YIM Neuroscience 2011
Satellite event at SFN-2011:  “Neuroscience in India:  Ongoing research and opportunities”

This event was the second of what we hope will be a regular series, every other year at the Society for Neuroscience (SFN) meeting.  Approximately 200 people attended.  This year, five institutions co-sponsored the event, an indication of growing enthusiasm in India about recruiting in the area of neurosciences.

Organizers: Shubha Tole (TIFR), Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath (IISc), L. Shashidhara (IISER-Pune)

Sponsoring Institutions: Indian Institute of Science, Education, and Research (IISER) Mohali, IISER Pune, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, National Brain Research Center (NBRC) Manesar, National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS) Bangalore, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) Mumbai.

Event description:  This satellite event featured presentations that highlighted ongoing Neuroscience research in India, as well as new opportunities for young scientists.
New Institutes and well-funded initiatives for attracting investigators to set up labs in India were described.  The 2-hour event included short, informal talks by successful Indian neuroscientists from several institutions that are recruiting postdocs and faculty in the neurosciences. The first one was by Viji Ravindranath, who described the growth of Neuroscience research and opportunities in India and all the institutions that had hired neuroscience faculty in the past decade and importantly in the last couple of years.  Then Shubha Tole described the genesis of the YIM meetings and the indiabioscience.org websites, and took the audience through a few links to describe the information and networking resources therein. Neeraj Jain talked about opportunities at NBRC and Vidita Vaidya, and Shona Chattarjee described their own “take” on what it takes to set up a successful research program and the opportunities and challenges they experienced.  Tom Albright and Mriganka Sur also gave their impressions of the changing scenario in Indian neuroscience.  This was followed by a pretty active question session.  We first heard all the questions (some 20-25 of them); they were typed online and projected on the screen, grouped and then addressed by each of the panelists.
We also announced that we would do this type of an event every alternate year. There were additional questions after the session ended, and some email comments, excerpts from which are below:

Comments from participants:

First of all thank you very much for organizing a wonderful satellite event at Neuroscience 2011 describing the ongoing research and opportunities in India. It was really helpful especially for postdoctoral fellows residing outside India and looking for avenues to go back to India.

I wanted to thank you for the excellent session on opportunities for neuroscientists in India, conducted at the SFN meeting a few days ago. I attended the seminar and was delighted to learn about the immense possibilities and funding options that exist back home now. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the New Mexico VA Healthcare System and am very interested in returning toIndia to start a research career. My interests are in sensorimotor control of human movement. It was great to learn that all research areas are welcomed and funding is not limited to only certain fields of work. Thank you once again for organizing this wonderful seminar.