mathematical formulae in it.  Mine didn't have any.

But, I received good reviews from my PhD examiners and those reviewed the papers for the journal.  My PhD work was on the topic "Genetic Algorithms based Methodologies for Optimization of Discrete Structures".  My thesis did not have many complex mathematical equations.  More than Mathematics, I chose Algorithms from Computer Science, especially from the Artificial Intelligence (AI) family to solve Structural Engineering problems, which was looked at with considerable skepticism by quite a few.  I happened to listen to a lecture by Prof David Goldberg (A Professor at the University of Alabama) on 'Genetic Algorithms' at the Carnegie Melon University (CMU), USA in 1988.  I was at Carnegie Melon University at that time to work on exploring Artificial Intelligence to solve design problems.  The lecture made me think deeper on the problem I chose for my research work, and resulted in me deciding to go the Computer Science way rather than the traditional mathematical way.  And I chose Genetic Algorithms to solve structural engineering design problems for my PhD.   Possibly the potential that I saw in AI at CMU might have influenced my thinking.

I knew, it was bit early to work in an emerging field, especially when access to computers and computing power were highly limited, and there is a risk associated with it.  The IBM mainframe computer we used at that time at IIT had 512 KB of RAM, and a VAX-11 730 computer in our lab had 1 MB RAM.  I had the privilege of working on Apollo and Sun workstations for my PhD work, which had about 2 MB RAM; a luxury indeed!  My laptop has 8 GB RAM today.  Each run of my computer program used to take about 4 to 6 hours; some complex ones went beyond 12 hours. Though Artificial Intelligence concepts and techniques were well known during those days, the computing power required to run the AI programs was not there.  So it was a big risk that I took to venture into AI algorithms at that time.

In addition to doing research to get a PhD, I wanted to do quality research work.  I did get PhD for the work, but was not sure about the quality of my work.  Today my friend sends me some insights that reflects quality of my research work, done 25+ years back!

As per “Web of Science” report, my two papers together were cited by other researchers 490 times! Wow!!!!.   Maximum citations (32 times) was in the year 2013, 20+ years after the papers got published.  In general, the average citations for any good publication in similar topic in engineering seems to be around 10 - 15 (I was told so), and an average of 245 gives me goosebumps!  Here's a snapshot of "Web of Science" report.

In initial years, citations were less and it grew as years passed, indicating that my research work was well ahead of its time. 

As per the Library of American Society of Civil Engineers, my paper was downloaded 1374 times, which is a good number.

This info from my friend Prof Jacob led to mixed emotions in me.  Absolute delight, because of the assertion that the research work I did as part of my PhD work is of superior quality.  Immense sense of satisfaction to know that even after 20+ years, researchers still find value in my work.  And a bit of sorrow/ worry somewhere in a corner of my mind, that I didn't get to continue a career in research / academics, which I feel is best suited for me.  BTW, my wife realized this, and she used to tell me often to find ways to get back to my research and academics!  

Now, I am getting back to research, not in engineering, but in Music and Autism.

I would like to dedicate this post to my guru Prof CS Krishnamoorthy (fondly called CSK) of IIT Madras, who was a friend, philosopher and guide for me at IIT, without his guidance, my academic work and PhD work would not have been possible.  Me and Prof CSK have co-authored two books, one is on currently hyped topic "Artificial Intelligence". 

Such days are very very rare in life.. So thought of sharing my joy...