14.1.2017:
Prof. Apurva Sarin: Senior Professor, NCBS-Bengaluru. Masters in zoology from Delhi Univ and PhD from ..? Recipient of young scientist award in 1990. Currently Dean, InStem. Specializes in stem cells, regenerative medicine, and the mechanism of cell actions and how their fate are determined. Mentions induced puripotent stem cells - stem cells grown in lab and made to become a specialized cell of choice - while this has already been demonstrated, building a full organ from stem cells remains a challenge.Human body has trillions of cells of several types. An active area of research is understanding how stem cells know what specialized cell it has to become during regeneration of cells (why stem cells in skin become skin cell, not cell of some other organ), and how do they continue to remain as stem cells before regeneration.
Dr. TVV asks: Is stem cell taking human medicine towards something like lizard tail regenration? Prof. Apurva says that lizard tail can regenerate only once - a rule that researchers are trying to understand. InStem started in 2009 - institute of stem biology and regenerative medicine.
Curiosity drives a biologist - a curiosity about things which may not get understood completely in one's own lifetime but may be understood completely by future scientists. Different research groups within InStem - one group working on stem cell-based solution for cardiomyopathy, another group working with NIMHANS to understand cell mechanisms behind emotional, cognitive health. Another group working on sugars/receptors on cells. Dr. Apurva's own group, the most recently formed within inStem, is working on understanding T-cells, how their numbers are regulated; says her research is not specific to stem cells - asks questions about how cells deal with low energy situations etc. - says the answers to these can help stem cell research too.
On colaboration with NIMHANS - schizophrenia, bipolar disorder etc. which are believed to be complex multi-gene disorders, as compared to single-gene disorders like sickle-cell anemia that is more well understood.
NCBS works on biology from he level of biomolecules to ecosystems (savanna system, for instance). Joined NCBS in 1998, now with InStem.
No single incident that led her to become a research biologist - says it was a.
Must trust your instincts and pursue what you want to do. Unfortunately, students often find it difficult to convince their parents that research is a viable career. Says there is no simple answer to this problem - perhaps if students get their teachers to persuade those who are difficult to persuade!!!
There is fear about stem cell research. Agrees that regulation is needed but it must be an informed regulation. Needless fear should be avoided - there are dangers associated with pretty much anything developed in labs, not limited to stem cells.
21.1.2017:
Dr. Sudhir Mishra: (Very expressive, energetic) Eminent missile scientist. CEO & MD, BrahMos Aerospace. Bachelors degree from Jabalpur University. M.Tech in mechanical engg. from IIT-Madras. Has worked on almost all major missile development programs of DRDO. Worked as a scientist in DRDL, Hyderabad. Developed guiding systems, propulsion systems and several other systems involving mechanical engineering. Says he has been working on missile programmes since a time when India was very poor in missile technology - had to develop things from scratch due to lack of help in this domain from other countries, and often had to use what would be considered tinkering/"jugaad". 1994 - developing Prithvi - .Remembers that his passion for missiles goes back to 1973/1974 when in 7th or 8th standard. Studied in Hindi medium school in MP. Had to give a talk in class - chose to talk about some astra for which he gathered information from some Hindi magazines - background mythological story of that astra says whatever one wishes will become true and intense wishes will definitely become true. That saying came true in his case as after his studies, he got to work with Dr. Abdul Kalam's team in 1984. Says Dr. ABdul Kalam is his role model. Says unlike other people of his (Mishra's) generation who wanted to go to the US and become rich, he decided that his only ambition was to develop missiles for his country, not to become rich. He feels full of energy and wants to deliver new and best things.
Soldier capabilities enhanced by BrahMos missiles, a joint venture of India and Russia. DRDO involved not just in development of missiles and weapons, but also high-energy food, pre-cooked food (starting from cholay, bisibele bath, idli powder), protection suit, special shoes. Some food technology/product from DRDO has been sold to Patanjali food brand. Says DRDO has had several spin-offs, food item being just one example.
BrahMos is the best missile system - like Rolls-Royce, beyond BMW and the like. All 3 defense services use BrahMos and it gives a threat/protection enevelope of atleast 5 kms. Feels very proud of BrahMos and his team that has designed and developed it - huge team involving almost every engineering domain.
How did BrahMos manage to go into production in a short time. Calls it a result of "mind to market". Tells youngesters - "knowledge without speed" is of no use. Perfection, speed and competence should go together. Research that takes long time is of no use (to the armed forces?) - BrahMos program kept this in mind and hence was able to deliver the missile for testing in 2001, just 3 years after the agreement was signed in 1998.
