The nation should feel proud as applied electronics engineer who was appointed with multinational through campus placement in the College of Engineering, Trivandrum (CET) quit his job within an year to pursue higher studies abroad. Michael Jacob Mathew is one of the finest examples who can very well reflect that taking risks pays off. What sounded like a good start to a promising career was only an eye-opener for Mathew.
List of Commonwealth Scholarship for Indian Students
He had no harsh reasons to regret the decision when he flew down to Britain with a Commonwealth scholarship of Rs 1 crore.
For the year 2015, the Commonwealth scholarship has been granted to 16 Indians for post-graduate studies and five others for Ph.D. Mathew being the only one from Kerala in the entire crop.
He is the son of P.A. Mathew, a retired secretary of the cooperative bank in Kottayam, and Sherly Jacob, an officer with the Rubber Board.
Beyond placement
Mathew was of the view that “he realised the limitations of his knowledge when he started working for Bosch. At that time I wanted to expand my expertise and moreover securing a top rank in GATE validated my decision to leave the company. Thereafter I joined the Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI) at Durgapur in Bengal to pursue higher studies in mechatronics, a multidisciplinary field of engineering.”
CMERI, a sister concern of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, is one of the finest research centres in India for robotics and mechatronics.
With the robots
Since early stages Mathew was passionate for robotics was blown away by the atmosphere of CMERI and the guidance by the excellent professors.While in CMERI he experimented with assigning intelligence and analytical capabilities to robots.
When he was just about to join the Ph.D. Course at IIT Bombay, he came across the Commonwealth scholarship. Now as he has been selected, he could pursue PhD from the University of Birmingham for three years. He has promised that on successful completion he won’t stay in UK rather he would come back to is motherland.
Hurdles galore
Its not that easy to avail the scholarship as it may seem to be.
- First Challenge: It was an Interview which was arranged by the Union Human Resources Ministry.
- Interview Panel: It composed of experts from leading institutions such as the IIT. Candidates were shortlisted on the basis of their individual studies, research and even personal background.
- Selection Process: The judges were supposed to shortlist 60 applicants from India to be considered for the Commonwealth scholarship.
- The same was followed by all the Commonwealth countries competed in the final round.
