The India Research Management Initiative (IRMI) of DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance aims to "strengthen research ecosystems in India by building capacity for research management and creating a community of practice that support knowledge creation and innovation for addressing global challenges." Its first annual conference brought together various stakeholders on a virtual platform.

The 3rd National Post-Doc Symposium was held from 10 - 13 December 2019 at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, and was attended by over 70 postdocs and late-stage PhD students from around the country. The proceedings and key take-home points emerging from the meeting are discussed below. Registration is currently open for the 4th National Post-Doc Symposium, to be held on 3-4 April 2021 in a virtual format.

In a virtual ceremony on 2 December 2020, the Infosys Science Foundation announced the winners of the twelfth Infosys Prize awards. The awardees represented a diversity of fields and research areas, spread across six categories: Engineering and Computer Science, Humanities, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Social Sciences

A positive highlight of the COVID-19 situation has been the large number of grassroots-level innovations brought forth by Indian start-ups, entrepreneurs, and researchers to counter the pandemic. A thriving culture of innovation and entrepreneurship is necessary to nurture this spirit. In this regard, the fourth edition of the National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition (NBEC) is currently open for applications.

The COVID-19 pandemic has expanded our need for virtual meeting platforms and pushed conference organisers to innovate to ensure that scientific networking continues to flourish in these troubled times. The Monsoon Brain Meeting 2020, held in June 2020, aimed to embrace the virtual format and use it to facilitate discussions on and around neuroscience, as reported here by Annapoorna, one of the attendees of the meeting.

Genetic variations and diversity both within and between populations play an important role in human health and disease. The Indo-US workshop on Human Diversity and Health Disparities brought together researchers from several different fields to discuss the importance of this often-neglected dimension in public health and biomedical research.

The International Summit on Women in STEM -"Visualizing the Future: New Skylines" was organized in January this year by the Department of Biotechnology and International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB). The following is a report by Zill e Anam, a young scientist who had a ring-side view of the proceedings.