A young faculty member in a traditional university, however much he/she has excelled research-wise, is a greenhorn in teaching. To establish himself/herself as a personality to be looked up to, creating new knowledge and simultaneous effective dissemination of knowledge are a must. However, is there any effective training mechanism in place to help tackle the challenges that crop up in doing so?

The present human resource development centres (HRDC) under the UGC evolved from the past academic staff colleges, which, as per XI Plan guidelines, “emphasizes teachers as agents of socio-economic change and national development and underlines the need to make them skill–oriented teachers”. Since the only teaching job in our country that does not require a professional degree/diploma or training in education/pedagogy is assistant professorship, the national policy on education (NPE, 1986) paved the way for in-service training for assistant professors.

It is mandatory for an assistant professor to undergo an orientation programme (OP) in the first two years and two refresher courses (RCs) in the subsequent four years. Many a time, the programme and course syllabi do not serve the purpose because of the following reasons.

• Insufficient funds to engage resource persons from across the country
• Lack of experts in and around the host institution
• Absence of lectures by industrialists/entrepreneurs/environmental warriors/politicians of repute and high academic quality and integrity,
• Heterogeneity of the candidates’ backgrounds (e.g. on one hand, orientation programmes are open to one and all in their first two years of joining the job. On the other hand, refresher courses on life sciences, more often than not, turn out to have more of one particular subject, such as classical taxonomy/botany or zoology-oriented lectures/activities, while the participants are from botany, zoology, biochemistry, microbiology, molecular biology, and other backgrounds),
• Mixing of degree college and university teachers in the training, though the latter deal with only post-graduate and doctoral students,
• Questionable academic quality of the experts, some of whom are retired and not tech-savvy enough to deal with the Google-era participants, and some of whom themselves did not undergo such training.

Because of these circumstances, orientation programmes end up disorienting the participants and refresher courses serve to normalise the levels of motivation and knowledge, instead of improving the same. Still, we are obligated to attend these ‘trainings’ out of learned helplessness.

Many serious participants expect to get some quick tips for balancing research, teaching and administrative work, in that order. However, that does not happen because for many of the resource persons, during their initial stage of teaching at a university some decades ago, eligibility criteria for the job were different, and, therefore, there was not much push for research. For example, they could become university teachers with just a Master’s degree, and, hence, there was no expectation of research from them. Therefore, there was also no need for a proper funding mechanism for research.

Till date, there are a few instructors, for whom the research programmes are considered an academic formality for the respective degrees, while the postgraduate teaching programmes in universities top the priority list. This is so deeply ingrained in their mind that they have separated research into industrial and academic. Further, they believe that only the research institutes/laboratories under the DBT, the ICMR, the DST and others should do hard-core research, not the universities.

As a consequence of this mindset, research infrastructure is weak with erratic power and water supply, insufficient supporting staff, insensitively allocated budget for repairing equipment, non-existent auctioning mechanism for the junk materials, and so on. To compound the matter further, there are issues like the lack of environmental management systems and proper disposal of waste (chemicals, plasticware, glassware, metal scraps, solvents and biologicals). These issues could be addressed by installing an incinerator on the campus and by constructing a well-planned drainage system without involving much labour and hence, financial cost and time.

The absence of a dedicated section for research/project-related accounting leads to a step-motherly treatment and inappreciable status of research, even though these universities (including many central and state universities) award degrees like MPhil and PhD regularly. This situation is a consequence of irregularly-updated policies framed by people who were themselves never exposed to research labs of international repute, and some of whom are from non-experimental science backgrounds. In a traditional liberal arts university where the core strength is the social science or languages, it is impossible to exclude people from non-experimental science backgrounds while framing certain policies for the university as a whole, which may not take into account the needs of experimental scientists.

In the beginning, orientation programmes and refresher courses did not have any mention of helping in research-related matters as an integral part of the training. Subject-specific refresher courses were introduced much later. This means that batches of trained teachers have not attended subject-specific refresher courses, wherein research and development come into the picture.

The sorry state of research in universities is because of the missing emphasis on it. The problem with doing research in a traditional university largely arises out of misplaced priority of the administrators or the founding fathers. A separate research cell should be set up and adequate attention should be paid to the researchers in terms of supporting their needs. There is enough funding nowadays, even though its effective utilisation is an unrealised dream. Administrative checks alone cannot ensure the efficient and effective utilisation of funds if the policies governing the utilisation are not redesigned to be research-oriented from its current administration-friendly design. For example, under the overhead budget, there is limited flexibility to utilise the funds [1]. The solution to this could be brought about through both top-down and institutional interventions.

A young faculty member who has not managed to get his/her professional balancing act right even after attending the mandatory in-service training has to face non-technical problems as well, including financial and administrative hurdles. Among them, the problem of cramped space hits him/her hard in the very beginning as he/she fails to get himself/herself even a room to call ‘office’. Ironically, the apparent reason for this is that these traditional universities were not built to create space, but to occupy space, as they are spread over a large area with less built-up floor area because of which there is limited space to utilise for research or to work in.

