A background to this piece:

We would like to refer to an earlier article titled 'University-Institute Interactions: How will it Improve Undergraduate Biology Training in India?"

To quote: “potential scientists should be tapped at an early age onwards, from the academic hinterlands spread across the country.” The above article referred to programs like 'The Get Involved in Biology Series' (GIBS) initiated by wikilabs at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR, Mumbai, Season Watch (NCBS, Bengaluru) that are expected to functionally network students, teachers and researchers across the country through engaging in collaborative research in undergraduate biology. Another piece, 'Collaborative Undergraduate Biology Research (CUBE)' by Athulaprabha Murthi of the Indian Bioscience team also had referred to the CUBE experience.

The present article is a takeoff from both these articles and is a narrative of an ongoing effort to functionally network the 26,000 undergraduate colleges in India. The functional connectivity is proposed to be achieved by providing research experiences to undergraduates by means of simple model systems based research. The aim is to transform college labs into contemporary, open-ended, inquiry-driven and collaborative research laboratories so that the biology we teach reflects the biology we do. We propose that linking the synergistic communities of teaching and research in biology or any discipline will empower the teachers who are the mainstay of the Indian education system. The network that CUBE envisages will facilitate resource sharing among the members so that scarcity of any resource for a group/individual is an opportunity to invoke the entire network to pitch in and provide.

The Biology we teach should authentically reflect the biology we do¹:

In the current scenario of the undergraduate education, colleges and research centres work in isolation with each other. It is not uncommon that individuals within the same institute too do not collaborate and communicate, unlike in the west. Moreover, what goes on in the name of college laboratories is largely based on cookbook recipes. Thus what we witness is ‘non-active functional linkages’ amongst colleges and between the colleges and the research centres. As a result, a majority of the undergraduates entering universities remain unmotivated or come away with only a traditional, descriptive model of biology.

Hence, with a focus to remedy this situation we initiated the first phase of the collaborative model in the summer of 2012. This was a 5-week hands-on research experience based on ‘Simple Model Systems’, like daphnia, drosophila, snails, earthworms and crows. Operating on the no-selection criterion, we had a total of 18 students in the first phase from 4 different colleges in Mumbai and suburbs. Not only the diversity of the colleges (From St Xavier’s College in south Mumbai to much unassuming colleges of the far off suburbs of the Metropolitan Mumbai, like Ulhasnagar and Kalyan), but also the sub-disciplinary diversity of the participants proved to be a great asset for our model of collaboration. With the short-term objective of maintaining these inexpensive, simple model systems, the participants pursued some interesting and sophisticated, front-line research questions on the molecular basis of learning and memory, on epigenetics, regeneration, decision-making, biological rhythms etc.

What happened next is indeed more unconventional. This model of undergraduate research was not just an “apprenticeship model’ in which students were trained in the course of a one-off workshop; it rather had a cascade effect: more colleges were continuously being roped in. Each of the participating colleges was required to establish a “simple model systems” based research lab in their respective centres and conduct similar types of workshop for their neighbourhood colleges, to initiate them into Collaborative Undergraduate Biology (CUB) Research. They were encouraged to submit research proposals, in collaboration with students of neighbourhood colleges (and with their respective teachers as CUBE Teacher Fellows) for the Obaid Siddiqi CUB Research Start-Up Award/Grant, a small start-up grant to defray initial expenses to establish model systems. As mentioned earlier, the model systems and the techniques introduced are extremely inexpensive and yet raise sophisticated questions. Developing newer model systems has also been part of the CUB Research program in these centres.

The student mentors were able to conduct CUBE workshops for students of neighbourhood colleges not only during the two weeks of Diwali holidays, but also for an intense 6 days during X’mas vacation. One of the student interns of this 6 days CUBE X’mas, is engaged in developing fire-flies as a model system for studying urban ecology.

Currently, he is developing soil nematode culture to feed firefly larvae and is goading a few newcomers to maintain C. elegans. A deviant means to pick up the powerful model system like C.elegans, indeed!

