Dr. Kolluru Sree Krishna graduated in science from Andhra University in 1979 and completed his master's degree in Geophysics from the same university in 1982. He started his career as a seismologist at Geophysical Service Inc a subsidiary of Texas Instruments, in 1983 when the company was involved in the hydrocarbon explorations in the basins of Krishna-Godavari and Cauvery basins and spent more than a year with the petroleum company. In 1984, he joined the CSIR - National Institute of Oceanography, Goa (NIO) as a Scientist-B where he holds the post of chief scientist since 2009. In between, he held several positions at NIO and also secured a Ph.D. from Andhra University in 1996. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research - Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences in 2001. He is currently leading the School of Sciences at GITAM University as a Dean.

GITAM Visakhapatnam

You held key positions at various prestigious institutions throughout your career. What is that one thing that made you excited and walk with GITAM on the journey?

I held various positions in industry, research, and academic institutions, almost I have completed 40 years of professional experience in different domains, as I told industry research, academic institutions, After I completed my 40 years of professional work, I realized that, as I have worked for the development of my career, and also the development of science in various domains, I should work for giving back to the society. I was so far serving for small groups, and may be worked on science-related problems and so on. But after accomplishing 40 years, I realized that my experiences should not be limited to smaller groups, I thought that I should be useful to the larger community of educational institutions. So, that has attracted me to the academic institutions, I was looking for where I can utilize my expertise and my knowledge and services and that was the point GITAM institution was looking for a good science background person to serve as a Dean in the School of Science. Both the GITAM’s interest and my line of thinking matched, and that brought me here to head this school of science.

As GITAM is adopting the NEP 2020 approach, the students might face challenges with the transition. How do you handle them as a dean?

Regarding the NEP 2020, the government of India has introduced a new scheme for education. A student can join the graduation and has the option of leaving the course at any year with suitable certificates, and also, they can join elsewhere to continue their education, that is the flexibility NEP 2020 provides. Under NEP 2020, we have introduced in the university the subjects of psychology, sports, and programming as the fundamental core subjects. These will be immensely helpful for students for their comprehensive development as good humans and good citizens of the country. I'm sure that the introduction of these courses will be helpful to the students to develop themselves and become better individuals. 

As a Dean of the School of Sciences, what is the USP or what are the differentiating factors that make GITAM stand out from other colleges?

I have worked in other academic institutions which are government-funded institutions and universities. What I find in GITAM is that students can choose their choice of disciplines. In the major and minor subjects, there is no compulsory that you must choose only these subjects It is purely based on the choice of the individual student and parents’ interests, and they can choose to best disciplines as major and minor subjects in under graduation. With that, they can pursue a major subject and they can pursue a minor subject during the time or the period of three years or four years. They may like to have more interest in the minor subject and they can pursue, post-graduation or research in that domain. Introducing these major and minor subjects in the GITAM institutions, and also the disciplines available in GITAM are not available even in reputed institutions. We have a combination where a physics student can take data science, A chemistry student can take microbiology as a minor or science and technology as a minor, and a biotechnology student can take chemistry as a minor. Different combinations of subjects can be chosen depending on their interest. Today the order of the research is interdisciplinary research. 

How do you stay current with the latest trends and developments in the field of Sciences and incorporate them into the curriculum and programs offered by GITAM?

We have to revise the syllabus at regular intervals. Science is getting progressed every day and if you don't revise the syllabus, the students will not get the updated about what is happening. GITAM has a very good practice of revising the syllabus very frequently. We have already introduced the revised syllabus for this academic year 2023-24. For revising the syllabus, we have invited experts at a national level. not just the GITAM faculty. We have invited established people in every discipline and we develop the updated syllabus which is par to the level of all the top institutions of the country. This is a syllabus that is needed for the students to carry the research even in abroad universities. 

How well is GITAM focusing on maintaining industry relationships with companies to leverage them for live projects, training, and placements for the students?

We always do our best to generate good placements for science students by connecting with the industry, research institutions, etc. We have set up the new Board of Studies for each department and this Board of Studies consists of five external experts besides the internal people. Here, we have taken advantage of taking the leading personalities of the country these experts come from the IITs and Central Universities and one expert will be from the industry. We made the revision process compulsory for each discipline, so that we will be knowing the details of all our activities, our syllabus, and the teaching approach from the industry perspective. 

What are the biggest challenges currently facing Science colleges, and how do you plan to address them as the dean?

Not just in GITAM but it is a national problem, I would say. When we look at the statistics of education, students and parents are inclined more for professional courses either engineering or medicine, and there are 1000s of engineering colleges and the entire flow is towards engineering. We are not getting a good number of students and good quality students for the science streams. This is the current situation and even top institutions are also suffering from this situation, we need to attract students and also we need to convince the parents that science is also a very good stream and it provides good placements and scope for carrying outstanding research. Many educational institutions lack experienced faculties and high-end equipment, and in this context, we are proud to say that the GITAM is having a very advanced state of facilities and we have established modern laboratories. Our next step is to popularize these facilities among the student and parent community. The second approach is to provide outstanding opportunities for students who have joined GITAM. And by looking at these opportunities we hope that the next generation of students will be attracted to join science. We have microbiology, food science and technology, biochemistry, and biotechnology, are outstanding branches that not many universities offer. We need to utilize these opportunities to push our students who are interested in doing research in countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, or European countries.

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How would you promote experiential learning and practical application of knowledge within the School of Science?

For every theory class, a student attends, they will have practical sessions as well. We are conducting practicals in the laboratories and with this, to a certain level, we can make them with a practical approach. The second Level is, we have internships and projects. Students do carry internships during the third or fourth semester and that allows them to have exposure to the real research environment. And for the entire fourth-year, students who wanted to carry out real projects, we provide access straightaway to our advanced facilities. Project works were being carried out for project investigators and so on, we will be attaching these students to them so that they will be involved or associated with the live experiments and will take learnings from there.

What is something a science course aspirant can expect from joining GITAM?

I would say that the combinations that we provide here are not available everywhere. It is a rare opportunity here; the kinds of combinations will provide and the kind of laboratory facilities we have is not available everywhere. And more than all, with experienced faculty and besides that, we often invite experts and knowledgeable people from outside for delivering lectures. A student will have ample opportunity of going through the course and acquire very good knowledge here at GITAM.