The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India and the Prakash Lab at Stanford University, USA signed an agreement a few months ago to bring the Foldscope to India to encourage curiosity in science. As part of this was a series of Foldscope workshops and talks in India between 16-21 December 2015. Manu Prakash, his team (Marie Bas, Tom Hata, Jim Cybulski and Lakshminarayan Iyer) from Stanford and volunteers from TIFR-Hyderabad worked together with DBT and local organisers to teach students and enthusiasts the workings of the Foldscope.

A Foldscope workshop at Sri Venketeshwara College, Delhi University was the first in the series. Students from all over Delhi and India attended this workshop, and a list of attendees can be found here. The day ended with a long talk by Manu Prakash at Gargi College, Delhi, where he spoke to assembled students about how uninhibited inquiry and learning from mistakes are important components of science.

The workshop proceeded in stages. Stage 1: Assembling the origami microscope.

Stage 2: Getting the biological sample in place

Stage 3: Capturing what you see through a Foldscope

The day ended on a high note, and new explorers left the event equipped with a powerful pocket-sized tool.

If you attended the India workshops, post your posts and images on https://microcosmos.foldscope.com/

More on the Delhi workshop:

https://sumangovil.wordpress.com/2015/12/16/first-...

https://microcosmos.foldscope.com/?p=11010

If you are interested in knowing more about Foldscopes, visit https://microcosmos.foldscope.com/

Stay tuned to the IndiaBioscience website for more on the DBT-Prakash Lab Foldscope initiative and leave your comments here.

The first Young Investigators’ Meeting UK was held on 9 September 2015 in Cambridge, UK. The event was initiated by a group of postdoctoral scholars and PhD students of Indian origin in Cambridge, UK. Conversations with colleagues had them convinced of the need for such an event in UK, as the Indian diaspora wanted to know the pulse of current Indian research, said Bhavani Shankar Sahu, one of the organisers. Jointly organised with IndiaBioscience, the meeting was funded by the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance, British Council India, Department of Biotechnology, EyeStem Research Pvt Limited and the Institute for Life Sciences, Ahmedabad University.

The event focused on bilateral research collaborations between researchers in UK and India, and on the changing Indian science scenario, particularly in the life sciences. It was attended by 130 PhD students and postdoctoral scholars, mostly of Indian origin, from Cambridge as well as other universities in the UK and Europe.

The daylong event began with LS Shashidhara, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, describing the current Indian scenario in the life sciences. “India is on a trajectory that is generating its own momentum”, he said, and went on to describe major new initiatives, especially those of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST). Ashok Venkitaraman, who holds academic positions both at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, and inStem, Bangalore, spoke about the science that drives him, stating that his two-country research was an outcome of his questions rather than a causal factor. The rest of the day included talks by representatives from research institutes and funding bodies from India, and scientists from the two countries. Research institutes represented were the IISERs, NCBS, inStem, C-CAMP, IIT Mandi, Presidency University, IISc, Institute of Life Sciences and Eyestem Research Private Limited. Funding agencies represented were the Department of BioTechnology (DBT), the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance, the British Council and EMBO. The keynote address (live webcast) was delivered by K VijayRaghavan, Secretary, DBT, who, in the ensuing discussion session also answered many practical questions regarding applying for jobs in India.

A poster session at the end of the day saw many of the attendees presenting their research work, and interacting with the invited delegates for feedback and advice. Research presented ranged from cellular to developmental biology.

The funding session was the most sought-after at the event, as judged by participant feedback. One of the more popular talks outside of this category was on the growing career opportunities outside academia, by S Ramaswamy, inStem and C-CAMP. Of the interactions after his talk, Ramaswamy said, “The meeting was interesting, and useful to attract the best minds in the UK to come work in India. The questions were focused, and the assumption that those in UK are better aware of the Indian scenario than in other countries is not true. The interest of the attendees to work in non public funded research and industry was surprisingly high.”

