Good day, Dr. Vidya P Janaki. I'm Arjun. I've had a look through your background and your professional record. I'm interested in hearing more about your work and how you see yourself fitting in here with our faculty. Ready to start?

Please start by introducing your professional journey in academia.

I am Vidya. I did my UH schooling in CBC and NP and UH I did my UG from Kerala University and PG from Malayalam to Chennai. I'm university rank holder in PG Post my PG in 2013, I have been working as a Assistant professor in Commercial College of Engineering and Technology department of ECE.

OK.

Separate, I have handled that many technical tricks. Apart from that, uh, I have contacted uh, various uh, workshops and uh, uh, I have received 2 volunteer fellowships and I am uh, uh, had a good, very good practice 8 score uh, during my teaching career. And I have completed many NPTEL courses, uh, with very good uh, umm. Rankings.

And mask then, uh, based on my gauge score, I got admission to PhD at an IT history in the year of 2020. And within US in art and the institute's type and three category with enough standoff 4 1/2 years, uh, I was able to publish 3 papers in replica journals with and also two patents and conference publication to my critic.

My work was an interdisciplinary work, so like I was newly introduced into that field by my guide because now that silicon era is coming to an end that people are in search of some organic materials for designing a decent financial devices. So my area was of work was mainly concentrated in finding a.

Alternativity organic material for the manufacturer devices and other electronic devices in which they have the two patterns also.

And, uh, post my PhD, I joined it as also semiconductor as a silicon validation engineer. And now one year I have completed my experience in that industry and, uh, I'm continuing with that, umm, now currently I'm working on the silicon validation engineer in the associated value.

That's my brief introduction about.

OK.

Hello.

Hello, you are not audible.

Academy, ah.

Hello.

Are you audible?

Uh, Based on the Academy of seven and half, seven years, I have, uh, that's an assistant professor and, uh, for and a half years in, during my PhD, I was looking as a teaching assistant also. So I was handling my mainly digital electronics lab and I was assisting for digital electronics and, uh, real estate systems, uh, during my PhD, correct. And, uh, during my teaching experience and I'll post my teacher degree.

I was handling the social processing and transmission guide subject and my professor Microsoft also, uh, I was handling Microsoft microphone at our lab and, uh, electronic circuits lab when it was working as an assistant professor. Apart from this, I was in charge of, uh, NDA criteria 6 for the department as well as I was in charge of preparing the presentations, uh, by the head of the.

In the NBA notification team assistant institutions also I was working as a deputy one of the goal of her girls hostel, women's hostel, ladies hostel during my.

Uh, uh, completed as an assistant professor in the college.

Understood, Professor. Let’s transition into targeted questions. Starting with your teaching approach, how do you ensure that foundational concepts in subjects like digital electronics or signal processing are effectively understood by all students, including those who struggle?

Uh, Like, uh, first I will be, uh, what, uh, firstly I'll be giving some concepts, uh, introduction to some basic concepts and I'll be testing their understandability by conducting, uh, small test like multiple choice quiz, which is multiple choice question at the end of the, uh, hour or on the next day because that will give the.

Some time to go through the concepts that I have delivered in my place. So this way I will be able to ensure that other basic concepts which are mandatory for the study of understanding of the circuits are three or 450 PR For the students and those who are little bit are struggling, I will be trying to keep them special sessions are doing their lunch breaks or doing the three times so that they could also cope up with other students.

Uh, I'll nowadays we people have all the students that they have in mobile phones. So I will be going for some, uh, online medical preparation so that it is, uh, more accessible. And instead of giving a long paragraph, I will be going for some crispy points and, uh, relating that to the real time examples so that the students in the more quickly, uh, and uh, they will have a real dynamics will share and they'll be able to relate.

Thank you, Professor. In those additional sessions for struggling students, how do you adapt your teaching methods to make the material more accessible?

Environment there that consists can be applied.

Good approach, Professor. How do you structure laboratory sessions, particularly in courses like digital electronics or signal processing, to ensure students not only follow the procedures but also critically analyze the outcomes?

OK, uh, usually, uh, the approach which I follow was like, umm.

