With a mushrooming elderly population, research on ageing is gathering steam Among Greek myths, the tale of Tithonus is particularly tragic. Eos, the immortal goddess of dawn, fell in love with the mortal Tithonus, a prince of Troy. She begged Zeus, the ruler of Greek gods, to grant Tithonus eternal life, but forgot to […]
Researchers, doctors and communities work together to manage a neglected disease The first time Nagendra Kumar P started experiencing extreme pain was when he was a toddler. “He had severe headaches,” says his father, B Pandegowda. “We showed him to small hospitals nearby. He would become better for a few days, but the headaches […]
Radhika Muthukumar gave CONNECT a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to supply water to the campus community and treat the wastewater it produces A few metres down the road from IISc’s main gate is an 80-year old building that was designed by Otto Koenigsberger, an architect who left Nazi Germany and worked for […]
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 […]