The EMBO Meeting 2015, one of the largest meetings for the life sciences in Europe, was held in Birmingham, UK, between 5-8 September 2015. Over the three days of the meeting, there were over 60 talks, including some by prominent scientists from all over the world. Apart from the scientific sessions, there were lively interactions between researchers, enterprenuers and companies in the poster and exhibit area. A contingent of scientists, funding agencies and administrators from India attended the meeting, bringing attention to the research and funding scenario in India and the current trajectory of growth.

Opportunities in life science research in India were highlighted in a 90-minute session as well as at a booth in the exhibit area; both were joint initiatives of the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance and IndiaBioscience. The Indian contingent comprised of representatives from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance, IISER Pune, inStem, NCBS, C-CAMP and IndiaBioscience. Funding to organise these initiatives was provided by DBT, Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance, EyeStem Research Private Limited and Institute of Life Sciences, Ahmedabad University.

The Opportunities session was attended by postdoctoral scholars and PhD students of Indian origin from various parts of the UK. Most of them had left India for studies at least 5 or 10 years back, and were keen to know the current scenario of research and funding. Questions at the meeting varied from the general job application process for persons wishing to establish careers to the specifics of fellowships offered by DBT, Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance.

DBT’s Meenakshi Munshi spoke about the Ramalingaswamy fellowship at the session and interacted further with potential applicants at the booth during the meeting. 80% of the applicants to the fellowship are from the USA, and only 4% are from the UK. “Maybe events like this will increase the number of applicants from UK and Europe”, she said. Suman Govil, Advisor, Human Resources, DBT, added “40% of the Indian scientific workforce is currently working outside India, and if we are able to attract even a small number of them back to India the quality of our science will improve. “

Also highlighted at the session were the impending India-Europe collaborative intiatives and greater inclusion of India in the future activities of EMBO. Anne-Marie Glynn, Head of Global Activities at EMBO, spoke about the current opportunities applicable to Indians, and the likely changes to this next year. Also present at the meeting were the EMBO Director, Maria Leptin and Deputy Director, Gerlind Wallon, who expressed enthusiasm about the proposed increase in India-Europe research exchanges and collaborations.

To facilitate greater visibility of Indian science in the international mileu, the Wellcome Trust DBT/India Alliance provided ten travel awards to researchers from India to attend the EMBO Meeting this year. The grantees included young investigators and PhD students from universities and research institutes across India. It is hoped that such targeted efforts of both Indian and European agencies will result in productive collaborations and bilateral scientific progress in the immediate future.

Snippets from Day 1 and Day 2

July 1, 2015

Students kept busy on the third morning of the Meeting shuttling between various parallel sessions of talks. “I’ve learnt so, so, so much already,” said one young graduate student from Colombia. Another was impressed at how easy it was to strike up conversations. “Everyone is so polite and approachable, even the Laureates. There are people from so many different countries here. It’s amazing,” he exclaimed.

12:00 noon

When it was time for Martin Chalfie to give his plenary talk, the Bayern Hall at Inselhalle filled to capacity. He began by warning the audience that he will not be talking about the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), for which he got his Nobel Prize. “It’s all on the web, you can look it up easily,” he said. He wanted to talk about another problem that he has been interested in for decades, on decoding the sense of touch, using C. Elegans as the model system. “What sensitive piece of equipment do you think we use to study sense of touch in 1mm organism?” he asked. “Well, it’s an eyebrow hair stuck on a toothpick.”

By studying about 500 touch sensitive mutants, 6 cells and 17 genes needed for sensitivity have been identified. He has gone on to find out how cells differentiate to have this specific function, and how cell fate is maintained. Among these cells there are subtypes, and a lot of work has gone into understanding how these subtypes arise. Hox genes have been found responsible and we now know the pathway, but some mysteries remain. What determines where a gene is expressed, for instance, is unknown.

“What I really have stumbled into in this work, which has taken decades of my life is Hershey Heaven: To have one experiment that works and keep doing it all the time,” said Chalfie in summary. Chalfie and his team have done experiments again and again on the same system and learnt something new every time.

1:30 p.m.

A press talk on the “Future of biology” was held in the afternoon, open only to bloggers and journalists. The panel, which had Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Jack Szostak and Arieh Warshel, was asked which one problem they thought could be solved in the next 50 years. The answers ranged from memory storage in the brain to beating drug resistance.