The next hurdle is the merry-go-round in the administrative offices that could be perfectly exemplified by the saying ‘if the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain’. Left with no option, young faculty members learn financial and administrative matters on-the-job, though the orientation programme could be made more comprehensive by incorporating them in the syllabus.

Pedagogical/educational training (orientation programmes and refresher courses) for in-service faculty members could also be done more effectively. I have heard of the old practice of learning the art of teaching from senior teachers still being practised in a few universities wherein the new faculty members are allowed to attend the lectures of the senior professors in the first six months of their career without being assigned any class themselves. This practice can be quite effective in orienting new recruits towards teaching, but in conjunction with orientation programmes and refresher courses. Of course, it should be optional for those with prior teaching experience.

Considering that new recruits are usually motivated and prepared to take up the professional responsibilities, one can presume that they will not slide into the Scully effect [2], rather they will develop their own effective style of teaching. A robust real-time cross-feedback mechanism involving teaching, administration and finance should be introduced to assess the performance of young faculty members so that they get opportunities to improve on their weak points. The institutional quality assurance cell (IQAC) should be vibrant enough to provide the right guidance and recommendations to those who are in need of these.

A holistic approach to train assistant professors on pedagogy, administration and finance can minimise the time taken by them to fit into the role.

Notes

1. Overhead charges/budget is a part of the overall budget of a research project allocated for meeting the costs incurred by the project implementing institute on account of administrative and infrastructural supports. The infrastructural support is narrowly defined under this budget head as physical infrastructures, such as computers, ACs, furnitures, etc. Minor equipment and gas cylinders, for example, are excluded undermining the project’s requirements.
2. Scully effect is the phenomenon of viewers getting unmindfully inspired by the fictional characters in TV shows or movies resulting in copying the choices and ideology of the characters.

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The transition from Postdoc in Heidelberg to Assistant professor in Hyderabad was joyful but had a lot of surprises in store. Interestingly, my cancer biology lab is located at the Centre for Plant Molecular Biology (CPMB). I teach MSc and Pre-PhD courses in the Department of Genetics and Biotechnology. We actively collaborate with the Department of Chemistry and frequently visit them. Even though I work in Osmania University, my salary is paid by the University Grants Commission (UGC). Thus, I am both an insider and an outsider at multiple locations, which demands a lot of flexibility.

This is not possible without active support from senior professors in the University, directors who facilitated smooth access to resources, heads of departments who are welcoming, supportive administrators and friendly colleagues. Sharing lab space with the then-director of CPMB was very helpful in starting the work immediately and a couple of grants from UGC and DST were crucial to conduct research work at a decent pace. In the early stages of your career, associating with the right people is the key.

Importance of research in universities

Universities provide the majority of the manpower that caters to the needs of national research institutes and private companies. The quality of education received at the universities determines the overall performance of scientific enterprise in the country. An up-to-date training in theoretical knowledge and practical expertise makes students employable in the industry and also lessens the burden on research institutes to conduct graduate programs.

Conscious of the importance of training skilled scientific workforce, I take a special interest in training MSc students for their dissertation, in addition to supervising PhD students. A decade-long experience at the Technical University of Munich in training medical and biotechnology students equipped me to guide masters’ students towards dissertations with tangible outcomes within the short duration of their stay. Conducting quality research in a university setting is thus very important for training postgraduate students with adequate technical and scientific skills.

Classroom vs Practicals vs Dissertation

Our teaching basically is of three forms: theory, practical and project work. I employ a story-telling approach to teach theory in which an initial overview and context are presented followed by explaining the topic with the help of relevant experiments that helped at arriving at those concepts. In addition, I share relevant information with students via email and social media.

For teaching practicals, I present an elaborate theoretical background before training students to perform experiments. In addition to conducting practicals in the Department laboratory, I also conduct some practicals in my own lab so that the students experience a research laboratory setting first-hand and also gain awareness about a PhD students’ life by interacting with them.

The MSc dissertation students in my lab are trained in multiple aspects of scientific exercise on par with PhD students, including designing a project, defining objectives, theoretical and practical methodology, data analysis and presentation. I assign students to present a topic each semester to improve their language and presentation skills. It is, however, a very difficult task to achieve all this due to a huge diversity in student community with respect to the socio-economic background, subjects studied at undergraduate level, language skills and personality traits. Attending the Wellcome Trust-DBT sponsored EMBO scientific leadership workshop was very helpful in dealing with many of the issues we encounter on a daily basis.

Networking - an essential component of teaching/learning

I make sure that any friend from India or abroad visiting Hyderabad also gives a lecture at our institute, facilitating our students gaining deeper insights into various disciplines. We also arrange informal meetings with visiting scientists so that our students have first-hand knowledge regarding the work culture and expectations of potential future employers. Given the multi-disciplinary nature of our work, the students often have an opportunity to interact with chemists and physicians both on campus as well as at hospitals.

