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Item Fewer students going to US could be a new beginning(The Indian Express, 2026-02-04) Rao, V. RamgopalItem Viral robodog video shows why Indian universities need less spin, more substance(The Times of India, 2026-02-23) Rao, V. RamgopalThe recent episode involving a private university at the AI Impact Summit has been painful to watch. First, a word for the students and faculty. There are good students and committed teachers in every institution. When something goes viral for the wrong reasons, it is not only the management that feels the heat. It is the final year student sitting for placements. It is the young assistant professor building a research profile. Social media can be brutal. The debate quickly escalates into questions of national prestige. That part is deeply unfortunate. Now to the uncomfortable questions. What is fundamentally wrong in such incidents is not one exhibition or one poorly handled explanation. It is a culture where optics begin to dominate substance. A serious academic institution does not send a marketing executive to explain a technical prototype. The person standing next to a demo must be someone who designed it, built it, coded it or experimentally validated it. The moment scripted marketing language replaces technical depth, credibility collapses. In today’s world, every audience member can fact-check in real time. Second, excessive freedom to marketing teams in academic matters is risky. Universities are not branding agencies. Communication must be academically vetted. Leadership must take responsibility. Public claims are not just about visibility. They reflect the intellectual integrity of the institution.Item Making chips intelligent(Financial Express, 2025-12-15) Rao, V. RamgopalA 3-nanometre transistor is no longer science fiction; it is inside the phone in your pocket. Yet classical silicon is gasping. The next leap will come from nanoelectronics: new materials, new device physics, and integration at atomic precision. This includes today’s scaled CMOS, powering everything from AI chips to edge devices. This is not just about making chips smaller. It is about making them smarter, cheaper, and greener.Item Shrinking devices, expanding possibilities(Financial Express, 2025-12-13) Rao, V. RamgopalA 3-nanometre transistor is no longer science fiction; it is inside the phone in your pocket. Yet classical silicon is gasping. The next leap will come from nanoelectronics: new materials, new device physics, and integration at atomic precision. This includes today’s scaled CMOS, powering everything from AI chips to edge devices. This is not just about making chips smaller. It is about making them smarter, cheaper, and greener. The global nanoelectronics market, encompassing scaled CMOS semiconductors, sensors, and IoT edge devices, is heading toward $1 trillion by 2030. Nanosensors already detect a single virus particle. Ultra-low-power chips enable IoT networks that run for ten years on a coin cell. Flexible electronics printed on plastic will turn any surface into a display or a health monitor. From electric-vehicle powertrains to satellite constellations, every high-growth sector rides this wave.Item Ivy league or India, universities need public funding for innovation(The Times of India, 2025-11-17) Rao, V. RamgopalWhen Trump recently cut federal research funding, the tremors were felt even in America’s richest universities. Harvard, Stanford and MIT, with endowments worth tens of billions of dollars, were forced to cut budgets, delay projects and draw from reserves to stay afloat. The academia in the US soon realised that private donations and endowment income cannot replace the steady flow of govt support. That decision has shaken the very foundation of the American research ecosystem and offers an important lesson for the rest of the world. Public funding is not charity. It is the backbone of a nation’s knowledge economy. Not charity but investment: When govts withdraw support, universities begin to behave like businesses Every great university system, both public and private, is built on predictable govt support. In the US, private universities like Stanford, MIT and Caltech each receive hundreds of millions of dollars annually from federal agencies. Every grant carries an overhead, often between 40 and 60%, to support laboratories, staff, maintenance and compliance systems. These overheads sustain the invisible infrastructure that keeps research alive. Without them, even the wealthiest private universities would struggle to survive.Item Perception parameter a black box in NIRF rankings’: BITS Pilani Group V-C Ramgopal Rao urges more transparency(The Indian Express, 2025-09-18) Rao, V. RamgopalWith BITS Pilani entering the top 10 in the ‘universities’ category of the NIRF rankings this year for the first time since 2016, Prof V Ramgopal Rao, its Group Vice-Chancellor pointed to what worked for the institution this year and the issues he thinks are to be addressed in the rankings. Prof Rao, who is a former director of IIT Delhi, and has been a faculty member at both IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi, co-authored a paper – ‘Unpacking Inconsistencies in the NIRF rankings’ – published in the journal Current Science last year. The paper raised concerns about the reliability of the rankings, flagging issues like the “subjective” nature of the ‘perception’ parameter that is included in the rankings, inadequate transparency in the methodology, and reliance on data that is self-reported by institutions.Item Peer review crisis is stalling India’s scientific progress(The Times of India, 2025-09-15) Rao, V. RamgopalItem Why NAAC accreditation system needs a rethink(The Times of India, 2025-02-17) Rao, V. RamgopalItem As Tier 2-3 cities join exodus abroad its time to focus on 'Study in India'(The Times of India, 203-11-20) Rao, V. RamgopalLast year, the number of Indian students taking admission abroad exceeded 750,000, marking a remarkable 50% increase from 2021. Notably, more than one-third of these students chose the US, indicating a substantial 35% surge compared to the preceding year. An intriguing observation highlighted by a recent TOI report is that now one in every four international students on US campuses hails from India. While anecdotal data suggests a significant decline in the number of IIT students venturing abroad, the surge is predominantly attributed to students from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. Projections indicate that Indian households will spend an estimated $70 billion towards their children’s foreign education by 2025. Given these economic dynamics, it comes as no surprise that international universities are aggressively wooing Indian students with scholarships, newer academic programmes etc. and several countries have strategically improved their student and employment visa policies to attract Indian talent. Notably, geopolitical considerations have contributed to a decline in the number of Chinese students pursuing education abroad, while India is experiencing an exponential growth.