The discussion then moved on to the importance of tools and technologies that will enable us to find answers to open questions, and whether most science will become collaborative in nature. Ramakrishnan was of the opinion that while there would be problems that could only be tackled by large teams of researchers, science would always have the space for individuals who pursue good ideas on their own, or with very small teams.

Science communication was unanimously recognized as essential, especially in the context of getting better funding for important projects. The session concluded by alluding to some of the problems faced by the army of young students training to be scientists. There are big questions to be investigated, but many don’t find a place to pursue these questions. To avoid these mixed messages, more forethought needs to be put into scientist training, suggested one of the panelists.

July 2, 2015

Thursday was the last day of lectures and discussion sessions. Everyone was scrambling to try and meet the Laureate they’d missed.

9:00 a.m.

The morning session had plenary lectures by William Moerner and Elizabeth Blackburn. Moerner began with a simple baseball analogy to illustrate the need to study single molecules. While team batting averages are an ensemble measurement, he said looking at individual players showed who the outliers were. “By studying single molecules, we can ask whether molecules are marching to different drummers or not,” he said. He went on to explain his work on super resolution microscopy and how it can be used to study single molcules. The highlight for many, however, was his live demo of fluorescence on stage with orange highlighter and a green laser pointer.

Elizabeth Blackburn followed, and took the audience with her on her “journey from pond scum to the mind”. Early in her career, she became interested in the telomere, “which is like a cap at the end of the chromosome”. The telomeric DNA structure was found to be a simple repeating sequence. The subsequent discovery of telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes telomeres, by Blackburn won her the Nobel Prize in 2009. More recently, Blackburn has led investigations that show that the lengths of telomeres have a clear disease impact. Longer telomeres statistically correspond to longer lives and longer “health spans”, while shorter telomeres are associated, more often than not, with impaired immune function and diseases like cancer and diabetes, among others. Clinical studies have also revealed that chronic psychological stress has an evident telomere effect.

3:00 p.m.

A panel discussion on “Communication Overkill” was held that afternoon. The effects of media hype and miscommunication were discussed. Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt stressed the importance of scientists taking time out to communicate their own work.

7:00 p.m.

The much-awaited Bavarian evening unfolded that evening. A Bavarian dance performance and music accompanied a grand dinner. Many participants wore traditional costumes—there were kimonos and kurtas. An enjoyable evening stretched late into the night for many, with endless conversations in an atmosphere of congeniality.

July 3, 2015

Most participants headed out on a long boat ride that would take them to the island of Mainau in Lake Constance. The Meeting ended with 30 Nobel Laureates presenting a joint declaration on climate protection at the island. The Mainau Declaration 2015 calls for nations of the world to unite and take decisive and urgent action limit global emissions and tackle climate change.

Highlights from Day 1

Tuesday, 30^th June, 2015

7:00 a.m.

The morning began early with two parallel Science Breakfast sessions. The session on “Decoding science leadership: What matters in leading innovative labs, leading great people and leading self” was hosted by McKinsey & Company, Inc. The panel had researchers from various stages in their career—Bonnie van Wilgenburg, a junior research fellow at Oxford, Simon Elsasser, a young scientist who is in the process of setting up his lab, and Nobel Laureate Elizabeth Blackburn. The Director of McKinsey & Company, Germany, Frank Mattern, was also present. The session opened by the moderator with a list of reasons why science leadership matters more today. There areunprecedented opportunities, both within academia and outside. As research expands into territories outside of traditional disciplines, the job of a scientist is becoming increasing complex—as a mentor and a collaborator. Like in most other professions, technology has made science “always on”.

The panel was then invited to share their perspectives and insights. Wilgenburg talked about what young people could do to imbibe leadership qualities early on. She urged them, for instance, to see mentoring new students in the lab as an opportunity and not as a burden. She also stressed the importance of actively seeking out leadership positions on student boards and councils, and to get involved early in organizing conferences. Approaching mentors and talking to them about their practices and how they organize themselves can provide inspiration and build a network to tap into in times of need, she said.