How is it possible to answer questions in the frontiers of biology using simple, inexpensive model systems and techniques? To give readers a flavour of what students has to say in this regard:

“....before coming to this programme, we had a notion that complex biology research requires a lot of sophisticated machines, techniques, etc. We never thought that simple organisms could give insight into very deep research areas. After this programme, we have realised that research doesn't necessarily require fancy equipments and that relevant questions can do the trick.”

“The CUBE program, I thought would be full of experiments like we do in our college. But when I saw the lab at the Homi Bhabha Centre, it was something very different. How simple can a lab be? That was my first question when I saw the CUBE lab. No fancy stuff in the lab but, then, there were high level talks and discussions while using simple stuff that we were using.”

The undergraduate research experience should form a rich learning ecology with student-centric features. The typical features of such an ecology are that it is open-ended, interactive, inquiry-driven, collaborative and context-bound. Such an experience will have high levels of student-student and student-faculty interactions, ready connections of the subject matter to topics of student interest and learning that reflects aspects of scientific inquiry and evidence-based thinking.

Moreover, providing undergraduate research experience has been acknowledged as a powerful means of restructuring undergraduate biology practice as well as teaching in many countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and some countries in Australasia and has been discussed in several policy documents like the Vision and Change, NRC, Kellog's commission, Boyer's commission, etc. (Vision and Change- A Call to Action, ibid)

We also realize that for any such transformation, it is very important that there are dependable agents who ensure that the reforms get implemented and that these 'change agents' are made an integral part of the process. Unreservedly, we regard that teachers are the key agents of change and hence it is important that the gap between the communities of teachers and researchers is bridged by linking the two in ways that will help to bring the processes of research into teaching and also help teachers to build a research profile. Further, a community of biology educators/ researchers would be built who are willing to integrate evidence-based practices into their teaching.

An example of how optimistic one participant student is of this transformation:

''Our Education system has hyper polarized our teachers; we need to have this type of workshop to make them depolarized. We meet many teachers with low threshold which will definitely fire in coming days and the network will work smoothly."

CUBE model of learning is thus built upon “communities of practice” where teachers, researchers and students are socialized into the practice of research communities through active and sustained l engagement and collaboration. Membership in the community forms identity that translates into competence.

Platforms like the online portal provide a networked learning environment that enables learners to get entry into a common database that can be browsed, retrieved, linked and commented on by users for information on various model systems and at the same time with a prospect of being ‘associative producers’ by partaking in the kind of research that could be done using these. Through such a networked collaboration with peers and teachers at the same time, learners both provide and receive process-related feedback that would guide the continued revision and restructuring of knowledge.

After all, “Education is not something we do to our students; it must be something we do in collaboration with our students” - Brewer & Smith, 2011¹

¹http://visionandchange.org/files/2011/03/VC-Brochure-V6-3.pdf

Recognition of one’s achievements is always gratifying. Awards therefore play an important role as a mark of professional recognition within the scientific community. The INSA Young Scientist Award was established in 1974 to distinguish scientists who have made notable contribution within their field. Each year, 30 promising scientists below the age of 35 are selected by a committee for the award. Nominations are called for each year around April/May and an INSA appointed committee selects the awardees.

The award comes with a medal and a cash prize of Rs 25000. More importantly, it is the most prestigious award for a young scientist in India. The entire list of young scientists selected for the year 2012 are listed on INSA’s website

For this blog, I interviewed one of the awardees - Dr. Partha Mondal, Assistant Professor, Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The award recognizes his pioneering work on advanced microscopy systems. Today's microscopes boast of resolutions of a few nanometers, allowing researchers to image single molecules. But we still want more - even better resolution, faster imaging and deeper scanning. His recent work is focused on the last goal – deeper scanning. “What do we mean by deep?”, I ask. It turns out that the power of, super-resolution of, microscopes are limited to the near surface -- they cannot probe effectively beyond a depth of a few tens of microns. Explaining why this problem arises, Dr. Mondal says "In the biological complex tissue, there are a lot of interfaces that have different refractive indices, and this diffracts the beam. So the light is scattered away very quickly as it probes deeper." Achieving the ability to image in the deep would bring cell behaviours and tissue interactions directly within sight, so to speak. Prof. Mondal and his research student, Subhajit Purnapatra, are exploring techniques could vastly improve depth imaging and hope to make imaging at least skin deep.

