Professor Nayan Chanda reviews newest book by Professor Srinath Raghavan on Indira Gandhi

A recent review by Professor Nayan Chanda of Professor Srinath Raghavan’s book has been featured in��Global Asia, a leading journal on international affairs. The review offers thoughtful insights into the book’s key arguments and discusses its contributions to broader understandings about the political history of India in the time of Indira Gandhi.

Please read the full review .

The book can be found .

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In Conversation with Prasenjeet Yadav, a Molecular Biologist Turned National Geographic Photographer and Storyteller, on His Journey, Storytelling, and Science Communication

Ashoka Global Research Alliances, 51��� hosted 𝐏𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐘𝐚𝐝𝐚𝐯, a molecular biologist turned 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐆𝐞𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐜 𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐫, Storyteller and 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐫, for his talk on 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲: 𝐒𝐞𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐃𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐏𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐞. The immersive talk offered great insights into Prasenjit's career journey, his approach to storytelling as a means of driving meaningful and positive social impact, and the challenges he faced along the way.

Prasenjeet's story and photograph of Similipal's rare black tiger grace the October 2025 cover of National Geographic, making it the first Indian story, written and photographed by an Indian, to be featured on the cover. He has also won the 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐆𝐞𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐜 𝐏𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐏𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 in 2025. The Research and Development Office had the pleasure of conversing with him about the nitty-gritties of science communication, communicating complex and challenging stories to the public, involving them in the narrative, and driving the change.

You started your journey as a molecular biologist before transitioning into becoming a photographer and storyteller. Walk us through that shift.

To study molecular biology, I went to NCBS, where I was fortunate to have amazing mentors who have achieved remarkable things at national and global levels. Learning from them has transformed me into a better human being, and I'm so glad about it. But more importantly, what I've taken from academia and science is that I tell my stories in a similar way to how scientific research is done.  

The scientists design a hypothesis around their research topic, while I have a story idea and a version of what that story would be. They collect data, and I go into the field to photograph. When they come back, they analyse their data, and I do post-production, pulling all those threads together. Scientists, based on their data, prove their hypothesis true or not. Similarly, I go in with my version of the story, and often I come out with a different one based on what I've seen and experienced. They write papers; I write stories. This is something I've borrowed from science and am applying to my storytelling.

Science’s language, complexity and perceived difficulty can often feel intimidating, making those outside the field hesitant to engage with it. Being a student of science and now a storyteller, how do you suggest making science approachable and welcoming to general audiences?

The language of science is technical and subject-specific, and it has to be that way. For example, I have studied molecular biology, ecology and for me it will take a while to make sense of a physics paper. We cannot expect general people to understand it because it is meant to be understood by your colleagues in science. But, at the same time, it is our responsibility as a researcher, as a communicator, to make it more accessible to the general public for multiple reasons. One being restoring people’s faith in science by communicating it better.

We want people to be able to differentiate between science and magic. We want people to understand that just because this is scientifically proven, it doesn't mean that it's the ultimate truth. For that, we have to simplify not just the language of science, we have to communicate it.

Scientists mainly work with their peers and are used to the language, terms, and jargon of their field. It's difficult for them, as professionals, to take additional time to simplify and communicate their work to the public. We're expecting way too much from academics and scientists. Collaboration should be the answer.

There are enough storytellers in India who come from a basic understanding of science and the process of science, and there is scope for scientists and these storytellers to collaborate. Together, they can put the message out for the larger public effectively, without compromising on the integrity of the findings. My message to scientists is that next time you are writing a grant, put a budget for storytelling in it and then collaborate.

In your view, can intentional, well-crafted science communication serve as a bridge between knowledge generation and its communication?

When we talk about science communication, the majority of people talk about the news that comes out of science. But that's only one part of it; there's much more to it than that. Science communication is when you break that research down and help people understand what it means. At the end of the day, we're doing it for the people. For example, government institutes are publicly funded, and the research they support is indirectly paid for by the people. This makes science communication not just a hobby but a responsibility. People rarely see or understand the process behind how science actually happens, and a good science story highlights the process behind the conclusion. When you do that, people connect with and understand science in a more nuanced way, and not just as passive receivers.

In the present age of social media, where stories have been reduced to 15 seconds, how do you navigate the pressure of telling longer stories when people have shorter attention spans?