Elsasser enthusiastically seconded Wilgenburg about being active in seeking out opportunities. “Being visible is also important for getting opportunities,” he added. Networking, writing and outreach help to stand out in a crowd. He said that starting his own lab is teaching him that a very different skill set is needed to work and lead people. Communication skills were key, as were motivational skills—different approaches are needed for different people.

“There’s something that has come to surprise me as a key ingredient of leadership,” said Blackburn. “And that is respect.” She went on to elaborate that she has learned to respect people in two different ways. One is to respect the people in her team, and allow them to choose the level of mentorship they expect and require, and to let people run with their ideas. The second, she said, was learning to respect her collaborators from other fields who may have very different backgrounds and training. “You might think they’re ignorant in your field. But believe me their good at theirs,” she said. Personal interaction and clear communication are the best way to work around the barriers of interdisciplinary collaborations.

Mattern brought in the corporate perspective. “The quality of talent across some institutions is similar. Still, the differential in performance is significant,” he pointed out. He believed that the difference comes down to collaboration, the tone for which is set by the leadership. Excellence in any field is about creating an atmosphere where everybody brings out their best, he concluded.

The questions came in fast and furious. Many people were eager to know how to set the right tone early on and how to navigate situations where students are reserved or come from backgrounds where hierarchy is observed. Everybody agreed that frank communication is the key and suggested that they personally interact with new students (or with collaborators at the beginning of a project) to discuss goals, expectations and challenges. It is important to spell out that it is ok for them to contradict your views, and not expect students to know it automatically. “Respect doesn’t mean being submissive. It means listening, but also not holding back your own opinions,” said Blackburn.

5 p.m.

Brian Schmidt orchestrated an interesting Master Class in the afternoon titled “ A 21^st century career in research: A discussion about thriving in the face of career uncertainty”. The session covered a very wide range of topics of pressing relevance today. Four young researchers made short presentations that set the tone for the discussions that followed.

The first of these was a unique idea for the exploration of alternate careers. Uta Allenstein outlined her idea on alternate careers, which she calls “Let’s be physicists”. She plans to test jobs by doing short internships in a variety of careers, find out the skill sets needed, rate the jobs and blog about them.

The second focused on the challenges of studying interdisciplinary problems early in your career, which could make one a jack of many trades and a master of none.

The third talk was about women in science. Else Starkenburg talked about what she called the “leakiest part of the pipeline” for women, the postdoc years. She proposed several solutions that could help: paid maternity leave, paternal leave options, support for travel with caregivers and child (because networking is key) and return/part-time fellowships. She urged people to counter biases with information and also think about their own biases. The last presentation spotlighted research and opportunities in India, intended as one representative of research in developing countries.

The discussion that followed picked up on the different threads in turn. The discussion on women in science was most animated. “Men need to be invited and participate in this dialogue. Mandating maternity leave is not a good idea unless you also mandate paternity leave. We keep reinforcing the bias when we talk about it only as women’s issues,” said one young scientist from Caltech.

In talking about alternate careers, it was clear to everyone present that a job in academia was achieved by the minority. However, more young scientists felt the pressure to aim to become a professor rather than choose an alternate career. The problem they concluded was in the perception, common in science, that leaving mainstream science is considered a failure. The class left the participants with many questions and attitudes to ponder and reflect upon.

7:00 p.m.

The day ended on a relaxing note with a Grill & Chill event outdoors, with a spectacular view of Lake Constance and the mountains beyond. Everyone was invited, Laureates, young scientists, journalists and the residents of Lindau. One local said she'd been coming to the event for the last 5 years. "It's different every year. I have met so many people from everywhere in the world. It is a very refreshing experience," she said.

More from Lindau: Days 3 and 4

Monday, 29^th July, 2015

9:00 a.m.

