IISc’s role in helping Wipro launch its minicomputers in 1981 As one of India’s leading technology companies, Wipro is today largely known for its Information Technology (IT), engineering, and consulting services. But what brought Wipro into the IT industry was its computer systems business in the 1980s. The origins of the company’s most flourishing business […]
Using technology to tackle India’s terrible traffic Last summer, the image of a software engineer riding a horse to protest against Bangalore’s notorious traffic jams went viral on social media. “Bengaluru is overcrowded and too many vehicles on the road lead to traffic jams every day,” he was quoted as saying. “In fact, I learnt […]
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. […]
Why do some find life as a postdoctoral fellow in India so challenging? Ask any PhD student about their next endeavour and the most common answer you would receive is a postdoctoral stint, preferably abroad. Postdoctoral positions allow one to pursue independent research in one’s field of interest, paving the way for a future academic […]
Sulochana Gadgil is a meteorologist with a large and influential body of work on the Indian monsoon. Born in 1944 in Pune, she studied mathematics in India and the USA. After obtaining a PhD in Applied Mathematics at Harvard University, she worked as a Research Fellow in MIT. In 1971, she returned to India and […]
A look at how Bangalore can meet its growing water needs Bangalore is not new to water problems: the city’s water consumption is monstrously growing and its groundwater levels are rampantly depleting. Water pollution levels are a matter of grave concern, with Bellandur and Varthur lakes intermittently catching fire and spitting froth. The demand for […]
Kusala Rajendran, a seismologist at IISc, takes us into the world of earthquakes, and tells us why predicting them is far-fetched at the moment Inspecting trenches in a no man’s land, at the India-Pakistan border, stood Kusala Rajendran and her husband CP Rajendran. Surrounded by the BSF jawans, the Rajendrans were donning the detective’s hat: […]
Veena Srinivasan is a Senior Fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore, where she leads the Water, Land and Society Programme. Her research interests include the impacts of urbanisation on water resources, an issue that comes back to haunt major Indian cities and enter the national discourse every […]
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), […]
