Can scientists solve the conundrum of consciousness? Sometime in the late 1980s, two Oxford scientists examined PS, a patient who had suffered damage to the right side of her brain. The damage left her unable to notice things to her left. Even when she drew objects, she would draw their right sides perfectly […]
How NMR is helping scientists probe molecular structures It was after six on a Monday evening in September, and Durga Prasad Hari was in a hurry. Holding a thin glass tube in his hand, he walked quickly to the common instrument facility on the ground floor of the Chemical Sciences building, two […]
Are we harming the world in our pursuit to understand it better? Around 7 pm on Mondays, Maya can be found in her natural habitat, carefully seeding a culture to be infected the next day or inoculating a batch of bacteria to be genetically transformed. This is where she is on most days, in […]
India needs the right technology and policy to realise a gallium nitride future Harshada Ahire was caught off guard as she opened the door of the Power Electronics Laboratory in the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) at IISc, as I stepped into the large room. I was with Vinod John, Professor at EE, […]
Maths is providing new ways to make sense of biology In the early 2000s, a fierce debate was raging among health practitioners about when to start HIV patients on antiretroviral therapy. The standard approach at the time was to delay treatment until the disease had progressed to a critical stage. However, emerging mathematical models […]
A deep dive into the evolution of the microscope that has enabled groundbreaking discoveries In my eighth grade classroom, amidst sunbeams dancing on dusty desks, the creaking sound of the ceiling fan, and the pungent smell of chemicals, my science teacher Deepak Sah’s words painted a universe where tiny things held big secrets. We […]
Digital technologies are changing research and treatment In 2018, Vijay Chandru was already thinking about pandemics. He was back on the IISc campus, where he had co-founded India’s earliest genomics startup, Strand Life Sciences, nearly 20 years ago. Now a visiting faculty member at the Department of Bioengineering (BE), he started teaching a course on […]
The lives and experiences of IISc’s international students Fourteen years ago, before Fekadu Mihret Geremew came to India for the first time to pursue his Master’s, he had heard a lot about how it was not the ideal place to live. The image he had in mind was a country of traffic congestion, overcrowded […]
3D printing is revolutionising manufacturing As a young kid, Shashank HR was fascinated by how things, including his toys, were made. So, he would be thrilled whenever he had a chance to visit his father’s metal fabrication shop, where he witnessed how sheets and rods of steel were shaped into garage doors, gates and […]
India is betting big on lithium-ion batteries, but at what cost? In 1817, Johan August Arfwedson, a Swedish lawyer and mineralogist, was studying the mineral petalite in the laboratory of the renowned chemist Jacob Berzelius. His investigations revealed that the mineral mainly contained aluminium, silicon and oxygen. But around 4% of the composition […]