As storytellers, we need to understand the power of disruption and use it wisely. I don't see those 15 seconds as a story but as a hook. Out of those million people, there would be a hundred or a thousand who would get hooked by those 15 seconds and would want to access a slightly longer version. Do we always need a Black Tiger to engage people with a story? Well, the idea is to keep trying to learn how I can tell stories that are more interesting and relevant. It's worth the effort, and the challenge is something I really enjoy. There are times when the Black Tiger comes to the rescue, but most of the time it doesn't, and that's fine. Many times, the hook is the storyteller. So, when I don't know how to tell a story, and I'm frustrated, that becomes the beginning of many stories until you actually come across the solution.

Is there a set framework you follow to tell your stories?

I don't have a set method; it's different for every story. If it had to follow a singular method every time, it would get monotonous. I am still excited about 50 more stories to be told because with each story, I am learning along the way how to tell it. Every story is so different, whether you're focusing on telling a story at a microbe level or at an ecosystem level. It is similar to how every science research paper brings a completely different challenge, and you have to come up with a different method and approach. How I approach every story is by keeping these few things in mind: Is it making me curious and excited? Is it triggering my curiosity? Are there emotions involved, and can I connect with people emotionally? Why is it relevant, and how?

The Black Tiger picture, which became the cover story for National Geographic Magazine, came after 120 days in the field. What motivated you to keep going for 120 days? That's a long time to be out there. What is your secret? What makes you keep going?

120 days was just for that one picture; 2 years in the field for that story. I started my fieldwork in October 2023 and finished in April 2025. I really enjoy being in the field. I grew up in the field and feel at home there. I've been one of those lucky, blessed people to have the responsibility to tell stories that most people do not get access to, and I feel a sense of responsibility in that regard. The fear of not messing up the story is what keeps me going.

Of course, there are days when I'm low, and I question everything I am doing. But then the next day, something interesting shows up in front of you, and you get back to it. You get tired, but then you get excited about life once again. It doesn't matter what happens, good or bad; all we have to do is show up.

- Edited by Priyanka, Research and Development Office

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What Can Genomics Tell Us About Drug Resistance in India? Insights From Recently Published Research Paper by Professor Shradha Karve

What Does this Research Paper Talk About?

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) - the ability of bacteria and other microbes to survive and grow in the presence of antibiotics that would have otherwise killed them - is one of the most pressing public health crises of our time. When bacteria develop resistance to the drugs designed to kill them, common infections become life-threatening, routine surgeries become risky, and medical care becomes harder to deliver.

The problem is especially acute in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) like India, where the burden of infectious disease is high, and surveillance resources are limited. Most AMR monitoring in India has traditionally relied on antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) - a lab method that checks whether a bacterium is killed by specific antibiotics. While useful, this approach does not reveal which genes underlying resistance, how those genes spread between bacteria, or how India's resistance landscape compares to global trends. Without the understanding of this genomic layer, our ability to design better diagnostics and treatments remains constrained.

What Did the Study Aim to Find?

This study was motivated by a critical gap: the lack of large-scale datasets in India that link AST with whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data across multiple bacterial species. Professor Karve and her lab set out to build such a dataset - one that would allow us to map the genomic underpinnings of AMR in Indian clinical settings, test how well genomic tools predict resistance compared to standard lab tests, and understand how resistance genes are spread and shared among bacteria.

The ultimate goal, along with knowledge building, is to support the development of faster, more accurate molecular diagnostic tools for AMR in India- tools that could one day replace or supplement the slow, culture-based methods currently in use, particularly in critical care settings like ICUs, where rapid diagnosis can be life-saving.

The Strategy

Between July 2022 and July 2024, the team collected 266 bacterial isolates from two groups of tertiary healthcare hospitals, one in Northern India (New Delhi) and one in Western India (Pune). The isolates represented priority pathogens, including Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, and Enterococcus, as well as a few other emerging threats.

The researchers selected isolates belonging to high-concern resistance categories: carbapenem-resistant (CR), carbapenem-and-colistin-resistant (CR-Col), extended-spectrum beta-lactam-resistant (ESBL), methicillin-resistant (MR), and vancomycin-resistant (VR). For each isolate, two parallel analyses were carried out:

1. AST is the gold-standard laboratory method that tests how bacteria respond to antibiotics.

2. WGS, which allows us to read the complete DNA of each bacterial isolate and identify resistance genes (ARGs), their locations (chromosomes or plasmids), and the mobile genetic elements that can transfer them between bacteria.

