Why some enjoy the subject for what it is Let us begin with an unusual counting puzzle. Imagine two blocks labelled 1 and 2, next to each other on the ground beside a wall. Assume that the ground is frictionless, and that the blocks will not lose energy when they hit each other or […]
The ongoing debate on digital vs. physical prototyping It was supposed to be a simple task. As part of our coursework project on Applied Ergonomics at IISc’s Department of Design and Manufacturing (DM; formerly known as the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, CPDM), my team wanted to design earphones with the perfect ergonomic […]
Learning from traditional architecture Walking through the lanes of Majuli, the largest river island in the world, one cannot miss the characteristic houses, the Chang Ghar. Situated in Assam, at the heart of the river Brahmaputra and secluded from the rest of the world, Majuli has preserved much of its traditional heritage, including its […]
How its understanding has changed through the years The year was 1919. May was approaching and so was graduation season at the University of California, Berkeley in the USA. A young undergraduate student was in deep distress. One of his professors, William Bray, had assigned a paper to be submitted before the end of […]
Nihar B Shah is Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, USA, where he leads a research group exploring how human-AI collaboration can lead to more trustworthy research publications and fairer evaluation systems. He completed his ME from the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering (ECE) at IISc in 2010, and also received the Young Alumnus Medal […]
Can it help us understand the unknown universe? One day in the spring of 1543, a canon named Nicolaus Copernicus, lying on his sickbed, suddenly awoke from a coma that he had been put under because of a brain stroke. Resting beside him was the first copy of his magnum opus: De revolutionibus orbium […]
How did life emerge on Earth? (Spoiler alert: We still don’t know) On a cold winter evening in 1952, in a dimly lit lab at the University of Chicago, Stanley Miller, a 22-year-old graduate student, stared at the murky brown sludge in the shake flask in front of him, his stomach sinking. Days of […]
The consequences of leaving females out of biological studies Abha Khandelwal vividly remembers some of her unusual cardiac cases, a lot of them women. Like the 35-year-old woman who was watching her son play football when she suddenly felt nauseated. The mother brushed it off, wanting to stay and watch her son’s game. […]
Scientists on how they are navigating biases and challenges Sandhya Visweswariah grew up in different parts of the world before beginning her academic journey in India. She completed her early schooling in England and her O levels (equivalent to 10th standard in India) in Zambia. Then, Sandhya came to India for her undergraduate studies […]
Anindita Bhadra, Professor at the Behaviour and Ecology Lab, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata, does not believe in glorifying women as multitaskers. A former PhD student at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, Anindita studied hierarchy in social wasps and later shifted to researching the behaviour of stray dogs in India. […]
