PhD experience is shaped by primarily the research group involving supervisor and colleagues, and secondly by peer group involving the faculty and other PhD Students, and finally by infrastructure. CSE IIT Kanpur gives a rich experience in all these aspects.
I was fortunate to work with Prof. Baswana for my PhD, whose idealistic pursuit for research has shaped my entire journey. He is not only exceptional at finding the right research problems for us, but also guided us how to consciously develop this skill for ourselves. He took deep interest and care about our PhD journey, guiding us for the right time to seek an independent student paper, external collaborations etc, which proved significant later stage in our careers.
The faculty at CSE IITK in general are a great boost for the research environment, wherein every PG level course (except compulsory 601 and 602) gets ample flavour of its research aspects. Particularly for PhD students, the rich culture of our department made the faculty treat us PhD students as research peers which was great at making us feel included as a part of the department and responsible for it success and improvement. We also had a theory seminar SIGTACS (Special Interest Group on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science) which gave us a taste of the latest research in TCS. The student peer group was also significant in shaping the PhD journey. The successes of our peers were celebrated regularly both on the website and in person, which inspired us to strive harder and be more ambitious in our goals. The vibrant discussions with our peers truly guided us through the challenges of the PhD journey, but also gave us an overall understanding of research in larger CSE domains, outside our own research area. The peers often guided each other gave suggestions free from the requirement of acknowledging their contribution etc. in our work. This made the research environment more collaborative and less competitive.
Finally, the infrastructure also played a subtle but significant role in our PhD journey. The state-of-the-art facilities within our department (both RM and KD buildings) are currently unmatched across most IIT campuses. We were handsomely funded by the Research-I foundation as well, which allowed us to focus less on arranging funds for attending conference/workshopts etc, but more on actual research work. We were also all given laptops in our first year, which surely imbibes confidence the department shows in the students.