Professor Shradha Karve’s Lab used standard bioinformatic tools including the Resistance Gene Identifier (RGI) linked to the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database (CARD) for genomic resistance prediction, and MOBsuite and MobileElementFinder for plasmid and mobile element analysis.

Results and Conclusion

The study produced several important findings relevant to how AMR is understood and tracked in India.

Professor Shradha Karve and her team found that genomic tools tend to over-predict resistance. Compared genomic resistance predictions against actual AST results across more than 5000 drug-pathogen combinations, the team found significant discrepancies. The most common pattern was the genomic tool predicting resistance when the bacterium was actually sensitive in the lab and was found in more than 400 cases. This 'over-prediction' likely reflects the tool flagging genes that confer only a moderate increase in resistance, not enough to breach clinical treatment thresholds. Crucially, these false positives highlight important gaps that need to be addressed before genomic tools can be reliably used for patient diagnostics.

A rich and diverse resistance gene landscape has also been discovered. Over 80 distinct beta-lactamase genes (enzymes that break down beta-lactam antibiotics) were detected. The NDM (New Delhi Metallo-beta-lactamase) family - genes that confer resistance to carbapenem antibiotics, the last-resort drugs - were the most prevalent. Notably, blaNDM-5 was far more common than blaNDM-1 among E. coli and K. pneumoniae isolates, a finding that contrasts with some prior Indian studies and underscores the evolving resistance landscape.

A significant proportion of resistance genes were found on plasmids. Plasmids are small, circular pieces of DNA that bacteria can share with each other, enabling rapid, horizontal spread of resistance. K. pneumoniae showed the highest burden of plasmid-associated ARGs, highlighting its role as a key vehicle for resistance gene dissemination. Mobile genetic elements like insertion sequences and transposons were also found associated with ARGs, further facilitating spread.

Professor Shradha Karve’s Lab discovered several well-known pathogenic lineages (such as E. coli ST131 and K. pneumoniae ST147), but also noted the diversity and regional specificity of Indian lineages, reinforcing that global AMR data cannot simply be applied to the Indian context.

Impact and Benefits of the Study (Bird-Eye-View)

This study represents the first systematic, multi-species genomic AMR surveillance effort in India to directly compare genomic predictions with phenotypic resistance data across a wide range of drug-pathogen combinations. The findings have several important implications.

• By identifying which drug-pathogen combinations are well-predicted by genomics and which are not, this work provides a roadmap for improving the accuracy of molecular diagnostic tools for AMR. Rapid genomic diagnostics could transform care in ICUs, where delays in identifying the right antibiotic can cost lives.
• The findings underscore the urgent need for continued, expanded genomic surveillance in India. Resistance gene variants detected, the plasmid diversity, and the regional specificities of the isolates all highlight that India's AMR landscape has features that are not captured by global datasets.
• Understanding how resistance genes are distributed across bacterial species, plasmids, and chromosomes is critical for designing effective infection control strategies. The finding that no pathogen relies solely on chromosomal or plasmid-based resistance means that reducing antibiotic use alone may not eliminate resistance: chromosomal ARGs can persist even after plasmid-borne ones are lost.

More broadly, this work contributes a publicly available genomic dataset of 266 priority pathogen genomes from India to the global scientific community. It is a resource that can support future research, diagnostic development, and policy-making in the fight against AMR.

- Edited by Priyanka/Simran (Research and Development Office).

This blog has been adapted from the original article, available .

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Cross-Alpha Amyloids: From Natural Function to Future Technology

Amyloids are long, thread-like protein fibrils that form when certain proteins misfold and begin to stick together in an organised fashion. Over time, these fibrils can form aggregates or clumps known as plaques. 

This abnormal accumulation with its intercellular inclusion, called amyloidosis, is the hallmark of several serious health conditions, many of which become more common with ageing. Because of this connection, amyloids developed a negative reputation. They became widely known for their role in brain disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, where protein aggregates disrupt normal brain function and gradually damage nerve cells. 

For many years, amyloids were viewed almost exclusively as harmful structures, molecular mistakes that needed to be prevented or removed. Yet, nature has its ways of surprising humans. Over the past two decades, researchers have discovered that amyloids aren’t always harmful. In fact, many living organisms, from simple bacteria to complex life forms, use amyloids intentionally. 

These are termed “functional amyloids” that help microbes build protective layers, allow cells to stick together, support communication between biological systems, and store hormones. Therefore, instead of being accidental clumps, amyloids function as tiny biological tools that perform important tasks in living organisms.

