For KG Haridasan, IISc is truly home. It was on the campus that he grew up, did most of his schooling and on-the-job training, culminating in a nearly four-decade-long stint which ended with a role of Multi-Tasking Staff at the Department of Mechanical Engineering. One thing that always drove Haridasan was his interest in learning. […]
Category: Interviews
‘It requires a peculiar type of personality to groove on chemistry’
Over the past 45 years, Gautam R Desiraju has made contributions to science that have put him in a rarified international plane. A pioneer in crystal engineering, Desiraju has been at the vanguard of the field he helped create, though his interests have extended well beyond his scientific area to philosophy, history, geopolitics, and even […]
‘Life on Earth is so Precious’
Growing up in rural Andhra Pradesh, Murthy Gudipati sometimes slept in fields looking up at the stars. A few decades later, he now studies them as an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. An IISc alumnus from the 1987 batch, he studies the evolution of different kinds of ice […]
‘You Name a Game, I Know It’
Growing up in Coorg, Karnataka, CP Poonacha was always engaged in sports and outdoor activities. He enjoyed them so much that he decided to make it his career. After completing a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Physical Education, he started his career at Karnataka University and later worked at Jyoti Nivas College, Bengaluru. He joined IISc […]
On Accounts and Arts
Indumati Srinivasan has spent over three decades navigating some of India’s most complex public institutions – from the vast system of the Indian Railways to the research-driven environment of the Indian Institute of Science. Trained as an economist and shaped by years in the Indian Railway Accounts Service (IRAS), she brought rigour and quiet resolve […]
Bridging Worlds
Suhas Mahesh is a man of many talents. He is a material physicist working on building self-driving labs using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate materials discovery. A Rhodes Scholar currently working with Schmidt Sciences in New York, he also nurses a love for languages, particularly ancient ones like Sanskrit and Prakrit. He has published a […]
‘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. […]
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 […]
‘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 […]
‘Call me When Decroos is Here’
Mariadasan Anthony Decroos (known as MA Decroos) dedicated more than 40 years of service to the Institute from 1965. He worked with five Directors, handling sensitive, confidential, and strategic planning assignments that contributed significantly to the Institute’s growth. When CONNECT reached out for an interview, the 85-year-old promptly agreed to reflect on his life and […]