What’s your secret to making friends on campus? (Compiled by Ashmita Gupta, Kavi Bharathi R, Sandeep Menon)
Category: Campus Chronicles
Fantastic Fables
Spooky stories of campus past IISc is equal parts a university and an epic, covering several epochs in its century of existence. Stacks of dusty files overflow with correspondence and documents, digital folders burst with names and passwords, and fossilised records lie silently in the farthest corners of the library. Yet, there is more. […]
Connecting…
Socialising in the digital age Imagine sitting at Sarvam, basking in the bliss of a good hair day. The weather is pleasant, the sun is timid and a cool breeze is playing its part – the quintessential hyper-marketed Bengaluru weather. Around you, everyone chats happily. There is a reassuring calm within the chaos. A […]
Behind the Biosafety Doors
Staff who support high-stakes research A long walk downhill on Silver Oak Marg leads you to the quiet edge of campus, where the bustle of the main roads fades into the murmur of trees. The air feels cooler here. Just past the Combustion Gasification and Propulsion Laboratory (CGPL), there is a gate on the left. […]
‘You need special crazy people … to do science’
Yuri Kivshar is among the foremost authorities in metamaterials as well as nonlinear physics and nonlinear photonics, having made several pioneering contributions to these fields. The award-winning scientist is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Optica, the American Physical Society, the International Society for Optics and Photonics, and the Institute of Physics. […]
Guests come first
A day in the life of Geetha Ramaswamy A drizzle coats the pathway as Geetha walks steadily towards IISc’s Main Guest House (MGH). Today, she had commuted from her home in Benson Town to IISc by auto rickshaw. The previous evening’s downpour had left her scooter marooned on campus. She quickens her pace to […]
Rising Through the Ranks
Renugopal Murugesan first visited IISc in 1977, at the age of 14, when his father was employed as a construction worker at the old Physics department building. He joined his father as a daily wage labourer in 1981 and later worked as a mason. With the support of IISc faculty and staff, he learnt typing […]
CONNECT ASKS
How do you use AI tools in your work? (Edited by Ashmita Gupta)
‘My Work on National Projects Became the Driving Force of my Life’
Narayanaswamy Balakrishnan (“Balki”) has spent over five decades at IISc. Upon completing his BE (Hons) from the Coimbatore Institute of Technology, he pursued his PhD from the Department of Aerospace Engineering, IISc, where he continued as a faculty member. He contributed to diverse areas, including aerospace electronics, computational electromagnetics, and information security. He also played […]
Doors Wide Open
A brief history of IISc hostels To the south-west of the IISc Main Building, a stone’s throw away stands a rather squat piece of architecture. The ground floor construction is of grey-brown rock, cut and piled in rectangles of various sizes. The first floor is painted with what must have been a shade of […]