The scientific programme of the Meeting started this morning with an energetic talk by Stefan Hell, who related his journey to achieving super resolution. He had resolved early on to break Abbe’s diffraction limit (which is, quite literally set in stone). The breakthrough came when he read about stimulated emission, which was, effectively, an ‘off’ switch for fluorophores, or molecular labels. So when a sample is labeled with fluorophores, a (green) laser turns ‘on’ all the labels in a diffraction-limited area. Hell’s idea, which he demonstrated successfully over the next five years, was to use a ring of (red) laser light that would turn off some of these fluorophores using stimulated emission, leaving only a very small area of fluorescing labels, which could then be imaged. STED and other techniques that have brought the nano world into focus with microscopes have engendered a shift in the field—the quest for better resolution is no longer dependent better lenses. It depends, instead, on finding more effective fluorophores. “Light microscopy is about waves… and states,” he concluded.

Eric Betzig, who shared the Nobel Prize with Stefan Hell for "the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy" via a different technique, took the stage soon after. He introduced himself as a “tool builder by interest and inclination”. Forthright and engaging, he said, “I wanted to get into science not to do incremental things but make big impact. I like the idea of going into a field at its birth.” He candidly shared his tortuous route to the discovery of PALM, or photoactivated localization microscopy. In this technique, sparse subsets of fluorophores are turned on at random, and a stochastic sampling of many such subsets produces an image with a resolution better than the diffraction limit.

Betzig has since gone on to newer, more sophisticated microscopes that seek to overcome the limitations of first generation of super resolution microscopy. He pioneered a technique called Lattice light-sheet microscopy. “Everyone who has come to the lab to use it has left with big smiles and 10 TB of data. Of course, we never hear from them after, because they don’t know what to do with 10 TB of data,” he joked. He also touched upon another technique called adaptive optical microscopy, which may well pave the way for imaging deep inside biological tissues. “We are on the cusp of a revolution in cell biology. We have never studied cells as they are. We have to study the cell on its own terms. You can’t look at cells in isolation. You have to look at its environments and cell-cell interactions. That’s where adaptive optics will play a part,” he concluded to thunderous applause.

Betzig was followed by Venkatraman Ramakrishnan who won the Nobel Prize in 2009 for the "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome”. He walked the audience through the history of how increasingly complex structures were solved with the use of X-rays. Describing the technique invented by Max Perutz and John Kendrew to unravel structures of biological molecules, he said, “It’s a little bit like solving a jigsaw puzzle, except you don’t know the image beforehand since it’s not on the cover of the box.” He went on to describe how electron microscopy can be used to decode the structures of biological molecules with greater efficacy. Very soon, he promised, the revolution in electron microscopy will transform molecular structural biology significantly—the ability to crystallize the molecule will no longer be key.

1:30 p.m.

The afternoon session was a lively panel discussion on “The quest for interdisciplinarity: inspiration or distraction?” Martin Chalfie, Eric Betzig, Stefan Hell, William Moerner and Steven Chu answered various questions on the rewards and challenges of interdisciplinary research. One point that they were unanimously emphatic about was that interdisciplinarity should not be the goal of research, the problem one studies should be the goal. “Wherever the problem leads you, you should go and learn the tools and techniques from collaborators along the way,” said Martin Chalfie. They also agreed that fostering interdisciplinary thinking and research shouldn’t be forced, but brought about naturally. Institutes and universities could encourage these by provide spaces for interaction. “I spent a lot of time worrying about the cafeteria while Bio-X was being planned,” joked Steven Chu.

William Moerner stressed the importance of having deep knowledge in one field. “It’s the unity of the sciences that is interesting. The same concepts can be applied everywhere. It is important to master the concepts,” he said. Martin Chalfie acknowledged the important part played by students in learning. “Teaching and interacting with students have always been very eye-opening for me,” he said. He added that they are driving the change to interdisciplinarity by demanding to study subjects outside their disciplines. He concluded by saying, “Messiness is important. More people from more diverse backgrounds will generate more ideas.”