Attending orientation and refresher courses helped me network with many faculty friends in the region. The Regional YIM organized at the University of Hyderabad and the Wellcome Trust-DBT annual fellows meeting were very helpful in networking with researchers of the region and country, respectively. I also frequently share my experiences with faculty friends and constantly learn from their perspective regarding teaching and research in India.

I believe that a teacher with a lot of dedication and sound research background combined with excellent communication skills can impart knowledge to university students in a meaningful way to meet the current demands of the country. Upon graduating, some students may take up various non-scientific roles such as teaching or management for decades to come; a brief but decent research experience that cultivates scientific temper is essential for them to easily update their knowledge in the future and stay relevant in their respective jobs. It is thus important to conduct high-quality research in universities to give students a valuable learning experience combined with a taste of laboratory research.

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Needless to say, I raised a lot of eyebrows (and questions) from colleagues and friends when I shared my decision to move back to India to start my independent research career. A physician-scientist, I had completed my MBBS and MD in Clinical Microbiology in India, and moved to the US to pursue a PhD in Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Texas at Austin. After almost 15 years of formal education, I had the requisite degrees, skill sets and training to steer my own research group.

My research vision focused on using interdisciplinary approaches to study microbial infections, thereby bridging the gap between the laboratory bench and clinical bedside. For this, India, with its vast array of infectious agents, reservoir of clinical material, and my accreditation as a medical doctor, presented exciting prospects. Further, I received the prestigious Ramalingaswami Re-entry fellowship from the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, which would fund my research interests in India for five years.

I moved back to India early this year and activated my Ramalingaswami fellowship at a DSIR-recognized R&D laboratory, GenePath Dx, in Pune, engaged in cutting-edge molecular diagnostics for a range of conditions, including infectious diseases. Through the grant, I have established my independent research group, The Wound Infection Lab, that employs laboratory and clinical approaches towards the study of wound infections. This ranges from developing a human-relevant wound infection model system to the long-term characterisation of microbial populations from patients with chronic wound infections.

In addition to this, after several years in academic research and teaching, I have the opportunity to work at the interface of clinical diagnostics and patient care. I am also leading the development of innovative diagnostic solutions for infectious conditions relevant to India.

Through a combination of events, both planned and fortuitous, my return to India has enabled my professional profile to include a rare combination of academic research, clinical diagnostics, and biotechnology invention. This is a very unique opportunity to contribute to different aspects of Indian science, which includes advancing the frontiers of original research, impacting the lives of individual patients’, and innovating mass scale solutions for infectious diseases in India.

I am certain that there are several other young Indian scientists looking to return to India and establish themselves as independent investigators. Having transitioned the early stages of this path, I am encouraged to share some initial thoughts that could possibly facilitate others on a similar journey.

• Network, by all ‘means’: Incredible as it may sound, my return to India was consolidated by a connection on Facebook. I came across a public outreach group, The LOFT Forum, which hosted events on a range of topics for community awareness. On my next visit to India, I spoke at the forum on the implications of antibiotic resistance. It was not only a great way to re-establish connections back home, but the forum introduced me to scientists at GenePath Dx, Pune. Till this time, the possibility of activating my fellowship at an organization other than a large-scale university or institute was not known to me. For returning researchers, this underlines the significance of leveraging virtual, albeit unconventional, avenues of networking, especially since they are likely not to be physically present in India. Further, it is important to assess the option of working at small R&D facilities, and beyond conventional research set-ups. A niche R&D organization might prove to be a closer fit to one’s area of expertise, and large academic institutions are often inundated and back-logged with numerous applications from potential returning scientists.

• Go ‘local’: A few weeks into my return, a colleague invited me to speak at a Students’ Microbiology Association inaugural event at an undergraduate college. Starting with this, I continue to volunteer to share my research interests at college events, meet potential collaborators, as well as attend local workshops, conferences and seminars. Through these opportunities, I was fortunate to meet some highly motivated and young researchers, and can lightheartedly say that I impressed them enough for them to join my research group. Though not necessarily intended to be so, reaching out to different scientific communities enabled the expansion of my research group with high-quality local talent.

• Think ‘out of the lab box’: As returning scientists, we have often worked in very well-equipped international laboratories. For example, I worked in a laboratory in the US which had in-house capabilities for confocal microscopy, microengineering, microfluidics, nanofabrication, in addition to cell culture, microbial culture, and even advanced bioinformatics. Moving back on a start-up grant, it is financially inconceivable to establish this gamut of instrumentation all at once. Instead, one can look for solutions that do not involve building massive infrastructure for each project component. For example, India has some excellent engineering institutes and biotech companies with capabilities to develop microfluidic devices. I found it a viable option to leverage the expertise and resources of an engineering firm dedicated to building such platforms. This way, even though I may have the requisite microengineering skill sets, I can focus on the real science in my research, which is to study certain biological phenomena on these platforms.

