A Report on a truly Motivating Virtual Interactionwith Dr. Anthony Verghese.
“Successful people don’t fear failure, but understand that it’s a part to learn and grow from.”
As a student from class XI of MAHSS I’d like to to start by first thanking Mr. VyankateshPrabhudesaithe Director of Aryaan Study Circle for giving us students such a wonderful opportunity so as to interact with Dr. Anthony Verghese on the 18th of June,2020. Men of his caliber who are also so very modest are seldom found.
Dr. Anthony in Professor VPD’s words is one of the best and most humble students Aryaans has ever produced. Dr. Anthony Verghesedid his undergraduate study at BITS Goa from 2004-2010, after which he went to UK on the British Government’s Commomwealth Scholarship to do his masters in Wireless Communications at the University of Southampton. There he was awarded the University’s Mayflower scholarship to pursue his PhD. He completed his PhD in 2015 in a field called “Radio Over Fiber”. It involves using the fiber optic network to improve the speed and coverage of mobile communication.
After his PhD, Dr. Anthony was recruited as part of the research staff at Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, where heis part of an exciting researchthat revolves around signal processing techniques that improve the internet speeds of long distance fiber optic links between cities and short distance fiber optic links inside data centers. “It is quite the experience working with cutting edge equipment and talented PhD students.”, says Dr. Anthony.
The session started with Dr. Anthony reminiscing about the old days when he himself was a student at Aryaans. He nostalgically narrated to us the story of how, from a place not so close by, he travelled all the way to Panjim to attend the Aryaans classes. He told us how the environment in Aryaans completely changed the way he looked at a lot of things. “Back then getting into IITs and NITs wasn’t a very common thing amongst Goan students. But once in AryaansI was encouraged to think of getting into a good NIT.”, he said. He also told us how things drastically changed for him once he was in Aryaans. Being a straight-Astudent and topping his class up until school was cake walk for him.But once in Aryaans be realised he’d need to put in a lot more than earlier to achieve something. “Coming from school to Aryaans, I realised that the world is actually quite big. I was just one among many. But that wasn’t it. If this wasn’t hard enough, then after getting into BITS I realised; Oh! The world is even bigger!”
The interactive session then turned into a discussion. He threw some light on the topics he studied and worked with. He educated us about the fibre optic technology, which is his area of research.It was fascinating listening to him talk while he told us about how he researched into improving data speeds by enhancing the optical fibre technology. The part where he told us about submarine communication cables had us all intrigued irrespective of the fact that we may or may not have had a certain specific liking towards the subject. That is the thing about passion. It’s contagious. After all the more passionate the teacher is about his/her subject the more passionate and inspired the students will be!
Dr. Anthony inspired us all to become better learners and take interest in every little thing we did. He told us how important it is for an individual to be passionate about what he/she did. Giving us the examples of some of his college mates he said, “Don’t do it for the sake of doing it. Do it because you’re passionate about it. Otherwise you might just very well burn out in the end.” The session further continued and students asked a couple of questions relating to the technicaldoubts that they had about the 4G and 5G technology, the America-China dispute, how the fibreoptic technology worked to provide a steady internet connection to users and the like. Mr. Vyankatesh also put in his own question asking about how harmful the radiations emitted by the towers and cables were and whether they affected human life or not. Dr. Anthony carefully answered each question giving us the exact information we were looking for while also giving us a little extra information well within the topic.
All in all Dr. Anthony highlighted a very important point during our interaction with him. He drew the line between ‘accepting failure’ and ‘giving up’, two things most often confuse with each other and in many cases consider to be alike. Hesaid, “Failure isn’t final. You will have setbacks at various points in your life.” I mean isn’t it the given that if you’re trying to achieve something big you will definitely have setbacks. It’s not going to be easy. He said, “ Just don’t give up. Keep going at it like a woodpecker at some wood. In the end you’ll get what you’ve worked hard for.”
It’s not everyday that we meet such highly intellectual, passionate, highly motivating and modest personalities who radiate postive energy everywhere they go. It was truly a delight getting to know him and he inspires us to do more.
Written by,
Suhani A. PrabhuChodnekar.