More from Lindau: Day 2, Days 3 & 4

R. Uma Shaanker (UAS, Bangalore) spoke of his career as a “random walk,” beginning with an interest in evolutionary biology alongside his colleague K. N. Ganeshaiah that has taken him from sexual selection in plants to conservation genetics and drug discovery. His emphasis was on the simple explorations that can lead to path-breaking results, even in the absence of great resources. “For some of your best work, you don't need grants. When you start getting grants, you get distracted,” he said. Work by Shaanker and Ganeshaiah in the 1980s on sibling rivalry among seeds and sexual advantages in plants that turned into a Nature paper began with examining a very common place fact: when you open an orange, the seeds do not show perfect symmetry. Some pockets that could hold a seed do not. They showed that seeds actively work to prevent each other's growth. Shaanker's current work on using theories from ecology and evolutionary biology to shorten paths to drug discovery arises from a similarly simple observation: take an orange, once again, and watch the patterns of fungal growth on its skin. Pay attention to the common place, and question what makes it so common.

The closing lecture of the day by Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt (London Research Institute, UK) likewise focused on the simple observations, some arising from mistakes or from sheer luck, which guide the most rewarding research. Hunt won the Nobel prize in 2001 along with two others for the discovery of cyclin, a protein that guides cell division. Reviewers rejected his work initially. “Biologists actually quite like things to be complicated,” Hunt said by way of explanation. They could not accept at first that mechanisms might be so simple. On working and studying at Cambridge from the 1960s to 1970s, a time when dizzying numbers of important advances in genetics and molecular biology were being made and you could run into Frances Crick and Seymour Brenner in the tea room, Hunt said that he was only aware of how incredible that milieu was in hindsight. “We didn't think of ourselves as genius scientists. We had interesting problems we described to each other, in this very nourishing environment.” Hunt attributed many of his best discoveries to luck, but also to paying attention to lucky accidents. “The most lucky ones tend to be the very intelligent ones who work very hard,” he said.

Group discussions before and after lunch focused on how to organize and find funding for science outreach programs, and how to develop a stimulating post-doctoral culture in India. L S Shashidhara (IISER Pune) discussed the funding available from the DST for outreach programs, for instance for science camps for teenagers and science popularization in rural areas. “Students are hungry in this country for interacting with scientists,” he said. Shahid Jameel (Wellcome Trust/DBT) mentioned that the Wellcome Trust has money for scientists interested in conducting popular lectures or going to schools. Sreelaja Nair (TIFR Mumbai) spoke about two initiatives in Mumbai that engage with science popularization,Junoon and Chai and Why?.

The discussion on how to develop a more competitive post-doctoral culture focused on the problems that post-docs face in India which might drive people to seek postdocs abroad. Topics discussed included the fact that postdocs are sometimes treated like extended students in India rather than as colleagues, their salaries are not sufficient for taking care of families, Indian post-docs are given a lower preference for faculty hires than postdocs from abroad, and that one is not always given intellectual freedom as a postdoc in India. Other groups focused on the steps that could be taken now to increase visibility of postdocs and to build a network of postdocs across the country who could work together to address common issues.

The day also saw a brief visit from Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Narinder Nath Vohra, who spoke about the potential for scientific research to expand agriculture and industry in the country. He also emphasized the need for environmentally sustainable development. “The time has come for us to think about not only a second green revolution, but an ever-green revolution, which is sustainable [and] ecologically compatible,” he said.

The Young Investigator's Meeting closed with remarks from Ron Vale (UCSF), who summed up many of the conclusions from the previous days. He called on all of the young faculty and post-docs in the room to play an active role in the growth of science and research culture in India. “You have to make the [intellectually rich] environment that you want to live in,” he said. “India desperately needs builders. It needs leaders, and those leaders are the people in this room.”

Faculty and representatives from funding agencies had several points of advice for researchers seeking funding. These included planning applications well ahead of time, paying attention to detail, getting feedback from good mentors, and ensuring that the project proposed was feasible within the resource constraints of the place and people. “Think about what the possible criticisms for your work could be and try to address them,” said Michael Eisen (UC Berkeley). “That's good for your grant-writing as well as for your science.”

