We are mesmerised by the innovations in the corporate world but behind the success of these corporate laboratories is a busy underpaid university scientist. In the corporate sector, there is little room for fundamental research, and that is why most Nobel laureates are from the universities. In university set up, you are prepared for years of failure, and risks can be taken. In corporate world, if you do not deliver in time, you will be asked to take risk. It is not always the Ivy League universities which corner all the glory but many  non-Ivy League universities scattered all over. All chemistry research has been facilitated by Norman Allinger who is a guru to all those who use computer to figure out chemistry. The federally-funded National Institute of Health (NIH) of the US added to our understanding how the transport system in the cells work. This facilitates so much research in medicine. Though Steve Jobs was brilliant and audacious, yet without Alan Turing of National Physical Lab, UK and then the university of Manchester, there would neither be computer science, nor formalisation of the concept of  ‘alogorithm’. Mask Zuckerberg may have leveraged the Web, but the web was put in place by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989. CERN, Geneva is funded by 12 European countries and Berners-Lee is today a professor in the University of Southampton, UK.

As the Indian universities are in bad shape, we do not think of pure science research in India. Though IIT, Mumbai is the best but ranks 251st in the world. Some other Asian institutes happen to be in the first 100.