The review highlights the recent advances in understanding cross-alpha amyloids. The reviewers discuss their unique structural features, stepwise assembly processes, and functional roles in natural biological systems. By integrating insights from both naturally occurring and laboratory-designed proteins/peptides, the reviewers provide a comprehensive view of their remarkable versatility. 

The reviewers also demonstrate the emerging applications of cross-alpha amyloids in biomaterials and nanotechnology, as well as in energy harvesting. 

A Structural Surprise: Discovery of the Cross-Alpha Amyloids

Since the identification of the first atomic structure of amyloid, scientists have believed that all amyloids, irrespective of their sources and amino acid sequences, share a common structural arrangement. Their protein/peptide building blocks align into flat β-strands, which are connected side-by-side to form a β-sheet structure. These sheets run along the length of the fibril axis, forming the “cross-beta” pattern. This arrangement gives amyloid fibrils their remarkable strength and stability, and for many years, it was considered the defining signature of all amyloids. 

Then, in 2017, a group of researchers discovered the structure of a completely different kind of amyloid that didn’t follow the cross-beta blueprint. Instead of being built from beta sheets, this new form was made from helical protein structures and was thus termed the “cross-alpha” amyloid. These helices stack in the same orderly manner and form rigid fibrils. This was a major shift in understanding the amyloid formation. 

Scientists realised that the same type of fibrillar assemblies of protein material could be built from a completely different secondary structural framework. This discovery didn’t just add a variation to the rule; it expanded the very definition of what an amyloid can be, opening the door to new biological insights and design possibilities.

From Nature to the Lab: Expanding the Cross-Alpha Paradigm 

Cross-alpha amyloids were first identified in certain microbes, where they serve specific biological functions. But what makes this discovery even more exciting is that scientists have also been able to design artificial short peptides in the lab that can also form cross-alpha amyloids. In other words, this structure isn’t just a rare quirk of nature; it’s something that we can intentionally build. That opens the door to creative possibilities. If proteins and peptides can be programmed to assemble into stable, well-ordered amyloid fibrils, they could be used as building materials for many pathological and technological applications.  

Why Cross-Alpha Amyloids Matter?

The dual roles of cross-alpha amyloids illustrate the complexity of biological systems. Molecules once associated solely with disease are now revealing surprising constructive and innovative roles. By studying how these protein fibrils form, organise, and function, scientists are uncovering new principles of molecular design. The field, primarily focused on preventing harmful protein aggregation, is now emerging as a frontier of bio-inspired engineering.

As researchers unravel the mechanisms governing their formation and function, opportunities are arising to harness these structures for innovative technologies. What began as a structural curiosity is rapidly becoming a foundation for future scientific and technological breakthroughs - envision custom-designed protein fibrils for drug delivery, tissue engineering, or sustainable materials in the near future.

- Edited by Priyanka, Senior Manager, Communications - Office of Research and Development, 51���

This blog has been adapted from the original review article, available .

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Autism and Parkinson’s Disease: An Unexpected Overlap

Overview: 

As the title suggests, Professor Chakrabarti examines the underlying overlap between Autism and Parkinson's disease. While these two diseases manifest at opposite ends of the lifespan, Professor Chakrabarti underlines the following:

Autism is a group of neurodevelopmental conditions that appear early in life and persist throughout the lifespan. These conditions are often linked to challenges in sensory reactivity, social-emotional behaviour, and repetitive actions. In contrast, Parkinson’s Disease typically emerges later in life and is associated with progressively debilitating difficulties in movement and daily activities. Although these conditions occur at different stages of life, growing evidence points to an intriguing overlap.

For instance, autistic individuals are three times more likely than non-autistic people to develop Parkinson’s Disease in later life - a finding replicated across multiple countries. However, it remains unclear whether autism is correspondingly more common among people with Parkinson’s Disease. What about autistic patterns of thought and behaviour in Parkinson’s patients without an autism diagnosis? Asking these questions helps us test whether this unexpected overlap operates in both directions.

Approach:

To address the same, Professor Chakrabarti and his research collaborators at the India Autism Centre surveyed autistic traits in 330 older adults divided into three equal groups: (i) Parkinson’s Disease patients, (ii) patients with other neurological movement disorders (but no Parkinsonism), and (iii) an age-matched control group without any neurological or movement disorder.