After the session, about ninety of the workshop participants trekked out of the Khyber hotel into the winter cold, snow and fog of Gulmarg, Kashmir, taking a short trip down the road to ride gondolas up into the mountains. The Gulmarg gondola ride advertises itself as the highest in the world. Cloaked in white mist, even nearby mountains were invisible from the top. The ride took us above buildings buried nearly up to the roof by recent snowfall, dwarfed by thick stands of pine trees that rose far above the gondola wires themselves.

Elizabeth Hadly (Stanford) gave a lively talk in the late afternoon on her life and academic career, which began in anthropology and then shifted into paleoecology, but throughout focused on processes of global change. Speaking of her work tracing ecological change through fossil remains preserved in caves, Hadly said, “Puzzles to me are the most wonderful thing on the planet. When you excavate, it's like every single trowel full is a mystery.” Her current work focuses on how animals respond to human-instigated disturbances, merging the past with present environmental crises. She spoke strongly about the need for scientists to communicate their work in styles that are accessible to policy makers and the public, especially if their findings are of urgent public concern. “We're in this ivory tower and we talk to each other, but we don't do a good job of talking to the public,” she said. “Tell people in plain language why what you're doing is important.”

Hadly then opened a group discussion on gender sensitization, speaking briefly of the challenges that she faced raising children while continuing her career, and pointing out that many women around the world drop out of science at an age where family-work balances become problematic. The intense discussion that filled the next hour began by scrutinizing the leak in the pipeline that causes women to leave science. Several women in the room soon added that the problem is not just managing the work-life balance, however, but also the lack of systemic response to gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment faced by women in academic circles. Several constructive suggestions were made members of the audience for addressing these problems. These included: approaching civil bodies in harassment cases where institutes fail to prosecute their own, amending the law so that committees dealing with sexual harassment allegations have to be composed entirely of people external to the institute or university, starting a forum that brings sexual harassment cases into the open so that all institutes and universities are aware of their common problems, introducing mandatory introductory gender sensitization training for individuals hired at all levels in research where the definition of harassment and its legal consequences are made very clear, and putting a review system in place for administrative bodies.

The session ended with a positive note injected by Michael Eisen (UC Berkeley), who talked about the problems of sexual harassment in academia in the US which were commonplace twenty years ago but have reduced in the intervening years precisely because of open debates like the one in this room. “Bad stuff still happens,” he asserted, “but the mindset has changed, and it's changed because people have done exactly the kind of things that you're talking about.”

One commonality between all of the experienced faculty, brought to YIM as mentors: none have followed a linear, risk-free path. Upinder Bhalla (NCBS, Bangalore) compared his career that straddled the boundaries of computer science, physics and neurobiology to a “random walk,” following the trails of intriguing research problems. His main piece of advice for young researchers: “Go out and do things that don't work.” Only by tackling problems that have a chance of yielding nothing can we discover anything unusual. Michael Eisen (UC Berkeley) agreed. “Thinking in a linear way, planning your career like that, is antithetical to success in science,” he said. Eisen himself had moved from mathematics to biophysics to genomics, starting the open-source journal PLoS Biology along the way.

The theme of non-linear thinking that allows for the possibility of failure being vital to science resonated across the day. Rohini Balakrishnan (IISc, Bangalore), who studies cricket acoustics, spoke of the journey that took her to her second post-doc in Germany, which were two of the most rewarding years of her life. As each application for funding to work with her lab of choice in Germany fell through, Balakrishnan was close to giving up. Her mentor encouraged her to still come. “Why should we like money get in the way of doing the things we like in life?” she said. And so Balakrishnan flew to Germany and did the research she wanted to do, finding money as it came.

How can senior faculty act as mentors for rising researchers, when there is no fixed track that leads to a satisfying and stimulating career? One answer that many faculty provided: give students the flexibility to follow their own path, while still providing advise and support. “If you tell your students exactly what to do, you'll get exactly what you told them to do, which is rarely the most interesting thing,” said Eisen. Upinder Bhalla was more blunt: “Unleash your students,” he said.

