Geotechnical engineers, who investigate soils and their properties, play an important and sometimes overlooked role in civil engineering A vacation on a Spanish beach in the 1960s sparked a revolution in the construction industry. French engineer Henri Vidal was piling up sand to build a sand castle when he realised that no matter how […]
How student and alumni-led initiatives are bringing science to young children In 2016, when Suyog Mahulkar, Ashok B, Nilesh Potghan and a handful of other students at IISc decided to start an outreach initiative to teach science and maths at rural schools, they were gung-ho but also a bit “naive”, Suyog admits. Armed with […]
Research and teaching aside, the Department has also contributed to the creation of many new programmes and centres on campus Times were tough for IISc in the 1930s. It faced a serious cash crunch – income from both the Mysore Government and JN Tata’s Bombay properties had dwindled. World War II was looming on […]
“He was a man who devoted his life to developing new areas and institutions of science and technology” In 1966, when Arkal Shenoy travelled to the US to join a PhD programme at the Georgia Institute of Technology, after completing his Master’s from the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) at IISc, he didn’t have his […]
In July 2020, Anurag Kumar completed his tenure as the Director of IISc. He began his journey in engineering with a bachelor’s degree from IIT Kanpur and a PhD from Cornell University, and then worked at Bell Labs, New Jersey, USA, before joining IISc in 1988. After serving as the Chair, Department of Electrical Communication […]
G Padmanaban has spent decades trying to understand the lifecycle of the malaria parasite and develop a cure A few years ago, researchers from Michigan State University tracking malaria in Malawi made a gut-wrenching discovery. The reason why many children with cerebral malaria were dying was because their brain was swelling up so much […]
India is the world’s tuberculosis capital, accounting for 27 percent of the 10 million patients globally. Understanding how drug resistance emerges and improving vaccine efficacy are key to fighting this disease. Macrophage (red) engulfing tuberculosis bacteria (yellow), taken with ZEISS FE-SEM (Image courtesy: Volker Brinkmann) In 1890, Robert Koch believed he was going to […]
Using technology to tackle India’s terrible traffic Last summer, the image of a software engineer riding a horse to protest against Bangalore’s notorious traffic jams went viral on social media. “Bengaluru is overcrowded and too many vehicles on the road lead to traffic jams every day,” he was quoted as saying. “In fact, I learnt […]
A science education initiative at the planetarium, which IISc faculty members contribute to, strives to turn more local students into scientists On a sunny Saturday afternoon, as hundreds of chattering kids throng the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium to gaze at the stars, a small group of college students makes their way down to […]
