Cross Disciplinary Research

For those who are still new to the wonderful world of SRM, the impenetrable logic (or lack thereof) gaurded within the walls of draconion authority check these out here and here. So, before I begin an obligatory apology for not blogging so often. As I've been carried away with a deluge of work that finding time to blog is very very hard.

This is a season of mixed feelings, for everyone in our college, from the students who are more than happy to leave SRM and yet at the same time are about face the uncertainites of reality. Others (including me), have cleverly postponed that fact by a matter of two years by opting for 'Higher Studies'. This is also the season of the crunch, with most of us scurrying about our final year projects, and one such project is the central object of discussion of this blog post.

Cross Disciplinary Research is an important part of research, without which most of modern science wouldn't have been alive. It is the essence of academic research and here is the example to prove that our dear research scholars, are not the types to shy away from it. Infact they have the mental perspicacity to spot flaws in the mildewed reasoning of unenlightened souls.

[Date : 28/Sep/2005, Time : Unknown... (lost my watch some time back :( )]

Two hapless souls on the dias, under the scrutinious eyes of the globs, ready to start their zeroth review. This is how dismal the situation looked on this particular day. Their project , a cross-disciplinary effort involving Artificial Intelligence, Biometrics and some signal processing. The identification of Fingerprints, or rather validation of people using fingerprints. The two souls, bravely went ahead to explain the intricacies and details of their projects. And all this went across the heads of our research scholars and they took their own time to consider the implications, and the technical soundness of such a project (thier own time being lesser than the least count of a cesium clock). And then pronounced the judgement.

'REJECTED'

The reason being, a powerful cross-disciplinary project such as this had utterly failed to consult with one of the more significant and fundamental of natural sciences, Astrology!. Or in the words of our beloved glob

"Astrologers, have scientifically proved that fingerprints change with the position of the planets and the charecteristics of each and every induvidual. Hence, It would be impossible to uniquely identify the person based on the finger prints alone, as the project does not take into consideration the position of the 4th moon of Saturn on every third sunday of the epi-cyclic lunar calender."

Hmm.. Cross disciplinary reasearch and the keeness to spot flaws, even though they do not form the core area of research of our research scholars, is something that needs to be emulated in every institution of higher research and learning!.

Signing off,
Vishnu Vyas.