Random Thoughts

IISER Bhopal Campus I remember my first day at IISER Bhopal on 31st Jan. 2019. I had just arrived, all jet-lagged and groggy eyed. I filled up all the forms, met the HOD of my department and was taken to my new office. Thereafter, I was asked to go to the Chirayu Hospital for a medical check-up, was asked to fill up some more forms upon my return to campus and left to my own devices. However, I did not have a bank account, a phone number, a PAN card and most importantly, good internet (hah!). Procuring all these over the course of the next 10 days led to varying levels of frustration with the Indian system. It was a reverse cultural shock in some sense and made me question my decision of coming back to India. I think it is fair to say that my postdoctoral experience in the US had left me drained and this new life here was not helping in making me feel better. I was like a fish out of water, not able to find comfort anywhere. The next few months of my professional life were a struggle w...

I'm finally in the most exciting phase of my career. Things are looking up. I am largely my own boss (coz that's never entirely true :P) and can work on and design the problems that excite me. Every decision and every consequence of that decision, whether it bears fruit or goes on to be my undoing is completely mine. It is slightly scary but also the kind of challenge I really like. So here is a list of responsibilities, instances and circumstances which surprised and sometimes also frustrated me. Maybe, some years down the line, I'll be able to look at this list in amusement. So, hear goes. Measuring space:  Right in the first week after I joined the Institute, I was told that I need to submit a floor plan of my lab. I borrowed a measuring tape from the Institute's civil works section and set about the task. It was amusing, to say the least. I felt like an architect. But, in the end, also futile, because that space is not going to be created any time soon. Instead, ...

You can find Part I here . I moved to Boston in June 2016 with renewed enthusiasm. I was determined to make the most of the combined setup of experimental and theoretical research in the lab. And, let me tell you performing experiments is no easy task. It requires a lot of careful planning and execution, and for statistical robustness, a lot of repetition as well. I have written about this earlier, but it took me close to a year to learn everything and be comfortable about executing it without supervision. Another challenge that I faced as a new experimentalist was my inability to understand what would and wouldn't work as an approach to answer a particular scientific question. This, I struggled with for a while, until I gradually gained enough experience to understand the nitty-gritty of any approach.  Alongside my research, my quest for a healthy personal life continued as before. I became part of the Harvard Postdoctoral Association within the first month of my postdocto...

© Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson A country's expenditure on research and the attitudes of its citizens towards science and technology are one of the leading parameters of development of a country. India spends about 0.65 % of its GDP (world bank data for 2015) on research and development, a number that has not changed much in two decades. The Indian educational system too on the other hand does not help in creating scientific temperament. The education is mostly a means to secure a job, any job, however far removed it might be from the field you've studied.  These issues are even more apparent when you interact with people not related to the field. There is a lack of curiosity about science even among educated people. In fact, some are also of the view that it is a waste of the taxpayer's money. They go so far as to complain about the fact that their tax money is being used to fund PhD scholarships of students in Indian institutions. This, when the govern...

I started working in a biology lab about a year ago and realized quite a few things while I learnt the ropes. Here they are in no particular order. You go through a lot of pipette tips and latex gloves thereby generating a lot of non-biodegradable waste. So yeah, research does not always help the world, sometimes it just generates new trash.  You run out of good clothes because almost all of them have bleach stains on them. And of course, that's because you're too lazy to put on a lab coat.  You develop a bit of an OCD coz' you're constantly worried that you didn't turn on the shaker, or left your bacteria plate in the incubator for too long or left the gas on, etc. I can actually list a whole page of stuff I worry about long after I've left for home. :P Bacterial contamination can ruin your experiments and make you lose a day and sometimes more. Tiny tubes of 40 micro-liters of enzyme cost over USD 200. That sure seems like a lot of money! You have to ...