• Young advisor, seek advice-givers: A huge facilitator on this return path has been the guidance and recommendations from senior scientists, professors, and heads of institutions. I have been fortunate to have advice from these experienced individuals an email click away, and their suggestions have been invaluable in setting up my research, looking for funding options, and seeking out forums and conventions that cater to young investigators. The big takeaway from this is that a young scientist does not have to walk this early, uncharted path alone. Most established faculty in Indian institutes would be happy to share their experiences with young faculty, and this is a great way to build a mentorship network.

• Re-discovering the scientist within: I was pleasantly surprised that moving back to my home country would uncover a range of scientific opportunities beyond traditional research. Through affiliations with GenePath Dx and NCL-Venture Center, I was exposed to a new wave of biotech start-ups and innovation in the Indian science scene, while I discovered a personal interest in public and science policy. In fact, there are several universities with courses and programs catering to train the new breed of science policymakers. While these paths obviously exist in the US and elsewhere, often immigration and bureaucratic issues restrict us from fully exploring them. Interestingly, my interaction with policymakers has enabled a behind the scenes look at healthcare strategies and science funding, while exploring entrepreneurship has made me understand the needs and challenges of taking academic research forwards to the bedside and clinic.

A few months into this journey, it has been a very exciting and dynamic transition albeit with a steep learning curve. To others pondering a similar situation, I can say that while it may be daunting, it is a privilege to be a part of India’s story to transform the country’s ‘brain drain’ into ‘brain circulation’. The process will be a professionally and personally rewarding experience, and will greatly expand your competencies, experiences, and scientific vision. As I responded to colleagues and friends sceptical of my plans to return, ‘I have lived the proverbial American dream, it’s now time to shape the emerging Indian dream’.

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As a young scholar, I often imagined having my own lab someday. What I didn’t realize then, was that my vision of the perfect lab stemmed from already being part of a well-equipped lab with modern machines, constant flow of funds, uninterrupted staff payments, and regular avenues for PIs and students to attend global conventions. This perfect cycle of having funds for cutting-edge research, followed by recognition and awards, leading to newer grants, is quite literally the ‘Neverland’ for young investigators.

A more realistic scenario is where you might have a lab indeed, but it’s still an empty room with or without furniture! You proposed a great research idea, but the funding agency disposed of it. Even when success appears 100% guaranteed, funding probability may remain zero. You have an approved proposal, but the task force felt certain that it could be done with a fraction of your estimated budget. You agreed to take that fraction, but the sanction letter is yet to arrive. The sanction letter comes along eventually, but the funds haven’t been transferred to your department. By the time you get the promised funds, you are about a month from the guillotine– 31st March is breathing down your neck. And then you’re in the dreaded utilisation, justification, ‘or else’ cycle!

I choose to treat the challenges of funding in a lighter vein, to avoid a sense of dystopia, or the fear that with time, my concept of research may get distorted by what gets funded, rather than what I set out to do. Life as a young investigator can be stressful. You’re expected to cut the supervisorial umbilical cord, and transform overnight from a promising scholar to a capable manager of a mid-size business enterprise, handling truckloads of administrative paperwork, setting up purchase pipelines, installing equipment, running experiments, paying staff, resolving crises arising out of thin air. All the time. I was at a conference recently where the former DBT Secretary M.K Bhan, explained very beautifully, the need for young scientists to find a sense of music in research and to strive towards a ‘kinder’ kind of science in order to avoid the stress and the noise that seeps into us from our environment.

Getting and sustaining funds is as critical as the science we publish, or the rigour of our methods, and the concept has to be internalised long before you become a PI. I’d never have landed my first job if it wasn’t for DBT’s newly initiated IYBA research grant. I’d never have had the confidence to apply for this grant if it wasn’t for earlier, much smaller awards as a student– starting from CSIR’s innovative ‘Catch Them Young’ award, devised by S.K. Brahmachari for post graduate students. During the past decade, I have been funded variously, often in minuscule amounts, by national and international grants, as well as the corporate sector. I have also had to let go of the best students for lack of funds to sustain them. The Indian system has several opportunities for each stage of the scientific career, from both public and private sector sources, but they won’t come knocking at your door each morning. In a short but insightful conversation, Raghavendra Gadagkar, former INSA President, had said that ignorance is not bliss, and even less so, for young investigators. You’ve got to constantly work at reading, learning, writing and applying for grants, and make no mistake- you’ve also got to do first-class science alongside.

Instead of perceiving the funding agency as an unsurmountable opaque wall, find ways to get through this barrier, communicate your work in a way that compels their attention. This is another challenge altogether, learning to communicate effectively. Over lunch with Mary Williams, features editor at the American Society of Plant Biology, I discovered the immense potential of networking and social media for advancing science. Ironically, and quite unfortunately, many young academics in India are still averse to Facebook and Twitter, refusing to harness the infinite power available to them, almost like an Ostrich burying its head in the sand. We need to incorporate science communication and grant writing skills into the curriculum, with emphasis on how to convey science to funding agencies and the public in an engaging manner.

