Research experience during their undergraduate years can be a great way to motivate students and aid their future career development. However, most students seeking such experience run up against a major hindrance in the form of unresponsiveness of the researchers whom they approach with such requests. Divya writes about the harmful consequences of such attitudes and some possible ways in which this could be mitigated.

Gaiti Hasan is a Professor at National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore. In this editorial, first published in Current Science, she speaks about the importance of setting up mechanisms to provide formal mentorship to researchers at all stages in their career, whether they are graduate students, postdoctoral fellows or young investigators.

Interview of Shubha Tole from TIFR, Mumbai, on the social and subconscious biases in society against female scientists and some approaches to tackling these challenges.

"What is a teacher? I'll tell you: it isn't someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows." wrote Paulo Coelho in The Witch of Portobello.

Shubha Tole shares this sentiment as she reflects on her experiences as a mentor to three Wellcome Trust-DBT India Alliance Early Career Fellows.

This is a question to ask ourselves at many levels and about many things- indeed about anything one wants to do well, or make a difference to. At TIFR we had a series of presentations last month on “Vision for the future” – which was an attempt to ask “Are we doing enough” at the institutional level. In this blog I want to focus this question on the issue of … More