28.1.2017:
Dr.Mrutyunjay Mohapatra: Heads cyclone warning division, IMD, Delhi. Cyclone man of India; has studied more than 40 cyclones. Recipient of several awards including Young Scientist Award. What is cyclone? Word cyclone coined by a British officer in Kolkata, British India who observed storm systems in Indian ocean. Word derived from "cyclos" meaning coil. Explains how cyclones form through a cascading phenomemon - a result of instability resulting from heat, involving convection, cloud group formation, low pressure area formation etc. Dr. TVV: why astronomical phenomenon like full moon, eclipse are easily predictable whereas atmospheric phenomenon like cyclones are not? Answer: Atmospheric phenomenon are non-linear, unlike phenomenon like eclipse, solar winds which are linear. Better estimation of early weather conditions will lead to better prediction on cyclones. Non-linear phenomenon don't have empirical equation solutions; instead numerical methods have to be used. Satellites, radars, scatterometers used to observe weather conditions. Cyclones can be predicted upto 5 days in advance - area of occurrence, duration of occurrence, gale speed, tidal wave height associated with cyclone, trajectory. A primary of school teacher of his wrote a short poem on him (Dr.Mrutyunjay) after he joined IMD, telling what he would achieve in future. Tells how his father,in 1970s, had saved many lives by warning villagers about cyclones, at a time when no cyclone warning system existed. Motivates his junior colleagues in his division by displaying photographs of devastation caused by cyclones - feels it is important for meteorologists in his division to realize the impact of cyclone so that they realize the great onus on them to predict cyclones correctly and help save people. Joined IMD in 1992. Posted in Orissa in 1998, and witnessed the devastation caused by 1999 cyclone. Only 24-hour cyclone prediction was possible in India in 1999; consistent and timely forecast was not possible then, so only 40000 people were evacuated in time and 10000 people lost lives. Felt handicapped due to limitation w.r.t. observational infrastructure and prediction system. There has been a paradigm shift since then - multiple weather satellites (unlike just one then), updates from satellites every 15 minutes, digital radars available now, 13050 automated rain gauges, better modeling. IMD is looking for aircraft for supplementary observation for cyclone warning. Considering the cost of ex-gratia paid for kith and kin of lost lives in 1999 cyclone, huge cost invested to improve cyclone prediction post-1999 has helped recover the money by saving lives - 2013 Phylin cyclone led to loss of only 20 lives. Forecast has become lot more accurate and objective; and verification of prediction accuracy is in place now; unlike 1999 when prediction was more subjective, less accurate. More accurate prediction of cyclone path means less are needs to be evacuated. Takeaway message: Investment in science saves lives and money.4.2.2017:
Dr. Jeet Singh Sandhu: Deputy Director-General, crop sciences division, ICAR. Involved in development of 23 new varieties of pulses. Is known for doing path-breaking work on chickpea. Pulses need less water to grow. Pulses are very friendly - can be intercropped, cultivated together with several other types of crops. Joined Punjab Agricultural UNiv in 1985 as a research fellow. Everyday he looks forward to developing or finding a new variety of crop or observing at how the new varieties are different from older varieties. UN declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. Pulses - good source of protein and help enrich soil through nitrogen fixation.Dr. TVV: "Why is it called chickpea in English - is it to be used as food for birds only"? Dr. Jeet: Chickpea because shape looks like beak of a chick. Pigeonpea named because of similarity to eye of pigeons? Pulses are a major component of Indian diet.
Bred wild varieties of chickpea with cultivated ones. Many varieties were very adapatable and hence those that grew well in Punjab grew well in central India as well. Dr.Jeet was the 1st person to create a hybrid variety of chickpea - extremely difficult to develop hybrids of chickpea and some institute in Hyd which tried it had failed.
Where do pulses come in w.r.t. food security of India. India contributes 25% of global pulses production. But since India consumes a largely diet, pulse production not enough; shortage not due to technological limitation in pulse cultivation. 80% of pulses grown in rain-fed regions - these are usually farmers who are resource-poor; even quality and seed replacement rate is poor - these are the limiting factors (not technical limitation); considering the challenging cultivation conditions (moisture may be too low to support even germination), pulse productivity in India is on par with global. 20 million tonnes of production expected this year. Last year, India imported 5.8 million tonnes of pulses.
