BENGALURU: A mother-son duo from the city marked a special day as they received academic degrees on the same stage. Ranjani Niranjan, aged 48, was awarded a PhD degree while her 22-year-old son Raghava SN received his Integrated M tech degree from the International Institute of Information Technology-Bangalore (IIIT-B) on Sunday.
Speaking to TNIE, Ranjani said she was elated to do this with Raghava and called it a remarkable feat for their family. “Not everyone will get such an opportunity and I am so thankful. I have sat in a classroom with students 13 years younger than me and though it was challenging at first, it’s just a matter of time. At the end of the day we are all just learners,” she said.
Ranjani, earlier, worked as an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at PES University before starting her PhD. “My research is on a new for ‘Classification of Algorithms’ which offers prediction with a trust score. We have seen that even state-of-the-art algorithms make wrong predictions confidently. We wanted to explore if a model can say no. With a trust score, the researcher can decide whether to take that data or not,” she said.
Recalling moments of joy with his mother, Raghava shared how a few times the roles were reversed when he taught his mother. “Mom would seek my help with math queries, especially for Class 12 concepts. That was very exciting and fun, it was a reversal of roles. But I am so proud of her,” he said.
The duo credited their smooth journey to their husband and father who wholeheartedly encouraged them. “My father has played the biggest role in this achievement. He works in Infosys and made sure my mother got to college on time from Banashankari every day for the last five years. He has been our backbone,” the son said.
An engineer himself, he also offered a lot of technical inputs for his wife’s research paper.