Talking about the scale of the study, Professor Chakrabarti shares, “This was the largest study to date on this question, and it also involved a former Ashoka student (Swarnima Pathak) joining a group of researchers and clinicians to test participants over a year within the precincts of a busy neurology hospital (Institute of Neurosciences, Kolkata).”

Results:

The researchers found that people with Parkinson's Disease and those with other motor disorders had higher autistic traits than controls. While it answered their initial question, it also revealed that the non-Parkinsonian motor disorder group showed elevated autistic traits compared to controls. Thus, the higher prevalence of autistic features was not limited to Parkinson’s Disease.

As the team explored sex differences, another unexpected finding emerged:

• Men with Parkinson’s Disease had more autistic traits than men with non-Parkinsonian motor disorders, who in turn scored higher than controls.
• In contrast, women with Parkinson’s or other motor disorders did not differ from women without motor disorders.

The survey was conducted in three languages - Bengali, English, and Hindi, and results were analysed separately for each language. The same pattern appeared across languages, regardless of whether participants or caregivers completed the surveys. This observation may reflect one or both of two factors:��

(i) sex-specific manifestation of common factors increasing the likelihood of both autism and Parkinson’s Disease.

OR

(ii) differences in how men and women interpret survey items.

Conclusion:

Taken together with existing literature, these findings suggest that shared genetic or biological factors may increase the likelihood of features of both conditions. However, this overlap may not be unique to Parkinson’s Disease and could extend to other motor disorders, such as essential tremor. Conversely, Parkinson’s Disease may not be the only motor disorder for which autistic individuals face heightened risk.

Moreover, the overlap appears more pronounced in males than females, reinforcing the emerging view of sex-specific manifestations of common conditions and the need for sex-stratified care pathways. In sum, our results highlight the importance of assessing autistic traits as part of care planning for people with Parkinson’s Disease or other motor disorders.

- Edited by Priyanka, Sr Manager Communications - Office of Research and Development, 51���

This blog has been adapted from the original research article, available .

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Sage and 51��� Join Hands to Support Doctoral Research in Social Sciences

Reinforcing a shared commitment to inclusive, accessible, and interdisciplinary research, global academic content provider Sage joined hands with 51��� today to support emerging scholars in the social sciences. The initiative is designed to enable advanced, interdisciplinary research while reducing structural and financial barriers that sometimes limit access to advanced academic opportunities. 

 “Building on Sage’s scholarship initiatives, this partnership also underscores their commitment to inclusive education and research excellence,” said Sugata Ghosh, Deputy Managing Director, Sage South Asia. “We aim to support PhD scholars in the Sociology and Anthropology fields, enabling them to pursue rigorous and interdisciplinary research. Through this partnership, we aim to reduce structural barriers and create conditions in which thoughtful, high-quality work can thrive.”

Sage and Ashoka are investing in the future of social science research by strengthening the pipelines through which new perspectives and methodologies enter the global academic conversation. The initiative reflects the belief that the sustainability of knowledge systems depends on who is able to participate in them, and on creating conditions in which emerging scholars can shape research agendas over the long term. By supporting doctoral researchers at a critical stage of intellectual formation, Sage is contributing to a more resilient, diverse, and globally relevant research ecosystem - one that will continue to generate insights, scholarship, and leadership well beyond the tenure of the programme itself.

51��� will administer the support through its Department of Sociology and Anthropology and will oversee the selection process to identify PhD candidates with strong academic potential. The aim is to deepen understanding of complex social realities, inform public dialogue, and translate ideas into meaningful societal impact. This support will empower scholars to explore complex questions and contribute meaningfully to knowledge creation in Sociology and Anthropology and allied fields.

“Our partnership with Sage reflects Ashoka’s commitment to advancing rigorous, interdisciplinary research. Sage’s support to research students in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology will strengthen academic engagement across the disciplines and allied fields, and contribute to the global exchange of knowledge," said Somak Raychaudhury, Vice-Chancellor of 51���. 

This partnership is part of 51���’s broader efforts to expand access to world-class education while strengthening industry partnerships that enhance academic opportunities and long-term value for students.

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Decoding the Hidden ‘Behaviours’ of Cancer: How AI is Helping Us Understand Tumours Better

Professor Gupta’s recent publication presents a high-throughput neural multi-task learning framework for comprehensive quantification of cancer hallmarks. The paper is co-authored with his research fellows, Shreyansh Priyadarshi, a Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Mphasis AI & Applied Tech Lab, 51���, and Bhavesh Neekhra, a graduate student at 51���. It underscores the development of a framework for AI-driven prediction of Cancer Hallmarks.

