Can you tell us a bit about your research?

We are interested in understanding how cytoskeleton assemblies mediate biological motion. The cytoskeleton is a microscopic network of protein filaments and tubules in the cytoplasm that gives shape and coherence to cells. Be it muscle contraction or even complex cellular cargo transport, biological motion involves cytoskeleton assemblies. We want to understand the molecular details of how they achieve these biological motions.

What are the techniques that you employ to study these cytoskeletal assemblies?

The techniques we use are evolving. I am beginning to realise that I want to understand the biology of the cytoskeleton, not just employing one technique to understand one aspect. For the most part, we use structure, function and biophysical methods. More recently, we began collaborating with a human geneticist, Dhandapany Perundurai, who is also a researcher at inStem. Most often, these proteins are the ones which are mutated in diseases because they perform such an important task. This is true in heart diseases, for example. We would like to really expand into that direction and extend our understanding to study disease biology. The hope is that at some point of time, if we understand enough, we can design certain therapeutic interventions—either a drug-based molecule or better management.

You have just been awarded the EMBO YI grant. Why did you choose to apply for this grant?

I have been in touch with a lot of YIs who were formerly part of the EMBO YI program (YIP), including senior colleagues from previous labs. They have benefited from the programme in many different ways. One of them recently advised that this would be the right time for me to apply for the grant, and as it turned out, India became an EMBC Member State earlier this year. The timing was so perfect! I couldn’t have asked for a better situation.

Can you tell us about the process of applying for the grant?

The application deadline was in April and the outcome was announced in mid-October, so it is a fairly long process, but there is not a lot of work involved. For the preliminary application, you have to check to ensure eligibility and simply send in your CV and an abstract of your work, along with recommendation letters from your mentors. If you are shortlisted and invited to submit a full application, you have to write a two-page summary of your research program and how being an EMBO YI would benefit your work. The interview was in the first week of October. The committee has EMBO members and former YIP members. The interview involves a 10 minute talk followed by 10-15 minute discussion.

How do you think this grant will take your work forward?

For starters, we could benefit simply with the increased interaction with other EMBO members. As I mentioned earlier, many of my former labmates are now members, now we can collaborate more easily; I can send my students to get trained. I’m not sure yet how much I will avail of the EMBL facilities, but it is something I’m thinking about since I now have access to the facility. Additionally, the grant allows me to organise meetings, so at some point of time, I would like to have a cytoskeleton meeting here in India.

In what other ways do you expect to benefit from being a part of the EMBO YI network?

It’s a great way to get in touch with some of the best young minds in science. Just like my interactions with colleagues here have opened up new lines of investigation into diseases, maybe I will discover something else in my interactions with YIs in the EMBO network. I don’t know yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

Any advice for other Indian researchers who wish to apply in future?

One concern that came up during the process was about the facilities available to carry out the research I proposed—it helps to bear in mind that reviewers may not be familiar with the research environment here in India. If you encounter that, you need to talk about your institute, the facilities and the general research scenario in India. Maybe it would also help if, in their recommendation letters, your mentors could also write a little bit about the Institute you work at.

Your elder son, Vidur, was born in the first year of your PhD. Dhruv, was born in your 4th year. Yet, you managed to finish your PhD in good time and produced, what was, by all accounts, a first-rate dissertation. How did you do it? Did having kids help your PhD in some way?

Vidur was born a few months before I gave my qualifying exam and Dhruv was born around the time I was starting to finalise the initial chapters of my thesis. Vidur's arrival was, obviously, a life changer for my wife Uttara and me, while we were more experienced and better prepared when Dhruv was born. I was able to finish my PhD in reasonably good time (five and a half years), but it took a serious team effort and was only made possibly by the excellent team that I worked with. Personally, it was a matter of handling variable and often unconventional working hours and a compulsion to prioritise tasks and become more efficient at work. I think of these as positives and believe I have become better at them thanks to the children. Being around the kids is also an excellent way to take a break from thinking about work, and I have often found this to be quite beneficial too!