Uh, before the starting of a lab sessions that was at the start of this minister itself, they'll be having indirect session so that in the introductory session, I will be giving them a skeleton of all the experiments that they're going to do. So the mostly the how I choose the lab is the theory and the lab I'll be taking in parallel means if the student is having fear in that customer and parallel lab in that semester.

So there are many online tools available for open source tools available for digital electronics. So once the skeleton is given, the student has to try implementing that in that online tool that experiment like I'm going to verify some combinations circuits like POS or SOP form, so they should take some random.

Question which they have solved in the class and they should try to implement it and so that will give them a clear understanding what is the expected output when they'll be doing the hard real time implementation in the lab. So this is the usual approach I follow because we have Orchid and more number of open source tools which is available for.

Trying it online so when they try it and come, they will get much more clarity when they are doing it real time in the lab.

Ah, yes, actually, uh, the selected based technology, the main thing is that I think the case of consistent. So when it gets damaged, what we are doing, we are putting it in a corner. So it is getting dumb. All electronic devices are getting dumped and dumped in a dump air. It is not getting, uh, what uh, uh, associated with the soil like the plants or other organic materials. So that was the first thing that took me to the interdisciplinary research. First thing. The second thing is that. The silicon based devices. So nowadays we know that.

Understood, Professor. Let's now discuss your research. Could you explain the motivation behind your interdisciplinary PhD work on organic materials and how you identified the specific challenges in transitioning from silicon-based technologies?

Size to the latony devices becoming very small and small. So uh what is happening inside that is that we are reducing the size of the transistors. So now what happens is that because of the radiation reduction, the size of the transistors, the memory, there are some advices which is characteristics of some certain deposits which are getting affected like if you take the case of the memory uh, it is we all know that it is get data is getting stored inside the capacitance so. Their capacitance value need to be maintained for the data storage. So when because of this detection.

Uh, these capacitance uh values not getting maintained, we need to do periodic refreshing all the many side effects are coming, so we can overcome these effects by increasing the permittivity value and all, but it is not uh that much efficient, so people are going for some.

Alternative technologies like name register MMM inductance or mem capacitance for designed in the memory devices so that this is the motivation behind which I went in such a organic material. So uh, I when I was going to the organic what alternate solution can be chosen for?

The organic material I was able to find out the liquid crystal will be one of the option and I think more more has been exploited in that. So that property of the liquid crystal is that with the change in temperature itself it will be changing the alignment and a particular alignment can be used for a data store. So this led to the. What in start of my research and other thing is liquid crystal is the interface using a benzoic acid which is user which is more or which is an organic material? Let's help.

And the size of that cell in which I did the prototype like it was possible to store more than 1TB. That is the size of the area of the cell is just one 30M square. So if I that will be having more more than Avogadro number of molecules and each molecule will be able to store a large volume of data. So that was.

One of the motivation for carrying out my research and now I am planning. I have done till the circuit modeling so now I'm planning for.

Further extension of the above which is I'm carrying out side by side along with my job.

Thank you, Professor. An ambitious and intriguing area of work. Looking at its practical application, what are the significant hurdles in scaling this liquid crystal-based technology for mass production and commercial use?

Umm, uh, like the significant hurdle will be first one is like, uh, uh, see once, uh, the crystal is taken to that, uh, temperature, whatever data is stored will remain in that state. So again, if you need to rewrite, it means you need to, or, or erase it means you have to reduce the temperature so that increasing the temperature and decreasing the temperature will be one of the hurdle because there will be.

More many other number of components inside the device. So you need to take care of the heating condition that is one thing. So that will be one of the hurdle. And here other size means depends on the area. When more the area more the number of molecules more the data can be stored so. Like practically compatibility. You have to.

There will be uh more hurdles when will you be integrating with other devices, because other devices will be working in some uh, higher uh, voltage or lower voltage uh. But uh, that environment can affect uh, the alignment of these molecules. Even a slight change in temperature can uh, change the orientation of these molecules, which can lead to the.

Variation in the properties, uh, which you will not be expecting.