Typically, Gaussian light beams are used in microscopy and are easily scattered. Since scattering is the biggest deterrent to looking deeper, they proposed using beams of light that resist scattering. Beams with this property are called Bessel or Bessel-like beams. They can be produced by means of special lenses called axicons. This technique is well-known and has been in use since the late eighties. "[Using this technique], we have shown that we can go to a depth of 650 microns. In microscopic scales, this is big. Now, we are looking to see whether we can go as deep as 1000 microns. If this is achieved, you can actually see cell functioning deep inside the specimen, and in its natural environment," says Prof. Mondal.

In addition to developing this technique further, his lab also explores several other approaches to hi-resolution imaging. Among these is the use of a microfluidic platform. "Microfluidics uses micron-sized channels through which you can flow cells. If you have a proper illumination and detection system - it is basically a microscope. If you shine Bessel beams as the cells flow past, you can zoom into the cell and examine them, on-the-go!", says Dr. Mondal. Another area he seeks to develop is increased time resolution. Most super resolution techniques focus on spatial resolution, or the ability to tell two closely spaced objects apart. They achieve better resolution by taking a large number of images over time and averaging the results. This means that they have very poor temporal resolution, or the ability to catch changes happening in the specimen with time. To tackle this problem and make live cell imaging a reality, "the first thing needed are faster computing engines", says Dr. Mondal. "We are also working on ‘FPGA based’ fast processing engines in our lab and at IISc. These are many processors that are clubbed together in parallel. They are the intermediates between the microscope and the computer. They enable live imaging. In fact, when the experiment is being performed, if cell parameters (like temperature and pH) need to be changed, you can do it live," he adds. With a plethora of highly advanced systems at his disposal, he looks forward to collaborating with biologists to demonstrate their capabilities by examining challenging biological problems.

How many scientists are remembered not just as exceptional researchers but also as great teachers? Richard Feynman is one of the first names that would spring to the minds of many in this context. And for good reason. His formidable scientific legacy is matched only by his reputation as a teacher extraordinaire. A reputation that lives and grows even today, through the exhaustive Feynman Lectures on Physics, that continue to inform and inspire generations of students. David. L. Goodstein writes in his book, Feynman's Lost Lecture, "Feynman was a truly great teacher. He prided himself on being able to devise ways to explain even the most profound ideas to beginning students. Once, I said to him, "Dick, explain to me, so that I can understand it, why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics." Sizing up his audience perfectly, Feynman said, "I'll prepare a freshman lecture on it." But he came back a few days later to say, "I couldn't do it. I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we don't really understand it."

A telling anecdote that holds an important lesson: scientific progress derives as much from good teachers as it does from good researchers. Teachers’ endeavours are integral to the pursuit of scientific excellence too. Their unrelenting efforts deserve our support and applause, but they often go unnoticed and unrewarded. The Teachers Award instituted by the Indian National Science Academy aims to fill this void and cheer them on. The Award for the year 2012 was conferred upon 10 teachers from across the country, honouring their vital role in informing and preparing young minds. Among them is Prof. Anil. J. Elias, who kindly consented to talk to us about his experiences as a faculty in the Chemistry Department of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and also share some of his thoughts on science education.

Prof. Elias has taught practical and theoretical courses in Chemistry to engineering undergraduates and science graduates (Masters and Ph. D. students) for 20 years now. He rates his students highly and enjoys the challenge of teaching them. He also gives credit to the Indian Institutes of Technology for the flexibility they offer to teachers to fashion their courses. “This allows us a lot of scope to develop the curriculum and regularly update the course material with the latest research developments in the field,” he said.