Let’s talk a little more about efficiency. The lasting memory of my own PhD, is a feeling of unproductivity—many hours before the computer and nothing to show at the end of it. I am sure that is not something you could have afforded. How did you avoid that?

I certainly experienced similar seemingly unproductive stretches of work and it was very frustrating. But I think such phases are an important part of the overall process, and I do not have any solutions for it. What I meant in terms of improving work efficiency was trying to be more focused on the task at hand, which for me meant a concerted effort not to periodically check and respond to emails, nor to get too distracted with tangential reading, and especially not to read news articles and follow basketball scores while I was reading or writing.

What about decision-making? A PhD is a series of small and big decisions - 'should I use analysis technique X on my data?'; 'what should be the first sentence of my paper?'; 'should I present my results this way or that way'. Each of these can be paralysing, if one spends too much time ruminating, especially because there is no single right answer to any of them. Did you have a strategy for efficient decision-making?

No, I do not think I had any noteworthy strategy for such decision-making and in fact, I spent a lot of time trying to find suitable ways to present and discuss my results. What I believe did help was that I began my writing fairly early on during the thesis (by year 3.5), which gave me a lot of time to go back-and-forth with my supervisor while figuring out these decisions.

What were the biggest challenges in being a PhD student-cum-father?

Parenting can place great demands on one’s time, especially in the case of infants and very young children, because even regular day-to-day tasks such as feeding, bathing and helping children sleep can be both exhausting and time consuming. These responsibilities also make it quite hard to maintain a regular work routine, and my biggest challenge was in trying to string together enough working hours to make a productive day, and to do so consistently to have productive weeks and months. I was successful at doing this on some occasions and not so on others, and I think this stop-start routine slowed my progress overall. Things got particularly tough when facing hard deadlines such as work review seminars or manuscript submission dates. It was also difficult, both logistically and emotionally, when I had to travel, as I often did for fieldwork.

At the same time, did fieldwork also provide an opportunity for long uninterrupted periods of thinking about your work?

Yes, I've always found time spent in the field to be very conducive for thinking about work, and doing fieldwork is a great stimulus for new ideas and insights.

What about finances- was it a challenge to run a household on a PhD stipend?

It definitely is a challenge, if not nearly impossible, to run a household on a single PhD stipend, especially when children are slightly older and school fees start to come into the equation. In our case, we were extremely lucky that Uttara was able to keep working, either full- or part-time, throughout my PhD, and so we were able to live comfortably and even save a bit. Of course, this was all made possible by the immense support we got from our parents, who have enabled us to work by helping raise the children, and helped out financially.

Does NCBS take any steps to help PhD students who have a family?

NCBS is a very child friendly establishment and campus. There is an excellent creche that is open to children of all staff and students. All the people that I worked with, and especially my supervisor, were very accommodating and supportive, and this enabled me to do good work alongside my parenting responsibilities. As I did not approach NCBS for any additional assistance, I cannot really comment on whether there are any specific policies in place to help students with children.

How much of a challenge was your PhD for your spouse?

I think it was challenging for Uttara in a number of ways. Mainly, she made a huge effort to enable me to work on my thesis with the least possible distraction. Uttara did this by taking the lead on several family responsibilities, ranging from day-to-day requirements of our children to thinking about vaccinations, schooling and finances. Amazingly, she did all this alongside her various professional commitments, which included helping set up an NGO and carrying out some research projects of her own. Needless to say, Uttara worked extremely hard in the limited time available to balance these various responsibilities. I am sure it was often exhausting and frustrating, and I admire her greatly for this achievement.

You were pursuing a PhD in Botany before you joined the Department of Science and Technology (DST). What prompted you to move out of the domains of a wet lab?