Since pulses are largely grown in rain-fed areas, there is bound to be instability in pulse production depending on rainfall. But he has found that productivity has improved in rain-fed areas, so production has not decreased over 30 years despite drop in rainfall. 3 major challenges facing pulse production: technology should reach farmers immediately; minimum support price for pulses is a must (only recently has govt introduced msp for pulse crops); minimum support price a major factor for India's success in rice&wheat cultivation; pulse procurement from farmers also important.
11.2.2017:
Prof. Naveen Garg: Theoretical computer scientist at IIT-Delhi, specializing in algorithms (esp. approximation algorithms) and computational complexity theory. B.Tech and PhD from IIT. Post-doctoral research at Max-Planck institute. On "theoretical" computer science - does not focus on programming but on understanding what can be solved, how efficiently etc. Approx. algorithms - problems that are too time-consuming to solve, so try to get an approximate solution faster. Algorithm is a self-contained sequence of actions/steps. Uses the example of travelling salesman problem to explain algorithm complexity (NP-hard) and where appoximate algorithms are useful. Has worked on algorithms for scheduling problems. Scheduling problems originated in operations research domain. Scheduling problems in computers: mobile apps contending for resources on the CPU, millions of requests going to a data center - how to minnimize the time to serve a request with given limited resources. Another problem prof. is working on is facility location. Simple example: how to place ATMs optimally, such that customers' total travel time is minimized (for example). Facility location with constraints - say a ration shop can serve only 100 customers. This leads to "local search" algorithms. Locations not yet decided - though experiment - will moving the shop from A to B improve the metric. If the metric does improve by changing the location, stop searching - "near best" solution reached. Has developed an approximation algorithm which can be run quickly for this which will give a solution that will be no worse than 5 times the theoretically best possible solution (which would take thousands or millions of years to compute!!). Came up with a detailed analysis of a greedy algorithm for scheduling that had been used for quite a long time but had not been analysed.Dr. TVV mentions a recent news about an algorithm used by a US recruiting agency which gave lower weightage to candidates who were located far away from the office location, since it was presumed that they would be less intended to travel long distance to come to work. This had the unintended negative effect of putting coloured and relatively poor people at a disadvantage as most of them were found to live far away from the centre compared to other people. So the algorithm had unfairness built into it and it came under criticism. Prof's reply: This is something about which our research group had a lengthy discussion a few weeks back. We should be extremely careful about letting algorithm run our lives. ALgorithms not biased but the decisions that went into. "FAT ML" (FAirness, Accountability and Transparency in Machine Learning algorithms) conference for past 3 years. The news article in question was triggered by a recent book named "Weapons of Math Destruction" (person with bipolar disotder gets blacklisted by job screening algorithm because of the person's health issue). ACM has issued a statement on how should an algorithm behave w.r.t. fairness and transparency. Many of these types of algorithms are "learning" algorithms that go by past data. Dr. TVV says people should realize that algorithms needn't be unbiased from end-result perspective as they are driven by data and what human decisions went into developing the algorithm.
Dr. TVV: Should students prepare for IITs through intensive IIT coaching institutes like those in Rajasthan? Reply: Schooling at Jabalpur; no coaching centre of current type. Purchased study materials from Brilliant Tutorials - feels that is a better way to prepare; students should be let to choose how they want to prepare (give just guidance and inputs to students), rather than spoon-feeding them.
Dr. TVV: Should Indian school system be relooked? In-built mechanism in Indian schools that every student should be trained to become eligible for an engineering/medical/PhD degree. Reply: Mentions German system - parents and teachers meet at various points of student's schooling period, analyze his/her skills and progress and decide whether s/he should be trained for a research/engineering/doctor-like career or instead for a more hands-on job like carpenter, plumber. Germany has excellent institutes for vocational training. (Unfortunately) Indian system attaches social stigma to non-white-collared jobs; any job that requires using ones hands viewed unfavourably!
18.2.2017:
Dr. Sudhir Kumar Singh: Director-general, National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE), Gurugram. Dr. TVV starts with "a very interesting, in fact, a very powerful conversation with"! Associated with development of several technologies related to solar energy. The building that Dr. Singh now works from, Soorya Bhavan, is now powered entirely by solar power. Says that the cost of solar power has crashed from Rs.10 per watt in 2010 to Rs. 4 per watt. Various means of power generation from solar energy - photovoltaic vs. solar thermal. Photovoltaic has become cheaper in recent times for power generation. For puposes like drying/heating and desalination, solar thermal is more effective. Photovoltaic is good for day-time power, but for all-day power, solar thermal currently more cost effective as storage method for photovoltaic is costlier at the moment. PCM (phase change material) can store high temperature energy.Dr. TVV: Did you know about using the heat of sun to cool things?! Solar thermal energy used to power compressors for cooling/air-conditioning. Phase change (solid to liquid) technology allows 24x7 usage of solar energy. Solar-biomass hybrid technology - solar power used at times when solar power collection is optimal/sufficient, and biomass serves as supplement or backup when solar power collection is not efficient (less or no sunlight, for example). Biomass allows for high energy energy consumption (especially for high temperature requirements?).