I am encouraged by the energy and commitment of the members of groups like IndiaBioscience and Living Science that work, both online and offline to educate researchers about new findings, thoughts, policies and funding opportunities. We are slowly but surely making way for a change in policies and habits to improve access to funding opportunities for all, especially young scientists and students, across international borders.

The first thesis from the lab is always special for a researcher, just like the first child is to a parent. When my student defended her thesis a couple of days back and the external examiner had only words of praise for the work, the feeling of fulfilment was very special. Listening to Manabi making her presentation, looking at the perfect graphs that spoke volumes, I was thinking of the time when we were struggling to find a scrap of ground to stand on.

In June 2009, I joined IISER Kolkata as an IISER Fellow – a contractual faculty position used by the early IISERs in order to hire young scientists who didn’t have the required three years of post-PhD experience, but “showed promise”. Life had been good to me during my PhD and the short postdoctoral stint in Raghavendra Gadagkar’s lab at IISc. I had had a smooth transition from MSc to PhD, PhD to a Research Associate and RA to a faculty position, without a day’s break in my career. I had been promised a regular position in “about one year” from the time of joining, and I made the mistake of taking this statement at face value. I was naïve and young, and I have the bad habit of seeing the glass always a little more than half filled. My husband quit his career in industrial research to return to the academia after five years, and we left the city that we had begun to call home, for the city that had always been home. We left the secured shelter of a sedate and experienced IISc for the youthful IISER, with dreams of being part of building an institution and hopes of exploring the theatre scene of Bengal.

I had my research plan all chalked out, and quickly got down to working on a funding proposal. I was happy to have substantial teaching responsibilities, including a full undergraduate course, and the first semester flew by without any hitches. The students were great, we had nice colleagues, and the campus was just developing. We had issues with space and infrastructure, but most of us were young and enthusiastic, and we took it all in our stride. By the end of the semester, I had a student who joined for a year as an institute funded project fellow, with a promise of a PhD fellowship if she performed well. My first grant soon followed, and my lab was all set to work. Within a year, I had two project students and we started getting good data on my model system, the free-ranging dogs. However, as my research started to take shape, my career path became tortuous.

I realized that in order to find stable ground, simply working hard wasn’t enough. I was a woman, and I had to handle flirtatious comments, politely reject invitations to dinners, lightly step over compliments on how I dressed, and eventually all this summed up to being ticked off from the good books of the Director. The ambience of camaraderie that had once existed on campus was changing fast, making way for an oppressive autocracy, and the likes of us, who protested were blacklisted very soon. We were a handful against the majority of neutral people and the ones who sidled up to authority. The negativity reached its zenith in September 2011, when four of us, all women IISER Fellows, were handed over letters of termination stating MHRD guidelines, after a set of completely farcical interviews. Suddenly, I was about to be jobless in the new year. I was 7 months pregnant, and had a lab running on a CSIR funded project. After a month of sheer mental torture, the tables turned to some extent. The Director did not get the second term he was hoping for, the interim Director did not take long to revoke the termination orders. Apparently, no directive from MHRD regarding the discontinuation of contractual positions existed!

The new Director joined in February 2012, and we hoped that the institute will move forward. Everything had stagnated, work on our new campus had stalled due to various issues, we had no institutional support for research, no space for accommodating new faculty members and students, our students were crammed in the old hostels, and we were expanding every year, as per the MHRD directive. It was a period of crisis. Some things did move forward for the institute in the new regime, but the environment did not improve. Personally, I was at a critical stage, with my original contract for three years expiring in the middle of June. It turned out that the founding Director has hired many more faculty than the number of available posts, and so all hiring had been stalled, until the next sanction from the Ministry. We were also informed that contractual staff could not be regularised until new posts were sanctioned. The Director met each of the IISER Fellows. The memory of that meeting is still vivid in my mind.

He told me that the entire concept of contractual positions for faculty was faulty, and that he thought such positions were simply glorified postdocs. I reminded him that my responsibilities in the institute had been no less than any faculty member. I had taught in every semester (and had very good teaching feedback), had independent grants, had awards, and had published from IISER Kolkata, unlike some of my colleagues in permanent positions. He said he agreed that my CV was stronger than some of my colleagues, but he could not give me a regular position due to lack of sanctioned posts. He then told me, “you are a woman, you have a family, your husband is here and he has a permanent job. Why are you bothered about a career? I will make you a Scientific Officer, and you should be happy. You can teach if your HoD agrees, and even be a co-PI in grants. That way you can also do some research.” In my fury, I gave him a piece of my mind and left his office, throwing his offer of the permanent position at his face. That was the end of cordiality between us. Two of us had agreed to stay on as Fellows until new posts were sanctioned, and what followed was a period of immense mental torment for my family and my students. I faced selection committees every year. When new posts were sanctioned, we were “upgraded” to Assistant Professor (on contract), in complete violation of rules. In the next round of interviews, my colleague was offered a regular position, while I was offered another six months on contract. When I refused to accept this, I was given one year on contract. Finally, in 2015, I was made an Assistant Professor. The members of the Selection Committee asked me why I was still on a contractual position, when I was eligible to be Associate Professor. I had my little moment of triumph, when I told them that the Director would not allow me to apply for the post of Associate Professor, and he blurted out something about rules, which clearly nobody bought.