To be honest, it was not an urge to move out of a wet lab. I had registered for a PhD and had a couple of publications to my name. I happened to find out about a job opportunity in Department of Science & Technology (DST) and applied for it. After the interview, I was offered post higher than the one I had applied for and I decided to join on the strength of advice from my seniors.

Did you receive any formal training to get into the domain of administration?

I did not receive any formal training. I have learnt on the job and from my superiors.

How has been your journey over these years and how it has evolved?

I began my career in 1982 and have worked in different capacities. My first posting was in the National Biotechnology Board (NBTB). With upgradation of NBTB to DBT, I moved to DBT. Since then, there has been no looking back.

I joined when I was very young and got opportunity to learn from luminaries like Prof Dr. S. Ramachandran, Founder secretary of DBT and Dr MGK Menon, Secretary, DST. I have worked under the guidance of Prof MS Swaminathan—I had read about him as father of green revolution—when he was chairperson for the Women Bioscience Awards Committee. In addition to his professional achievements, his personality, his accessibility, and appreciation for others have influenced me tremendously. I have had many such mentors who have left a deep impression on me. More recently, Dr Bhan and Dr VijayRaghavan’s philosophy of giving unquestioned freedom to officers has allowed us to flourish and become experts in our own fields. These interactions have helped me greatly in formulation and smooth implementation of different programmes of the Department. DBT is by far one of the best scientific departments in the Government system. Our officers take lot of pride in achievements of DBT.

You went back to complete your PhD long after finishing your Masters. Do you think that step helped you to deal with the challenges of science administration better?

After a few years of professional life, I decided to register for a PhD again . I decided to study “Technology forecasting in plant tissue culture”, a topic which would be relevant to my job. I was particularly encouraged by my father, who was very keen that I complete my PhD—the degree also gets respectability in the system. Earning a PhD also boosts one’s own confidence.

You have worked on many different schemes and projects ranging from the Integrated human resource development programme in Biotechnology to the Star college scheme. Tell us about some projects that you have enjoyed working on.

I have been associated with the initiation of a post-graduate teaching programme in Biotechnology and we are the first country in the world to have Masters of Science in Biotechnology. Such DBT-supported teaching programmes are still rated among the best in the country. I have also been involved in setting up of infrastructural facilities, R&D projects in the area of medicinal and aromatic plants, environmental biotechnology. We established 3 National Gene Banks and held several workshops with tanneries, refineries, pesticides and dye manufacturing industries, and developed need-based projects to find solutions for these industries. In human resource development, I conceived the Star College Scheme under the guidance of Dr MK Bhan. This is a scheme I’m partial to, as it helps to provide practical and research exposure to undergraduate students. This scheme has transformed undergraduate science education by collaborative participation of science departments.

What would you say have been the highs and lows of your journey?

Like I mentioned earlier, my job has offered the opportunity to work with visionaries. I have learnt a lot from their guidance and mentorship.

On the flip side, delays in release of grants, at times beyond your control, are very frustrating. Mails from students about delay in disbursement of fellowships are very painful as I am able to relate to their problems and in spite of sensitivity and sensibility, things are beyond our control and we are not able to provide instant solutions.

What difference have you been able to make to the growth of science research and teaching in the country as an administrator? What are your future goals, both immediate and long-term?

For a substantial part of my career, I have been involved in formulation and implementation of integrated human resource development programmes. I have been very closely interacting with undergraduate and postgraduate students, research scholars, postdoctoral fellows, and have tried to appropriately include their suggestions. I am responsible for initiating and nurturing the postgraduate teaching programme, the Star college scheme, in addition to the Biotechnology Industrial Training programme, short term training courses, doctoral and post doctoral fellowships in Biotechnology. I have compiled and edited 4 publications and written several articles in Biospectrum targeted at students. I have also initiated a blog on Opportunities and Concerns in Biotechnology. My goals are to constantly improve the programmes on the basis of feedback and suggestions from all stakeholders. Post retirement, I would like to aggressively pursue science communication and help students.

What makes one a good science administrator?

