Columns

• A scientific way to cook

  

  When someone learns to cook, they also learn some rules that are never to be broken. Are these rules backed by science? Can we test them using some simple experiments? What can undergraduate students and faculty learn from these experiments? Why are they valuable to science education? In this article, Vijeta Raghuram, the Program Manager-Education at IndiaBioscience reflects on these questions based on her experiences at a workshop.

  Posted on Feb 26, 2024 in Biochemistry, Education, Teaching & Undergraduate

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• Frugal science: A lab on paper

  

  Low exposure to research, often due to the financial constraints of college laboratories, and extensive curriculum can make studying biology unexciting for students. This short article on ​‘frugal science’ describes how paper, a cheap and familiar material, has been developed into instruments to study nature and stimulate creativity and curiosity in students.

  Posted on Jan 25, 2024 in Biochemistry, Health & Medicine, Undergraduate, Interdisciplinarity & Education

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• Catching food freshness in real time: An undergraduate biology experiment

  

  Food spoilage is covered in undergraduate biology courses with limited scope for practical experience. This article describes a simple module that not only helps students explore the topic experimentally but also develop a deeper understanding of various scientific concepts and gain experience in design thinking.

  Posted on Nov 24, 2023 in Biochemistry, Biotechnology, Microbiology, Undergraduate, Research & Education

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• Stories from the community: Just for a protein, journey from Jawaharlal Nehru University to University of Cambridge

  

  In the third article as part of community voices for international grants and fellowships, Preeti shares her journey to becoming a Newton Bhabha Fellow, going from Jawaharlal Nehru University to Cambridge University, for a labour of love of a protein.

  Posted on Feb 16, 2022 in Biochemistry, Career Development, Funding & Personal Experience

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• Common misconceptions in biology: What fuels the body?

  

  Undergraduate students of biochemistry may know the sequence of reactions in different pathways of energy metabolism. But how well do they understand the interconnections between these pathways? Maya Murdeshwar, an educator from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, uses a quiz featuring cheetahs, triathlons and monozygotic twins to test her students and uncover their misconceptions about these pathways. She explains her approach in this article.

  Posted on Feb 26, 2021 in Biochemistry, Teaching, Undergraduate & Education

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• Interdisciplinary research: personal memoir of a biochemist

  

  In this next article in our series on interdisciplinary research, Kausik Chattopadhyay from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali, speaks about his journey into the field of studying bacterial pore-forming toxins, and how his academic background and present scientific environment have equipped him to probe this question from multidisciplinary angles.

  Posted on Nov 23, 2018 in Biochemistry & Interdisciplinarity

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