Nearly nine years later, I am still an Assistant Professor at IISER Kolkata, but I am a survivor. My students and I have gone through terrible times, but that has only made us more determined to perform, and more resilient to the perturbations within the institute. The institute has a new leader, and the environment is changing fast, for the better. The Dog Lab has endured several storms, and now, we have arrived. What I consider my biggest achievement is not the publications or the grants, but the happiness that dwells in our lab. My friend, Sumana Annagiri and I have decided not to build walls between our labs in the new campus. The Behaviour and Ecology Lab is not just a laboratory where students work, but their second home. A student once told me that her friend, who is an ardent Harry Potter fan, calls our lab the “Room of Requirement” for IISER Kolkata students. From one HP fan to another, there couldn’t have been a better compliment. Looking back, in spite of all the dark days that we have endured, the overall feeling I get is that of satisfaction – I still see the glass a little more than half full.

I was curious enough in school to pluck off the primary shoot apex of the marigold plant in my garden, when we were taught about the suppressive action of auxin produced by the primary shoot apex on the growth of secondary axillary buds. Repeat action ensured an extremely bushy plant that later bloomed beautifully.

Despite my curiosity and interest in finding why things behave the way they do, my entry into biomedical research was not a straightforward one. My father had hoped for me to get into medicine. However, I did not qualify in the entrance exams owing to a lack of interest and ended up in the biomedical research track.

As the first PhD student of Maneesha Inamdar at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, I learnt valuable lessons in not just designing, conducting and interpreting experiments but also in overcoming the obstacles involved in setting up of a lab. This entrepreneurial zeal also helped me in applying to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Govt. of India for a Foreign Travel Grant to attend the Mouse embryo microinjection workshop at Penn State University and the Society of Developmental Biology- Mid Atlantic regional meeting at University of Pennsylvania in 2003. During that trip, a chance encounter with a postdoctoral researcher in Boston introduced me to Zebrafish, a developmental model I got completely sold on. Therefore, I started applying exclusively to Zebrafish labs for my postdoctoral research. Since I had no previous experience in working with Zebrafish, it took me almost 9 months of search to finally get accepted in the lab of Prof. Randall T. Peterson at the Cardiovascular Research Center, Harvard Medical School/ Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston where I used small molecules to probe into cardiovascular development of Zebrafish.

Unfortunately, I had to prematurely resign from my position 2.5 years later to take care of my 8-month-old son. I moved back to Bangalore with my family with no intentions of getting back to research. I had made up my mind to focus on my family, quite like a large number of once would-be women scientists. Little did I know at that time how difficult it would be to be a stay-at-home mom after being in the lab forever. However, my daughter was born about a year later forcing me to extend my away-from-research break.

Though my in-laws were staying with us, I still assumed that balancing a research career with two young kids was beyond me. As a result, I started to look for so-called alternate/work-from-home careers and when my daughter turned two, I joined a Knowledge Process Outsourcing company in Bangalore that had the primary job of creating supplements (=question banks) on books they received from international publishers on subjects ranging from management to law to chemistry. When the management there finally let me start working from home about 9 months after joining, I realised within a week how difficult it can be for a mother of 2 young kids to extract ~7 hours worth of work from home. With that realisation, I started looking for teaching/industry R&D jobs. I hit a wall with both, due to lack of teaching experience and an accumulated gap of 3.5 years by then.

As I then started looking for ways to get back to research, I came to know that Dr. Anura V. Kurpad, Head of the Division of Nutrition, St. John’s Research Institute, was looking for a developmental biologist to carry forward the human placental work that had been started as an off-shoot of the St. John’s birth cohort established about a decade and half earlier. I joined as a lecturer in 2012 and have since then established the Molecular Physiology Lab, secured funding and started getting our findings published.

I started a modular course in Fundamentals of molecular and cellular biology for the first year medical undergraduate students during the academic year of 2015-2016 that I have continued every year since. I am also the co-coordinator of the Molecular biology course for postgraduate medical students started this academic year (2017-18).

Despite the successes, my stint at St. John’s Hospital was peppered with challenges. My foremost challenge was to align my research interests with the division’s on-going research themes. This balancing act has been a rewarding and enriching experience as the Division of Nutrition has an eclectic mix of physiologists, nutritionists and public health experts. Another equally daunting adaptation that I had to make was to learn to apply my training in developmental, cell and molecular biology to the model organism Homo sapiens, one I had never worked with before. A few lessons I learnt on the way: one, the art of explaining your research questions to subjects and clinicians for getting them enthused is perhaps the first step in being able to do human research; two, working with human subjects made me learn and appreciate the nuances in research ethics like never before; three, the variability involved in data from human subjects and the factors influencing that variability is something I am still coming to terms with and finally, the experimental limitations of the Homo sapiens model makes me appreciate the power of animal models, or better, the power of a complimentary approach.