A science administrator should be accessible so than he/she can understand the requirements and difficulties of scientists in the field. Science administrators should also be unbiased, transparent, sensitive and sensible to the difficulties faced by the investigators, willing to help them overcome procedural hurdles in their institutions. It also helps to be a good listener, and a team person willing to interact and learn from others, possess updated knowledge about the field and have good communication skills to obtain necessary approvals.

What would be your advice to someone interested in following a similar career path?

I think career decisions should be made on the basis of one’s interest. Wrong choices could be very detrimental for the candidate and organisation. Once you decide to be science administrator, you should not compare yourself with active scientists in laboratories as this would only breed dissatisfaction. Be willing to give your 100% and sky is the limit. There are tremendous opportunities to contribute.

What or who inspired you to become a scientist?

I don’t know if i ever wanted to become a scientist. I just wanted to do something which was interesting. It turned out that biology was interesting for me. I would say my mother was the reason I entered science. She was a botanist, and when I was a child we used to go for long walks to look at trees and pull apart flowers to see what they looked like from the inside.

What is the most exciting research you have been involved in?

Everything that I have done has been very interesting so it would be difficult to highlight one thing. I have been very fortunate that way in being able to select things that I found really interesting.

Is there one research question that you are currently working on that is keeping you awake at night?

What motivates me today is a larger global crisis of sustainability. What kind of world are we leaving behind for my daughter’s generation, or the generations that come after? That is a task at a mammoth scale that is really hard to tackle, because it is a large herd of problems masquerading as one. Take the scale issue, for instance. You might figure out how to fix your neighbourhood, but how do you fix a broken world?

Who are your women role models?

Elinor Ostrom, for her quality of mind and quality of heart. I don’t know of anyone else who was such a brilliant and incisive scholar, yet with such an open, collaborative, generous, and warm character. She had a great quality of mind and pioneered a tradition of interdisciplinarity and collaborative research among networks of scholars across fields who continue to collaborate today, years after she passed away. If you consider her as a woman scientist of her times, she faced numerous challenges. She was told she couldn’t take graduate courses in economics because many of her professors said that it would be a waste, as she would end up “barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen”. So think of someone facing difficulties of that magnitude, coming into political science at a late stage in life, then doing her PhD and going on to pick problems that led to an eventual Nobel prize in economics, the first (and so far the only win) for a woman in that field. She also practiced what she preached: a hard task, because she talked about commons, which involved collaborative work. For her, collaboration was at the core of research. She brought together groups of people to work on problems that affected them and then things moved ahead. That is something that inspires me even today, to get groups of people from diverse backgrounds and experience together, to work long-term in a collaborative, non-hierarchical atmosphere to tackle difficult problems.

How easy/hard has it been for you to achieve a sustainable work-life balance? How can institutions help in this regard?

I have been fortunate because I have an extremely supportive home. My parents and sister have been very supportive, and my husband and my in-laws are the same. So I have never had problems on the personal front.
At the work front, I was an independent researcher from 2003-2013. I could work from home and set my own schedule, which was extremely useful especially when my daughter was younger. One challenge as women grow and take on additional administrative and other responsibilities is to keep aside time for the home. Children need time, and complete attention—not just quality time but also quantity time. This becomes difficult keeping work hours in mind. My university is child-friendly, and I often take my daughter with me to work during her school vacations, which she enjoys. My husband also has a very flexible schedule and we share our tasks. For all parents (fathers and mothers!) with young children, having a child care facility on campus is very important.

There are pressures on young students. Given the length of a typical PhD, the unmarried students face pressure from their families to get married; when they are married they face pressures to have children soon; when they have children, they face the challenge of needing to spend time with them and find it difficult to resume their research, or return to full time work. That’s why having a supportive home environment is important, but many women may not have this, sadly. Thus an institution that provides an environment where you can bring your child to work becomes very essential. It is easy when the family is supportive but what if the family is either not willing to support or capable of supporting a woman researcher with family responsibilities, particularly with a young child? In the younger generation the division of responsibilities is a lot more equal, but there is a long, long way to go.