From student feedback, he has learnt that students particularly enjoy interactive classes. His tutorial classes, where students think aloud and solve problems together, are often much appreciated and very effective in building students' confidence. He also maintains a website where he regularly uploads new, challenging problems for students to try their hands at, in their own time. Fully realizing that technology is a powerful teaching aid, he also uses the resourceful Youtube in class, especially when teaching bio-related topics that he sometimes covers in his courses. “Video and animation give students a much easier way of understanding these concepts, and also keep their attention engaged,” he said. Two textbooks have emerged from his twenty years of teaching experience. The first is a collection of simple experiments in general chemistry that can easily be demonstrated in any undergraduate laboratory. The other is a theory textbook titled Basic Organometallic Chemistry that he developed from his lecture notes.

"It is as important to inspire and teach students as it is to do good research," says Prof. Elias. He believes that while teaching is an inherently rewarding experience, a little recognition for a job well done could work wonders. Even though universities commission their faculty to spend equal time and effort on teaching and research, the former often takes a backseat. One of the reasons, he feels, could be that rewards favour research, be it in terms of awards, funding or even faculty evaluations that later decide promotions. "Rewarding teaching excellence is a welcome change" he said, commending INSA. He feels that it is vital for young faculty to feel that effort put into teaching will be rewarded. He also notes that unlike many other countries, there are no graduate programs that specialize in science education in India. Maybe something our universities and research institutes should think about if they haven’t already.

IISER Scientists recorded the award ceremony which held in Pune on December 24th 2012.

A stellar lineup of scientists participated in the session including Satyajit (Jitu) Mayor (NCBS); Mohan Balasubramanian (NUS), yours truly (IndiaBioscience – yup, I am stellar ;) OK, just kidding) Ron Vale (UCSF, ASCB President), Sandhya Kaushika (TIFR), Roop Mallik (TIFR), Dulal Panda (IIT-B), John Mercer (inSTEM) and Colleen Mercer Silan (inSTEM).

To perform good research – money, a conducive atmosphere, manpower and support are essential. The session aimed to touch upon each of these aspects in the Indian context. Jitu laid the ground by presenting statistics on India’s funding landscape and showed the Indian government’s commitment to science and technology by scaling up funding for basic research. Money matters but more so does information on where the money is present, where the opportunities are, how does one break into Indian science, what is it like performing science in India and is Indian science good? My talk focused on IndiaBioscience’s role in addressing these questions and supporting Indian life-scientists. Mohan gave an objective perspective of Indian science as both; an outside observer as well as recounting his insights from serving on the boards of different academic institutions in India. Ron’s and Mohan’s account reflected the tremendous opportunities that are up for grabs and the excitement of a chance to shape the life-science community in India.

Following the short talks, the panel members fielded a plethora of questions comparing international and Indian scenarios, recounting personal experiences, explaining different types of institutions, networking in India, starting up a lab amongst others. With an enthusiastic 100 odd participants, many of who stayed on to network later on as well, the event was an informational hit.

Post- event, IndiaBioscience contacted the participants to understand if the participant needs had been met, what they had thought of the session and how we could better organize such sessions in the future.

Results:

1. Attendee profile: Our audience comprised of PhDs (60%), Postdocs (30%) and PIs (10%).
2. Dissemination modes: Our website and the ASCB program book seem to be the key modes of dissemination of information on the event.

3. Needs: Our survey results indicate information was sought on *

a) Funding (45%)

b) Career prospects at different levels – PhD, Postdocs and established scientists and both, academic and non-academic tracks (70%)

c) Understand the application process (20%)

* Text analysis on comments. Responders could list any number of needs.

4. Satisfaction: As the survey results show, the majority of participants felt satisfied. This meant that though we touched the important chords, there was room for betterment.

5.Suggestions: Including information on publications to give the audience an idea of the quality of work, infrastructure at new institutes, increased interaction time with panel members and careers “away from the bench” were suggested.

I would like to thank those that took the time to give us valuable feedback and from IndiaBioscience side, we assure you to incorporate these elements in our next offering.