In a society where research is falling behind in attracting the best students and talent, I continue to find my motivation for a research career in the clichéd yet relevant hope of being able to come up with original findings that make a difference in the life of a patient. The other source of motivation is, of course, my long-time friend curiosity!

As I pen down this article, I am taken down the memory lane of a young, enthusiastic Assistant Professor in 2007, joining a newly formed School of Biosciences at IIT Madras. Having done my PhD in Molecular Biology from IIT Bombay, I was aware of the hardships of doing research in India, but little did I realise then as a student, that doing Biological research in an Engineering Institute is a different ball game. I guess as PhD students, we were oblivious to struggles that our faculty members had to put up with in establishing the Department of Biotechnology at IIT Bombay way back in late 1980s.

Being allotted a designated lab space, I was all ready to set-up my cell culture Lab in IIT Madras, thanks to generous IYBA funding from DBT. Here I was with my first two students ordering routine instruments and lab-ware when, one fine day I got an SOS call from the purchase section asking me to see the Dean urgently. So, I rushed to his office to find a concerned Dean worried about how can he authorise the order of a “Recombinant Human protein”? His concern was about the “Recombinant Human”! Well, I had placed an order for human recombinant vascular endothelial growth factor (hrVEGF) as a media supplement for my cell culture experiments. So an hour later, only after explaining to him what are engineered bacterial expression systems and by giving him the analogy of commercial insulin production, did I manage to get the purchase order made. I soon realised that I will be spending plenty of my time translating biology to my non-biologist colleagues at IITM, in a language of logics, by borrowing principles of Physics and Chemistry. These experiences and a pertinent advice from my senior colleague in the Department on “Do what is doable”, made me re-invent the way I will be approaching my research in the coming years.

A few years later, I was having this animated discussion with a colleague of mine from Mechanical Engineering Department, about the use of small animals in medical research. Being an ardent animal lover, he was put off with the whole idea of using rodents for pre-clinical studies and insisted on simulating the entire human physiology in silico in order to do away with clinical trials. It was only upon highlighting the complexity of absorption of drug through gut, its clearance from the kidney, detoxification in the liver and the role of tissue perfusion and blood rheology, could I convince him about the multi-dimensionality required to even develop an in silico model, let alone its acceptability for replacing clinical trials in Pharma industry. By this time I was a pro in understanding their language and conversing with them in terms of restrictive boundary conditions, dynamicity, degrees of freedom and the chaos of biological systems. It was the same colleague of mine who came to my rescue when I was trying to design a cone-plate based device to impart laminar shear forces on cultured endothelial cells. His expertise in fluid dynamics came in handy in designing, crafting and validating the instrument. Under his supervision not only did my students make a small portable device in the ‘Institute Workshop’, they also managed to get me a programmable controller to run the set-up non-stop for 72 hours.

We have come a long way since those days of being lost in translation. Now the ‘Stores and Purchase’ section is sensitised to handling perishable biological reagents. The same goes for our Engineering Unit which now ensures uninterrupted power supply to our freezers and our Workshop team which carries out minor repairs of our high end equipment every now and then. I now look forward to discussions with my colleagues, be it in Engineering, Physics, Chemistry or even Mathematics, a subject that I barely managed to clear in my high school.

Today, when I am dealing with large scale micro-array, NGS or proteomics data, I do not feel lost. All I need to do, is to walk to the offices of my colleagues working in machine learning, mathematical modelling, computational biology or metabolic flux analysis. A chat over a cup of coffee with them is always an enthralling prospect as I always leave with new ideas and solutions.

So friends, I would conclude by saying that instead of just making lemonade from lemons, in the interdisciplinary world of IIT, you can make a lemon tart, pie or even a meringue! All it needs from you is to see the glass as being full.

Research mentoring is a key component of how academia works and trains its workforce. Each new researcher needs to acquire competence over a collection of scientific techniques including a sense of how to analyse data, a grasp on the literature in the field, and perhaps some basics of professional and management training. Most of these skills are intuitive enough to be taught in an organic way. In fact, to a large extent “learning on the job” is the order of the day. What is harder to achieve and is more elusive is to foster a habit of evidence-based thinking and decision-making in newbie researchers.

