Using IISc’s biodiversity for undergraduate education “How many of you noticed the beautiful, white-coloured, fragrant tree just outside the stairs that lead us here to the lecture hall?” I asked the first year UG students in my first class of organismal biology at IISc. Barely two or three uncertain hands were raised out of 120. […]
The first national effort to understand the meteorological phenomenon For about four months from May to September 1990, the Indian summer monsoon was the subject of unprecedented nationwide attention. While the monsoon winds raced from Kerala to the northwest of India in 35 days, less than its usual 45, researchers on land, air and sea […]
Syed Ameenulla, who joined IISc as a lab assistant and went on to be a scientific officer, recalls his involvement in the Institute’s monsoon experiments In the monsoon of 1979, Chandipur beach in Balasore, Odisha was host to a small group of researchers from Bangalore. The team, from IISc and the National Aeronautical Laboratory (NAL), […]
An IISc scientist’s work on a local solution for water and power Baliram Nag and I arrive on his bike at the Bastar District Collector’s residence, at the end of a leafy, secluded road in Jagdalpur. As we make our way past the security guards, they greet Bali warmly and ask him where the “vaigyanik” […]
When we read research papers, there’s much that we do not know about the studies and their authors. An ecologist sets out to fill the gaps In 2016, I began a series of interviews with scientists about the backstory of papers they had written. Scientific papers often present a cleaned up version of science even […]
A cell for the Application of Science and Technology to Rural Areas (ASTRA), now Centre for Sustainable Technologies (CST), was created at IISc in 1974 to initiate and promote work of rural relevance as a weapon against poverty. IISc’s then Director, Satish Dhawan, who was deeply concerned about science and society, invited Amulya Reddy [a […]
The Indian Nanoelectronics Users’ Program (INUP), at IISc and IIT Bombay, is training researchers across the country to build national capability in nanoelectronics Since it began in 2008, the Indian Nanoelectronics Users’ Program (INUP) has received exceptional positive feedback from its participants. Among them are college teachers who say that their participation in the training […]
A peek into the challenges of working in the wild “Field stations are absolutely crucial to the success of ecological research,” says Professor Rohini Balakrishnan, head of the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES). They form so vital a part of ecologists’ work that Kartik Shanker, Associate Professor at CES, says they’ve “internalised it”. “They are […]
Organic photovoltaic cells made at IISc were tested in the harsh environs of the world’s southernmost continent “Things were not going well, but he [Monto Mani, Associate Professor, Centre for Sustainable Technologies] did not let go. He went around arranging for the packaging, got me out of bed at 10 pm, and got me and my […]
