Seyed Ehtesham Hasnain 
You realise that he has been working more than 12 hours and feel apologetic about the interview. "I love sharing my ideas with like-minded people, anytime, anywhere," he says putting you at relative ease.
These are wonderful times for the University of Hyderabad. Hasnain took over as its Vice-chancellor two years back. His stint with the institution reminds one of R. A. Mashelkar's era as the Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). He talks Intellectual Property Rights protection, innovation-friendly atmosphere, knowledge parks and self-financing models in much the same way Mashelkar did when he took charge of CSIR.
"We are attempting to promote IPR protection in a very scientific manner in the university. When a professor has a major lead, the VC goes to the Executive Council and sanctions a sum of money," Hasnain begins explaining. The university has forged a tie-up with a company called Intellectual Ventures, co-founded by one of the founders of Microsoft, which scouts for interesting innovations and leads. If the company thinks that the patent is worth filing, it enters into an agreement with the inventor. It then makes milestone-linked payments leading to the award of the patent.
What was the need to introduce such a system at an academic university traditionally involved in basic research and without an enviable patent portfolio? "Unfortunately, we have been historically shy of patenting. The need for this was twofold – one, we didn't have the budget and two, as an inducement for the faculty to patent their product," he says.
The university is hoping to increase its portfolio with this novel approach and has already lined up at least a dozen patents to be processed in the next few months. "All because there's money at the end of the day — the university does not pay anything and we do not lose anything. It's truly a win-win situation. The company will also maintain the patents and fight any infringements," Hasnain points out. Subsequent to the University of Hyderabad and on its recommendation, the company has set up collaborations with IIT, Chennai; IISc, Bangalore; Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) and Anna University.
Hasnain has been instrumental in opening the first profit making company inside a university – the University of Hyderabad Knowledge and Innovation Park with an 11 per cent partnership with the government of Andhra Pradesh. The management of the company will be structured in this very ratio. "The idea is to promote establishment of a cluster of institutions with their own governance, rules and regulations but with some organic linkage with the university. The company will give them a piece of land according to their requirement and charge them rent for a period of 33 years. The profits will be shared by the partners and ploughed back into funding of innovative projects," he says detailing the nitty-gritties of the deal with entrepreneurial passion.
The faculty gets an incentive for getting projects from a corpus built out of part of the profits. "We are beginning with 50 acres of land and will go up to 200 acres. We already have seven major players — two from India — who want to set up R&D parks," he says.
Another path breaking development at the university has been the facilitation of faculty to become entrepreneurs without losing jobs. A faculty member can take leave for a few years to go into entrepreneurship. "If you succeed and feel like saying goodbye to the university, you can do so. If you don''t find it exciting, you can come back and join us without losing seniority or position," Hasnain tells his folks. UoH was the first university to implement this scheme before CSIR recently recognized its merit.
And then Hasnain switches gears to talk about one of his favourite initiatives — the technology-business incubator. Here, the university gives its scientists physical space and address where they can translate basic leads into commercial entities. The Union department of Science and Technology (DST) has come forward to fund this initiative. "This will facilitate the innovators who don't have an office or money to buy equipment. We will provide them all this at a nominal charge through an independent society for science, innovation and development."
The scientist, earlier the founder-director of Hyderabad-based CDFD, gets his inspiration from his humble beginnings. "With 23 people and a budget of about Rs 20 lakh in CDFD, we moved up to Rs 50 crore, 150 people and a huge facility in just seven years. That was on a smaller level. I wanted to replicate this success on a larger level," he says.
The administrator does not believe in micro-management. My role is purely that of a facilitator. "When I began decentralizing power, I did meet some criticism. But we have to create parallel power centres in order for everything to run smoothly. I get restless with the typical government set up where things move at their own pace. But I am trying hard to persuade my colleagues to be with me," he adds.
The list of novel policies at the university goes on — an integrated masters programme, centralized time tables where a student can learn diverse subjects such as physics and music at the same time and a fellowship for every single student. "We are proud to be the only university in the country to provide fellowships to each student at every level. The fellowship has another unique feature where the toppers at the end of every semester are regarded as achievers and offered more fellowship amounts. Also, we will soon become the first institution in the country to have 68 mbps wi.fi connectivity," he says with a glint of satisfaction in his eyes.
His primary love — research — still takes up some time of his day at the neighbouring Institute of Life Sciences. "If you ask me why I want more people in UoH to have power, I would tell you one of the other secrets — it lessens my workload so that I can take time out for research and to guide my postdoc students. This is something the scientist in me can't really compromise on."
