The Indian Science Congress at IISc

What old brochures of the event tell us about its purpose, and about how IISc saw itself The Indian Science Congress (ISC), an annual gathering of scientists, was begun in 1914 by two British chemists, JL Simonsen and PS MacMahon, who wanted to model it on the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In […]

G Padmanaban, IISc’s former Director, releases memoir

This memoir covers his journey after retirement What does it mean to be a retired scientist continuing to pursue research? The answer to this forms the narrative in a memoir by IISc’s former Director, G Padmanaban, titled Doing Science in India: My Second Innings. The memoir, which was released on 23 March by the Director, […]

India On Our Mind- an Exhibition on the Culture of Indian Maps at IISc

‘India On Our Mind’ is an exhibition on Indian maps that showcases collections from Hyderabad-based Kalakriti Archives and is open to the public until 18 April 2018 (between 4 and 6 pm on weekdays and between 11 am and 5 pm on Saturdays and Sundays). It is organised in association with the Centre for Contemporary Studies and […]

REAPing for the stars

A science education initiative at the planetarium, which IISc faculty members contribute to, strives to turn more local students into scientists       On a sunny Saturday afternoon, as hundreds of chattering kids throng the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium to gaze at the stars, a small group of college students makes their way down to […]

Have You Hopped Onto One of IISc’s Shared Cycles Yet?

Over 100 shiny green cycles around campus are part of a smart cycle-sharing initiative called PEDL – a renewed effort to make getting around campus easy without motorised vehicles. A collaboration between the private vehicle rental company Zoomcar and Ashish Verma’s lab in the Department of Civil Engineering, the new system is meant to provide […]

Morris Travers’ Troubles in Bangalore – And How Marriage Couldn’t Solve Them

The following piece is an edited excerpt from the unpublished autobiography of Robert MW Travers, the son of Morris Travers, IISc’s first Director. Locked in a tussle with JN Tata’s sons over his plans for IISc before he travelled to England on leave in 1910, Morris Travers sensed that having a wife would enable him […]

Humour: Pally and the National Facility

Readers of Voices, IISc’s newsletter, may be familiar with the fictitious Prof Palayanteeswaran, aka Pally. Connect brings you an all-new episode. —————————- Original Message —————————- From                        : Ajay Thakur <ajay.thakur@iitd.ac.in> To                          : Prof. Palayanteeshwaran <pally@iisc.ac.in> Subject                   : Request to use the IISc mass spectrometry facility Date                        : Mon, January 1, 2018, […]

“Simplifying solutions can make science more application oriented”

Fathima Benazir and Alex D Paul were classmates in school. Many years later, Fathima, a postdoctoral fellow at IISc, began looking for opportunities abroad and happened to share her research work with Alex who comes from the corporate sector. Alex, after going through her work, encouraged Fathima to come up with a product that can […]

How IISc is working to improve the quality of India’s teachers

The Talent Development Centre at the Challakere campus trains around 1500 teachers at the high school, pre-university, undergraduate and postgraduate level According to Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2016, a survey that assesses the quality of learning among students in rural areas, only 43.3% of class VIII students can perform simple arithmetic operations like […]