My doctoral and post-doctoral mentors were very particular to include mentoring junior researchers in my evolution as a scientist. Therefore, by the time I had to build my team, I had already worked with over 40 undergrads doing hands-on bench work, both in India and abroad. As a result, when I accepted a research faculty position at the Center for Brain Development and Repair (CBDR) at InStem, building a team of focused (and happy) researchers did not feature on my list of challenges. However, I did forget to factor in the unexpected, which was to enable my colleagues to use technology effectively and not be a slave to it. For instance, my earliest surprise was when I was recruiting people to my team. I spent over 3 weeks sending out emails to all my connections requesting for JRFs and trainees to be recommended, however when I put out the same request on Facebook on a whim, I received 37 enquiry pings and then emails within the first eight hours. I eventually hired 2 people from this barrage. Surprise no.2: with my nascent team I found that the usual response time to email for experimental plans and follow-ups is a day. If the same question is asked on WhatsApp, I get a response in less than 5 minutes.

I was struck by how well-connected my team was on instant messaging and social media. I quickly realised that for any tangible team building and mentoring, I had to leverage these tools to connect with my ‘people’. I soon started using instant messaging for disseminating logistical information about lab meets, Google docs for inventories, and cloud backups for data sharing and storage. The real challenge, however, was to enable my colleagues to utilise all these instruments effectively rather than adding to the redundant chaos and clutter

I also feel that young researchers need to be taught how to synthesise usable conclusions from the flood of information that is available so easily. These are the real ‘skills’ that today’s mentors must impart to the younger lot. With the increasing awareness that permanent academia positions are the exception rather than the rule, it behoves us to make our people more “job-ready”.This again requires the same common minimum skills that make any successful productive scientist.

At the YIM 2014 we had a discussion on mentoring where a very eminent, senior professor mentioned that in India, the PI needs be a friend, philosopher and guide but most importantly an agony aunt. This thought stayed with me since I had seen my PhD mentor on many occasions providing such services to hordes of students, within and outside the lab. I was expecting the same. However, in my two years here, relationship advice is not what my students come to me for. They usually want to talk about work-life balance. On many occasions, I’ve had to recommend reading books like Lean In, The Color of your Parachute and Motherhood: the elephant in the laboratory. This may well be a reflection of the demographics of Bangalore LifeScience cluster, but it does represent a shift in the kind of guidance being sought. Most of these chats have emanated from posts and pictures that I posted on Facebook etc. While we may not have to be agony aunts, we may sometimes by example demonstrate how to successfully or unsuccessfully navigate life’s many challenges.

As I proceed in my journey as a YI, I’m slowly coming to the realisation that as mentors we form a link in the chain– passing on the time-tested parables of work and scientific ethics using crutches of new technology to explore the great unknowns in science. What we need to know to be productive and well-adjusted humans remains the same, just the manner in which lessons are imparted, changes with the times.

“I always wanted you to be an engineer” my father reminded me again as we walked around the large room on the first floor of our house in Bangalore, where he wanted me to set up a clinic and examine patients. With an exceptionally gifted ability to screw-up math problems in school, I was actually quite happy when I had to disappoint my father 25 years ago, by choosing to go to a medical school instead. The world of medicine fascinated me. Even though I found sitting in classes, going through labs, and cramming for medical exams mind numbing at that time, the concepts of human physiology and the biochemical intricacies of cellular life were starting to make an impression on my then 19-year-old brain. Before I knew it, the clinical part of my medical education was almost complete, I was an intern seeing patients, and people were calling me ‘doctor’!! I recall sitting down with patients asking their history, and praying that I don’t miss, or, worse, do anything that would harm them. Each patient interaction was fascinating and exciting in its own way. The clinical history, the subtle cues, the diagnostic tests, and finally putting them all together to form a diagnosis and suitable treatment plant was gratifying.

As my internship progressed, I began to realise that medical training in India was designed for just one thing – serve patients. Each time a patient left my examination cubicle, I would wonder about the beautiful biochemistry behind the malady, the fancy pharmacology, the magnificent molecular biology of the disease, and all the why’s and how’s of the condition. But sadly, before I could get into my cloud of biology-appreciation, the next patient would walk in. I had started to feel that I may not be cut-out for the pace and pressures of a clinical practice, but more suited to intellectually dissect problems, ponder and raise questions.

So, one fine day, without much of background or awareness about lab research, I naively travelled to the United States trying to find a professional niche that allowed me to raise questions and propose solutions. An unexpected, but fortunate opportunity at the University of North Carolina, to work as a part-time research assistant in a molecular biology laboratory, exposed me to bench research and, my first pipette! In the lab, there was no one waiting for me to finish or rush. I had all the time to think and to do all sorts of mental biology exercises that I could not do before. This experience opened up a whole new alternative reality, where I witnessed other like-minded physicians actively doing biomedical research. I had found my calling. I finished my masters, got myself a Ph.D., completed my post-doc, and jumped over to a faculty position in India and I haven’t looked back since.

Now when I teach my students, many of whom are engineers and doctors, I am constantly reminded of how my quest to buy a bit of time to think about the biology behind the disease has taken me down this wonderful journey from medicine to research. My father has come to terms with his son neither being an engineer, nor being able to use the first-floor room for his son’s clinic, but he still cannot figure out what his son actually does!