Thank you for explaining, Professor. Let’s talk about your teaching and mentoring responsibilities during your career. How do you guide student projects in research-oriented areas, especially those with such interdisciplinary focus?

See, I choose the during my like kitchen period during the second year or third year of the my of their carry of their student life. They will be coming for the mini projects. So based on their area of interest, they'll be choosing it. I will be giving only a small part. Of that reservoir, some base work I'll be giving to those students.

OK.

So I'll be sitting with them after the college hours and I'll be working with them so thoroughly. I will be also working. I will not sit like they are doing. So we will sit, we will see our work. So based on that we'll be working to get that side by side. So which will create more interest in students seeing me also working. So like that I extracted the work because from the third year onwards, the students.

Be approaching for the project. So they will get a two year span for completing their work and at the end of which, uh, it will be more effective for them and they can be converted to some journals or, uh, some conference publications. So, uh, the seed is sown in the mind when, as soon as they enter into the second years by exhibiting the works which has been done by their senior. So that will attract them for doing more interdisciplinary.

Title.

Understood,

Thank you, Professor. How do you ensure that interdisciplinary student projects are not only innovative but also aligned with current industry or academic trends?

Uh, yeah. Uh, even if you are doing some interdisciplinary work, it should be something that is applicable to your, uh, department. It should not be, uh, uh, one that is applicable to some other area. You are a civil student and you are working for an electronics means no use of that.

So you should ensure that at the end, that whole thing will become applicable somewhere into your, uh, domain.

Makes sense, Professor. Now let’s discuss your publications and patents. Could you elaborate on how one of your published research works made a significant contribution to its field?

Uh, can you, uh, repeat once more?

Certainly, Professor. Could you elaborate on how one of your published research works significantly contributed to advancing its field?

Ah, I'll be first. Based on the volume of the work, I'll be choosing the journal.

So first I'll be going with the pretty good journal and based on their feedback I'll be modifying the content and I'll be submitting my books.

Thank you, Professor. Among your publications or patents, which one are you most proud of, and why?

Uh, journal of molecular liquids, obviously, uh, that is, uh, uh, very good journal Elsewhere, I'm heading to the Lake Bristol and it is difficult to get their work published in that. I was aiming for that journal and, uh, by God's grace and by, uh, uh, the blessings of my, my diets, I was able to get one paper in that and UH-2 patterns.

First one was the patent claiming the memory effect MLCS and second one is patent claiming A technique for identification of temperature transition materials and.

Uh, that journal was uh, uh, giving more, uh, happiness than competitive patterns.

I have put the effort behind that getting the paper published was.

Huge.

Thank you, Professor. Your efforts in publishing such high-caliber work are commendable. Could you also share how you have connected your research to practical applications or industry needs, particularly during your tenure as a validation engineer?

Silicon validation engineer, that was I'm working in the field of art testing. Okay, so previously my research work was designing a prototype. Now what I'm doing is whatever the data that has received in the prototype that is being validated by me in a hard way. So that memory I mainly my research work was related to the memory devices and and now I'm working in the validation of.

Ah, yes, uh, actually now why I'm about.

Double data, RAM and many other shifts. So the basics which I have.

Uh, study or which I have uh used for my research works are helping me a lot like starting from doing a literature survey whenever I knew about.

How to approach all these things, Whichever I have gathered in the 4 1/2 years of my research life is very helpful for carrying out the hardware validation.

Whenever a new device comes.

Uh, in the book.

Thank you, Professor. It’s clear your research background supports your engineering efforts. Looking ahead, how would you integrate both your academic and industry experience to contribute as a professor and guide future technologies?

Sorry to interrupt, we're down to the last 5 minutes.

Now with that, I have experience in both the Academy as well as the industry, have a clear vision of what to do next in academia if I get a chance like what is the industrial expectation I know. So I will be integrating those topics along with my academic curriculum background while delivering the content so that it will be useful for the students, will be industry ready rather than students will be going and getting trained in industry for the job.

OK, it's no problem.

So that they can be directly onboarded to the project by the industry.

No.

Understood, Professor. Your integration of academic and industry insights to prepare students for direct applicability is a strong vision. Would you like to add anything further?