BS (Electronic Science)
Every ambition asks for something in return. More often than not, it asks us to leave home. Yash Kumar Dubey wasn’t ready to make that trade. He has a younger sister, four years old, and he knew there would come a time when work would almost certainly take him elsewhere. There would be jobs in unfamiliar cities, perhaps even higher studies abroad. Those years would arrive soon enough. Childhood, however, would not wait. He wanted to be around for the ordinary moments. The conversations after school, the evenings at home, and the privilege of watching her grow up.
When he first came across one of Professor Jankiraman Viraraghavan’s lectures introducing the IIT Madras BS Degree in Electronic Systems, he found something unexpected: a programme that allowed him to pursue an IIT education without giving up the life he valued most. Affordable, flexible, and accessible from anywhere, the degree offered him the opportunity to stay close to home while building a future that could eventually take him far beyond it.
Today, Yash pursues the BS Degree while travelling to campus for its on-site laboratory sessions – experiences he describes as the heart of the programme. Ask him about IIT Madras, and he remembers more than classrooms. He remembers the breeze near Mandakini Hostel, conversations during Paradox, and the feeling of returning to a place that gradually became familiar with every visit. Yet it is inside the laboratories that his admiration for the programme truly comes alive.
“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”
These words, by Richard Feynman, describe Yash’s experience most accurately. Building circuits from scratch, experimenting with embedded systems, and working through embedded C labs transformed electronics from something theoretical into something he could build, test, and understand. The practical exposure strengthened concepts from the ground up, often complementing and deepening what he was learning elsewhere. That philosophy of learning by building naturally extended beyond the laboratory. Projects involving STM32 microcontrollers, Arduino and ESP32 platforms, and digital signal processing became opportunities to experiment.
The same spirit shapes the way he approaches life outside academics. Every academic term seems to begin with a new startup idea. Some survive. Others fade away. Failure, for Yash, is never the end of the conversation; it is simply the beginning of another one. His current MedTech startup explores how AI can help identify and track expired pharmaceutical stock more efficiently, inspired by ideas discussed at the Government of India’s AI Summit in New Delhi.
Away from oscilloscopes and breadboards, Yash is equally at home behind a drum kit. He has performed during ‘Unwind’ at Paradox 2026, finding as much joy in collaboration and conversation as he does in electronics. For him, campus events are as much about people as they are about performances, a chance to build friendships alongside circuits.
Ask him what comes next, and the answer remains deliberately open. It could be GATE, research, entrepreneurship, or higher education abroad. Right now, he is more interested in exploring than arriving. If there is one experience Yash believes every learner should make the most of, it is the laboratory sessions.
“That’s where everything you’ve been studying finally comes alive.”
The BS Degree gave him more than technical knowledge. It gave him the space to grow into an engineer without ever feeling that he had to choose between ambition and family.
~written by Shambhavi Shekhar
