Working towards a PhD is hard work indeed. But with a friend by your side, it can only become easier. That's the lesson that this father and daughter twosome from Kerala realised while pursuing their doctorate programme in electrical engineering from Thrissur Government Engineering College. Dr Nirmal S and her father Dr Sivarajan KN had the fortune of being partners in studies that one rarely gets to see. This is the story of their shared zeal towards engineering and research.
"Actually the idea to pursue a PhD was my father's. He had earlier received a sanction from the Electricity Board to do his doctorate degree way back in 2006 but that did not materialise as he could not find a suitable guide," says Nirmal.
"With my MTech degree, I was able to get into teaching after I retired from service (need to specify the service. I can venture a guess that he worked at the EB office but it needs to be spelt out) in 2010. I was even headed the Electrical and Electronics Engineering department at the last college where I taught. Even though I completed my master's in 1989, I was never really away from the academic side of things since my job demanded a direct application of whatever I had learnt. Besides that, I always felt that I had the personal ambition to study further," narrates Sivarajan.
Talking about the mutual collaboration of working at the same institute and the same department, Nirmal says, "At some stages I was egged on by the expertise and guidance provided by my father even though our topics were completely different from each other." Nirmal keenly stresses on the support provided by her mother throughout the past few years. "I feel even more than my father, the confidence imbued in me that allowed progress to come naturally came from my mother's side. Moreover, she took care of her job as well as our home during that time. She really was the pillar of support that both my father and I needed." Her (her as in Nirmal's or the mother'?) elder brother, who is a researcher at Tata Institute of Social Science in Mumbai, also helped her with advise on writing articles.
Beyond the same college, even the supervisor to both father and daughter was the same professor. "Our guide, Dr EA Jasmine, was extremely supportive throughout the course of the programme. She would give us timely prompts to keep us moving in the right direction. She would not exert undue pressure on either of us. At the beginning, she was very particular about our topics needing to be distinct from each other so that there isn't any repetition," recalls Nirmal.
"Another interesting and beautiful part of the course was when we both had to sit for coursework in the same classroom during the first year. We had to write exams for four subjects and studying for them was very fulfilling and enjoyable to both of us," says Nirmal, as she reminisces the time spent studying with her father. "I would never bring work home but my father was a proper workaholic. He would be up for it 24x7. I remember that he would get all excited about preparing simulation models on the computer and would not leave it aside. That used to bug my mother a lot," laughs Nirmal.
Sivarajan mentions one particular challenge that he had to overcome while doing his PhD. "Getting the thesis published in a reputed journal was quite a task since it was important to not just have the content and the work you have done, but also learn how to present it. They would focus particularly on the grammar of the text as well. That was a crucial part during the final stage of the process," he remembers.
Now that the father-daughter duo has received their doctorates, their paths ahead seem further aligned as both are keen to pursue teaching as a profession. There is no saying that they would not be teaching the same subject in the same institute somewhere down the line.
