The importance of collaborations in the biosciences in India

Satyajit Mayor
Dean, National Centre for Biological Sciences
Bangalore
   
   
Biological research in the contemporary sense requires a broad multidisciplinary scientific base. With the traditional strength of the physical and natural science disciplines available in India, collaborations with these researchers would be an obvious route for scientists engaged in biological research to take. Couple this with one of the biggest attractions to doing science in India today, the freedom to take on unusual and innovative projects without much interference, one could end up with a heady, collaborative and collegial scientific enterprise. Because the pool of active researchers is small, it also fosters truly multidisciplinary collaborative links. I would be first one to confess, that it is this aspect of doing research in India that has been particularly rewarding for my own research and the most enjoyable. I am a cell biologist working on membrane trafficking, but I have been able to forge meaningful collaborations with a condensed-matter physicist, a fruit-fly geneticist interested in neuronal conduction, and a hard-core physiologist of the immune system, to name a few.    
   
I suspect that this is not the norm for most researchers in institutions in India, partly because the value of collaborative research is under appreciated by the ‘rewards establishment’, and traditional yardsticks of peer reviewed publication indices. This, combined with a low level of self confidence in one’s own research, poses impediments that interfere with the growth of genuine collaborations. However, this scenario is rapidly changing, as institutions like the NCBS are actively engaged in promoting collaborations between its own researchers, and between researchers engaged in research outside the ambit
of the biological sciences.    
   
Another example is the establishment of Centres of Excellence that actively funds large scale collaborative proposals between researchers having an interdisciplinary programme at the core of the centre. An exclusively collaborative model for research is also being experimented at the newly established Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine (inSTEM). There are several broad-based funding opportunities in most funding agencies exclusively geared towards collaborative research. The very ethos of the newly launched Nanoscience Mission is based on funding researchers interested in collaborating across disciplines to understand the nanoscale phenomenon and apply its principles in making new materials and products that could have a direct impact on perceived societal needs. Most of all, a major impact of this mission will be felt in the biological sciences where most phenomenon is controlled at the nanoscale.    
   
So let us nurture the collaborative spirit in Indian biosciences!    
   
Satyajit Mayor
NCBS