“Something special about undergraduate research is that these students take bigger risks and ask bolder questions,” said Sravanti Uppaluri, Biology Faculty at Azim Premji University, as she traced the history of the university’s Science Undergraduate Research Conferences (SURC), the third edition of which was flagged off on 6 December 2024. Her words rang loud and true over the next two days, as the primary participants of the conference, undergraduates from all over the country, presented their work on topics that ranged from abstract to practical, fundamental to cutting-edge, translational to downright wacky.

The first SURC took place in Azim Premji University’s old campus in Sompura, back in 2019. Tulsi Srinivasan, a maths faculty at the university, who has witnessed all the editions of the conference, recalled that it was first designed as a platform for their own students to talk to others about the research they were doing, and for them to be exposed to research from other disciplines. The other, more ambitious goal was to encourage other colleges in the country towards undergraduate research. 

This year, about 110 undergraduate students were selected to present their work at the conference. Of this, 60 were from other universities. It took Meera KU, science administrator at the university, and her team over six months of planning to ensure that the conference would proceed smoothly. Vijay Ravikumar, MSR Kumar, Saswata Roy, Antara Das and Mohammed Irshad were the other faculty organisers of this year’s SURC

Each day of the two-day event began with a plenary talk by a prominent scientist. The first talk was by Kusala Rajendran, seismologist formerly with Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. The experience of being addressed to by a famous senior scientist could easily have intimidated a young audience, many of whom were at their first ever science conference — however Rajendran’s talk was meticulously tailored to ensure that no one would feel out of their depth. She awed the audience with the immensity of Earth’s geohistory, the minuteness of human’s presence on earth and the ​‘accidents’ that stopped dinosaurs from continuing as the dominant lineage, all whilst staying true to the precise nature of her scientific work. The lively question-and-answer session was a testament to the success of her efforts to engage the undergraduates. 

The following day, it was the turn of C. Aiswarya, a computer scientist from Chennai Mathematical Institute. If Rajendran’s lecture was a story, then Aiswarya’s was a puzzle. By cracking codes and interactive crowd work, she shepherded them through a gripping 45-minute introduction to computation with graphs. The problems she posed were by no means a walk in the park, but it was exhilarating to see the level of thinking undergraduates are capable of with the right guidance.

Apart from the two plenaries, the rest of the programmes were dedicated to the undergraduates and their own work. The presentations were organised into three formats: 10-minute talks, poster presentations, and ​‘flash talks’, a format that is becoming increasingly popular in science conferences around the world. In a flash talk, the presenter was given two minutes to pitch their poster to the audience. A successful pitch would presumably ensure a good footfall at their poster stand. 

The topics spanned the disciplines of biology, physics, chemistry, environmental science, mathematics and computer science. Some examples include: the role of a tree cricket’s microbiome, sea surface temperature trends in the Bay of Bengal, renewable liquid biofuels, stochastic modeling of elevators, p‑Adic Numbers, the lottery problem and more. There were also some excellent examples of interdisciplinary work on display, such as two separate posters that looked at elections through a physics and mathematics lens. ​“There was so much novelty!” commented Antara Das, a biologist who was part of the organising committee for this year’s SURC. 

We saw how much is possible even with meagre resources, using freely available data and inexpensive equipment.

For the second half of both days, participants could choose from a range of workshops across disciplines. Vivek Ganesh, from the university’s Research Centre, facilitated a workshop on Geographic Information System (GIS), during which he gave the 20 attendees a broad overview of the components and methods of this now ubiquitous mapping tool. Participants were given 90 minutes of time to create their own visualisations of air quality data from Bangalore. ​“The students were excited to project data from curved surfaces to flat ones, and to learn that there is no such thing as a 100% true projection,” he said.

Meal times were opportunities for participants to mix, and acquaint themselves with faculty members, both from the host university as well as the 20-odd faculty members from other universities who were invited. Beyond this, there were also a couple of ​‘Sci Adventures’ planned by students and faculty of the university, to help their visitors feel more at home. Both proved especially fruitful, especially with the opposition of Jupiter that was coincidentally happening on the stargazing session held on the first night, and the elusive neighbourhood Indian roller bird that decided to present itself during the bird watching session held in the morning of day 2.

Anil Challa, a biologist and science educator from Shiv Nadar University, who was present for the conference, said, 

Instead of us lecturing to students, I enjoyed seeing students engaging each other so well.

Anil pointed out the difficulty of having higher participation from smaller universities and colleges. ​“It’s easier to get students from IISERs and private universities, but we should also find more ways to enable other students to travel,” he said. One way to do this, according to Anil, would be to organise regional SURCs (similar to IndiaBioscience’s regional YIMs).

Indeed, diversifying the participation is topmost on the minds of the university staff as they envision the future of the SURC tradition. ​“We hope to improve representation of not-so-famous universities and institutes from rural areas in the upcoming editions,” remarked Meera. There is also the matter of disciplinary diversity. Most of the abstracts received were from biology, whereas fields such as mathematics were underrepresented. Srinivasan believes that this is because undergraduate research in maths looks very different from that in biology, physics or chemistry. 

In maths, you may not be doing original research, but still there is a lot that can be done. I hope to see many more maths students participate in future SURCs.

While the organisers continue to refine the format with every successive year, they will hope to retain the friendly and encouraging environment that is key to its success. ​“No one is looking down on you here. This is a place for students to feel safe presenting their science,” summed up Das.