Do young women researchers need/benefit from older women mentors? Do you think women need to be mentored differently?

Over the years, I have seen that many younger women tend to seek out women mentors and researchers as role models. Several of my women students have told me that they are concerned about what their work schedule will look like over the longer term, and in particular, how they will deal with issues of work-life balance, and parenting. This leads to many thoughtful discussions with students about dealing with personal challenges. Young women balance a much greater set of responsibilities and have to think of many more issues compared to men, and mentoring takes on a different, more personal and involved note of nurture and care in these circumstances, quite apart from and in addition to the research mentoring.

Do you think sexual harassment is an issue in Indian academia? Does your organisation have a cell or policy to address these issues?

Ecology and development—the two areas of my research—are such field-based activities that sexual harassment becomes an issue faced by many. Our university has a well defined policy and an active cell that deals with these issues: they are complex, and require far more than just cosmetic handling. I have not had any personal challenges on this front with my students. In part, I must thank the fact that we have just been lucky, but I am also somewhat obsessive about checking out the safety of field situations and making sure we engage trusted, reliable field assistance before we begin any new field projects. Yet there are “softer” issues of women dealing with unnecessary patronising, with their ideas and outputs being dismissed, or having unpleasant sexist interactions with their peers, which have to be dealt with strongly and productively—mentoring comes in very importantly here as well. But this is a larger problem of changing societal mindsets. It’s an uphill battle, and a long one that we all fight.

What are the structural roadblocks that impede the progress of women in science?

Several. Societal and familial roadblocks aside, there are basic but essential structural issues of parental leave and child care. Many private research centers and universities only provide 3 months of maternity leave for women. At the same time, the World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding for at least the first six months. How are these two supposed to co-exist? This sets up a very unfair situation for a woman researcher, who faces a Hobson’s choice: to sacrifice her family income (which may be very important for the family as well) and career growth, or balance her work prospects against the long term health of her child. Indian universities also provide either zero paternity leave, or leave of a maximum of two weeks. Under such circumstances, how will the task of child care ever be shared equally, or even partially, across parents? The availability of childcare facilities on-campus also leaves much to be desired across academia in India. These are fairly simple interventions and policy changes that need to be made, swiftly, and across all research centers and universities.
Universities and research centers need to look at generating a fair, gender-nuanced supportive atmosphere that can help younger researchers, who can feel overwhelmed, achieve a successful work-life balance and prevent them from burning out or losing their enthusiasm and drive. And this is important not just for women but for men as well, to enable them to carry their fair share of the load of familial responsibilities at home. The glaring imbalance in paternal and maternal leave policies is a stark example of this gender imbalance which is so woven into the country’s science administrative policies that we don’t even notice it anymore.

What is one change, that, in your opinion, would hugely benefit aspiring women scientists?

Changing the glass ceiling that still exists, somewhat glaringly so, in Indian science. The situation is much better than it was when I was a beginning student, in the early 1990s. However, a cursory look at the top science committees, prestigious science awards, administrative committees will demonstrate the glaring absence of women. Young women researchers look at these, and see the absence of seats at the decision making tables as a clear signal to them of what the world will be like, unless they manage to change it. To clarify, I am certainly not asking for affirmative action, or reservations for women scientists. But I am speaking of equal opportunities for women, particularly in positions of power. It would be very difficult to believe that there are no women of ability available for these positions. Of course, this is not a problem unique to science or academia by any means, but the situation in science appears to be far worse than in the corporate sector, which seems to have witnessed some improvement along these fronts.

What is one piece of advice you wish someone had given you way back when you started?

To enjoy each stage in your work and personal life without getting stressed. I think women tend to put great pressure on themselves and set impossibly high standards. Taking the time to relax, take a deep breath, and recharge is important. Everyone needs a good hobby, or three, or ten!