Satellite data used to map solar resources for the whole country. Climate conditions varies between regions - solar radiation reaching the ground changes based on place, time, dust conditions. Rajasthan would seem the best place for solar power generation. While it is true that Rajasthan has one of the highest usable solar radiation, photovoltaic plants installed there degrade faster than in other places due to high heat.
NISE offers several human resource programs related to solar power usage. "Surya Mitra" programme is one such. MNRE sponsors solar power skill development programmes. NISA has a testing lab/facility for accreditation of photovoltaic cells and other systems related to solar power. Only power generating agencies accredited by NISE eligible for government's solar power subsidy.
NISE devloping a power storage system (thermal based) for use with photovoltaic technology. Renewable energy production could go upto 100GW by 2022. At this moment, it is only 9GW, but a lot has been learnt so far which is going to help expand generation of solar power. 50GW of the 100GW target will be rooftop solar panels which do not need land acquisition - hnece easily achievable. Government working with private sector to develop solar parks.
Major challenges: More manpower needed - Surya Mitrahas trained over 10000 people, but a lot more is needed. Cost of solar generation is the major concern but it is expected to come down. Recycling of solar panels is a problem - typical photovoltaic cells do not contain toxic materials (unlike general cells/batteries), but if other materials are introduced in these cells/systems in future, recycling will be a major challenge.
25.2.2017:
Dr. Siddhartha Roy: Director, Bose Institute, Kolkata. Bose Institute celebrating centennial year in 2017. Dr. Roy is a structural biologist and biochemist. Ph.D. in biochemistry from Univ of Delawere. Recipient of Shanthi Swaroop Bhatnaagar Award in 1999. Started as a chemist, thought biology was too complex (too many details), but by the end of his bachelors degree, he had become fascinated with biology and chose biology for research. Worked on DNA structure and fuctions. Says understanding biology needs observing the biological molecules in action. A pioneer in "chemical biology". Biological chemistry, a well-known field for over 70 years is a reductive approach - start with biological structures and breaks them down into chemical constituents. "Chemical biology" takes an integrative approach, studies the whole system together, possibly a collection of millions of modelcules. The term itself was coined in India in 1982 by another Indian scientist (Dr. Bimal Bechawat, Indian Institute of Experimental Medicine). Dr. Siddharth Roy started on chemical biology at a time when it had not yet gained popularity but the tools needed for such integrative study had become available. Omics is one such tool - a biomarker discovery technology; allows studying millions of cells. Another technology involved tagging cells/proteins with a fluorescent chemical (which occurs natural in some jellyfish; the discovery of this chemical or its use won its discoverer a Nobel prize).Chemical biology expected to revolutionize drug discovery. Says most single molecule drugs were discovered by serendipity, i.e. were discovered, not designed (example: penicillin). Says one of the earliest such drugs against infectious diseases was originated in India - Dr. U.N.Brahmachari's drug to treat kala-azar. Says this drug had saved as many lives as penicillin but unfortunately Dr. Brahmachari was forgotten - an unsung hero who deserved a Nobel prize (5 other drugs for other infectious diseases had won their discoveres Nobel prizes).
Chemical biology gives handle to drug discovery - says drug discovery, which in itself conplex, is just a part of chemical biology. The field is important because biological systems are too complex and behaviour of chemicals changes when put together into biological system.
Interest in chemistry - inspired by his father who worked as a research assistant to Dr. Praful Chandra Bose, but had to give up full time research to participate in freedom struggle. Despite this, his father remained a chemistry enthusiast and this helped kindle Dr. Siddharth's schoolday fascination in chemistry.
Bose Institute was initially known as "Temple of science". Many legendary people outside the field of science were associated with the institute - Rabindranath Tagore, Sister Niveditha. Dr. Bose may have been inspired by a desire to see India gain intellectual freedom, freedom of thought. Says Dr. Bose is the father figure of inter-disciplinary science.
Says his faculty had identified 2 major inter-disciplinary areas for the institute to focus on - complex systems (described earlier) and synthetic and systems biology.
