Scientist and Mommy

At one point I thought of myself as a scientist who also happened to be a woman. At the end of four long-gestation projects that ran crazily overlapping with each other, two resulting in boys now aged 4 and 7,

Integrating research with undergraduate teaching : a personal recount
L.S. SHASHIDHARAfrom IISER Pune gives his personal recount "Purely from the academic point of view, I have always been inclined to spend more and more time in undergraduate teaching"..

Finding and Starting a Job at Jawaharlal Nehru University
It was July 2006 when I started applying for a faculty position in Delhi. At the time, I had been a post-doc at University College London where I was working on the molecular characterization of epithelial tight junctions. 

The Neem Genome and a Public-Private-Partnership

Friday September 30^th 2011 morning when scientists all over India scanned the newspaper while they had their “cuppa”, some caught a small headline with a picture insert that resembled the one below.

“Ganit Labs in Bangalore sequences the Neem Genome”.

The Exciting Science Group, National Chemical Laboratory, Pune

K. Guruswamy introducing the "Exciting Science Group", which aims to connect scientists with high school students and teachers in Pune.

University-Institute Interactions: How will it Improve Undergraduate Biology Training in India?

How can one harness the collective intellectual resources and facilities in India to provide high quality education in the life sciences for college students?

The importance of collaborations in the biosciences in India

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,

Science in India:Then and Now.

SATYAJIT RATH from NII, Delhi offers his frank thoughts"We can use our growing ease of circumstance to go the way that our friends and colleagues in the ‘First World’ have gone..".

Coming as a pair: Finding jobs and managing careers in India

My husband Amitabha Bandyopadhyay and I decided towards the beginning of 2005 that we would be looking for jobs in India. Two factors mainly contributed to this decision:

Low budget digital microscopy for schools and informal learning environments.

When I began interacting with children (elementary to high school) in Hyderabad, I realized that it was not very easy to get them excited about biology.  This was especially visible when one saw the excitement that chemistry experiments created.  I could even bring some excitement into astronomy using the open-source 'Stellarium' software.

Hype and the Reality of Biotechnology

Biotechnology has become a very common, but also most mis-understood, term due to the hype created about its potential so that the sky seems to be the limit for the hopes and visions generated by biotechnology.

From Chidambaram to Cambridge:  A life in science

Since the Chemistry prize had been awarded for biological work the previous year, I was confident that it would not be awarded for the ribosome that year.

Research Experiences for College Students

Acquiring knowledge from text books and the teachers has been the mainstay of the undergraduate education in India. But doing things on your own builds scientific temperament and innovative thinking.

Science Education and Research in 21st Century India

As the Indian society is reinventing itself, it is going through a massive change. To ensure sustainable growth, we need to move from service economy to knowledge economy. In this context, we are ushering a new education system in science and technology to bring Indian intelligentsia into knowledge production.

From lab-bench to a desk at India Alliance

At 15, I was sure I wanted to do a PhD. Biology intrigued me, I thought DNA replication was more symphonic than Beethoven's 5th, and a career discovering fundamental truths was a privilege. When my postdoc-stint did not go my way, I started exploring other things in which I could combine my interest of science and education. This is when I realised that there were career choices beyond a life in academia!

Find the right research environment, and make it work for you

I rediscovered that biology could be interesting, well into the second year of my PhD in condensed matter physics at MIT. Visiting my family in Bangalore and finding myself at a loose end one afternoon,

Fun in Funding! The Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance
The Wellcome Trust-DBT India Alliance, an independent, public charitable trust based in India that has been recently established by the Wellcome Trust (UK) and the Government of India’s Department of Biotechnology.

Will they return?

"Will They Return? The Willingness of Potential Faculty to Return to India and the Key Factors Affecting Their Decisions" authored by researchers from Rutgers University and Tata Institute for Social Science sheds light on the different factors which concern potential faculty/scientists wanting to return to India.

The Dos and Dont’s of Finding a Good Postdoc

Finding a good postdoc position is important for your career and also a challenge. Doing all or part of your postdoc overseas can be a very rewarding experience. The challenge is that good laboratories ...

Making a Transition from Academia to Industry.

Completely new arena of bright career has opened up in India. Biotechnology sector is offering deserving candidate jobs in their own country, with salaries that can match global market.

Junior faculty mentoring at UCSF

We all benefit greatly from mentors at every period in our training and careers. This is especially true in academic science, where so many processes, decisions and responsibilities that strongly influence our trajectory to success...

inStem : The new stem cell institute at Bangalore

The Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem), is an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology, located at and nurtured by the NCBS, 

The Kerala Meeting

The young investigator meeting in Kerala, last February, organized by Ronald Vale (UCSF), Sandhya Kaushika (NCBS), and Mukund Thattai (NCBS) was an unusual event. The idea behind the meeting was to bring together a group of young Indian biologists in USA and Europe....

Looking for an academic job in India?
SHUBHA TOLE from TIFR, Mumbai provides some basic FAQs to get started ..

Cutting-edge Technology Platforms in India

C-CAMP is a new center in Bangalore that provides access to cutting-edge technologies in the life sciences.  Learn what it has to offer..

The ‘Science Katta’ at Pune: catching them young
It’s Tuesday of any week. It is about five minutes to six in the evening at the Department of Biotechnology at Abasaheb Garware College in Pune. All the classes are over by now. Most students have dispersed calling it a day.

Careers in India

If you want a job in India, you need a sense of humor and a good CV. A thick skin, which makes you insensitive to real and imaginary slights, and a personality that is sensitive to the concerns of others also helps.    

Perspective on finding a job and starting a lab in India
I started looking for an Assistant Professor or equivalent positions in research-led institutions in India in early 2007 hoping to get one by the third quarter of the year leaving me sufficient time to wind up my affairs and return by the end of the year.

This is a time of tremendous expansion in Indian science and the mood is one of optimism, change and opportunity for scientists. It is important to appreciate that India today has tremendous possibilities not just for science per se, but for the extended range of activities that are now needed to sustain cutting-edge scientific research.

Scientist and Teacher

When I am asked where I work and reply “IIT Bombay” the most common question that follows is “What do you teach?”.  To this I inevitably reply “Molecular biology and microbiology, but my lab does research on malaria”.
 

The Human Frontier Science Program

The Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) is an international funding program that supports collaborative research in the form of grants for teams of scientists in different countries and postdoctoral fellowships for advanced training ...