Talks by young investigators again returned to the idea of veering from the beaten track, this time from the perspective of individuals just starting out with independent labs attempting unusual paths. Anindita Bhadra (IISER, Kolkata) spoke of her research on cooperation and conflict in stray dogs, a model system that has been seldom used in India despite its relative ubiquity. “Just walk around, you'll find my lab everywhere,” she said. Garga Chatterjee (ISI, Kolkata) spoke about his work on the visual memory deficits that accompany prosopagnosia or face blindness, with an addendum about his new research that uses data crowdsourced from the internet.

Break-out sessions through the day opened dialogues between mentors and young investigators, where lab management and the role of mentorship in science were discussed in greater depth. Here many young investigators and mentors agreed that the recruitment and promotion processes lack transparency in Indian academia, making it difficult both for younger researchers to progress in their careers and for older faculty to advise them. Dinakar Salunke (RCB and THSTI) suggested that in India, more informal mentorship initiatives between researchers work better than an institutionalized mentor system. “Identify your own mentors and reach out,” was his suggestion to young investigators. Ideally, mentors should be in the same field, and could even be collaborators.

When talking about lab management in detail, many mentors emphasized that PIs must be sensitive to lab dynamics and the inevitable stresses that students face in their twenties. Giving students a free hand did not mean never stepping in. Ron Vale (UCSF) suggested solving rivalries between students by having them work together. “Turn competition into collaboration,” he said. Elizabeth Hadly (Stanford) spoke about the need to act against imposter syndrome: some students need that reassurance that they do deserve to be where they are.

How do young investigators motivate incoming students even as their labs are starting out, and lack resources, maybe even space? Shahid Jameel (Wellcome Trust/DBT India Allaince) emphasized the importance of communication with students at that stage. Showing an interest in their work would help with motivation. “Create an atmosphere that is intellectually rich even in an environment that is resource poor,” added Ron Vale (UCSF).

Maria Leptin (EMBL, Heidelberg) ended the day recounting the life-long journey that took her from a dance academy to immunology to developmental genetics, raising a family along the way. “I've had a lot of fun in my career, and I think it's important to have fun,” she said. “I've had hard times too, and I think it's important to work through them.”

We aim to shape our website to be a one-stop place for news about Indian biology, and resources in the form of articles and videos. Our team collates and updates data about relevant grants, jobs and events. We have a database of over 700 Indian institutes, universities and colleges where biology is done. Our new website will contain an interactive platform that will let the user filter a large amount of organization-specific information (jobs, grants, news, etc) in an efficient manner. The new avatar of the website has been designed with feedback from institutions and users, with the purpose of bridging the information gap that currently exists.

The keynote lecture was delivered by K VijayRaghavan, Secretary, DBT. In an engaging talk he observed that humans, as a race, are making new kinds of changes to the planet, in a rapid manner, and in very interesting ways. “Scientifically our ways of functioning may also need to change. This is important for us to discuss,” he added. He urged young researchers to “keep science central”, but also encouraged them to shake up the system when called for and have the courage to lead that change. Among other things, his talk also touched upon the need to invest in science education and in communicating science in a manner that not only makes it interesting, but also removes misconceptions.

Satyajit Mayor began with a general welcome to postdoctoral fellows, and outlined some of the larger purposes behind bringing postdocs together with young investigators and more experienced faculty, along with funding agencies and institute directors. Where Indian science goes is therefore in the hands of these young researchers, he said. Addressing the postdocs in the audience, Mayor continued: "You need to create completely new avenues of research, and it's absolutely possible if you quickly grasp opportunities." He urged them to question the systems we have in place in Indian research, so that we can make them better.

L S Shashidhara followed with an outline of the challenges and opportunities that presently face postdoctoral fellows seeking academic jobs in India. He opined that the Indian economy is now in flux, transitioning from a service economy into a more sustainable knowledge economy. His advice for post-docs applying for faculty positions in India was, "We want more novel, concrete research proposals, not just an extension of your postdoc. Plan for at least five to six brains and fourteen hands, because you will be leading the group."

Manzoor Shah spoke about the major lessons that he has learned after a decade as a young investigator in India. "As a young investigator, one of the first challenges you have is to identify your own paradigm," he said. Giving examples from his own journey as a researcher, he emphasized the importance of learning how to ask the right questions, collaborate and hold on to networks.