They begin by setting up the background on how cancer is often viewed as a single disease by laypersons, but in reality, it is a complex collection of cells behaving abnormally – something that encompasses a wide range of things.

For decades, scientists have known that for a tumour to grow and spread, it must acquire specific 'superpowers', i.e., anomalous biological capabilities known as the Hallmarks of Cancer. These include the ability to grow uncontrollably, evade the immune system, resist cell death, and establish its own blood supply. However, currently available tools in hospitals rarely measure these hallmarks directly. Instead, doctors must rely on staging systems (such as TNM) and grading scales that assess the tumour's physical size and microscopic appearance. While useful, these methods are blind to the molecular processes that drive tumour growth.

This explains why two patients with the same cancer stage often have vastly different outcomes.

Key Objective:

Professor Gupta’s project was motivated by a critical gap in cancer care: the absence of a unified method to measure the biological “behaviour” of a tumour. The research team wanted to move beyond just looking at the physical size of a tumour and instead look at its genetic activity. 

Talking about the project, Professor Debayan says, “Our primary objective was to build an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool that could analyse gene data from a tumour biopsy and simultaneously predict the activity of ten different cancer hallmarks.”

This approach aimed at a detailed molecular 'ID card' for each tumour, helping researchers and doctors understand exactly which biological mechanisms are driving a specific patient's disease.

Methodology and Approach:

To solve the challenge mentioned above, the team developed a framework called OncoMark.

The biggest challenge was that there is no existing dataset of tumour biopsies that are perfectly labelled with their hallmark activities. To overcome this challenge, the team implemented an innovative workaround:

1. Synthetic Training Data: The team used detailed data from single cells (single-cell RNA sequencing) to create computer-simulated 'synthetic' biopsies. This allowed them to train the AI on accurate, noise-free data.
2. Multi-Task Learning: Cancer hallmarks are interconnected; they don't occur in isolation. They used a 'Multi-Task Learning' approach. Imagine teaching a student to solve ten related math problems simultaneously rather than one by one - they learn the underlying logic more effectively. Similarly, the AI developed by the team learns to predict all ten hallmarks simultaneously, thereby understanding the hidden patterns that connect them.

The team trained the model on gene profiles from 941 tumours across 14 tissue types and tested it on independent datasets to ensure it generalises to real-world patients.

Results and Conclusion 

The results were highly encouraging. OncoMark predicted the presence of cancer hallmarks with over 99% accuracy during testing. Key discoveries included:

• Accuracy: The tool consistently performed well across five independent datasets, demonstrating robustness.
• Distinguishing Cancer: OncoMark clearly separated healthy tissue from cancerous tissue. Healthy tissues showed stable, balanced activity, while cancer samples showed 'noisy' and elevated signals in specific hallmarks.
• Staging Connection: The team found that hallmark activity increases as cancer progresses. A Stage IV tumour (advanced) has much higher hallmark activity than a Stage I tumour. This confirms that the Oncomark tool is correctly identifying the biological drivers of aggressive cancer.
• Drug Insights: The team was also able to link specific drugs to the hallmarks they suppress. For example, the team could observe that certain chemotherapy drugs specifically reduced the activity of the 'Resisting Cell Death' hallmark, confirming that the treatment was working as intended.

`

Bird-eye View: Key Takeaways & Impact

OncoMark represents a significant step toward Precision Oncology, that is, treating the patient rather than the disease category.

By moving beyond simple physical staging, this technology allows one to visualise the "engine" beneath the tumour's hood. This could help physicians identify aggressive tumours that appear harmless under a microscope but are biologically dangerous. Furthermore, by determining which hallmarks are active (e.g., whether the tumour is feeding itself via new blood vessels or evading the immune system), clinicians could select treatments that target those specific vulnerabilities.

Edited by Priyanka (Research and Development Office)
This blog has been adapted from the original research article, available .

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Bringing Research into Action: Insights into ResComm 2025 -The Research Communication Conclave

51��� hosted a 3-Day Research Communication Conclave - ResComm 2025 from 17th to 19th December. The key objective of the conclave was to bring together experts from academia, research, industry, policy, and communication fields to initiate a dialogue on communicating research effectively to wider audiences.

Organised by The Research and Development Office in collaboration with HDFC Library, 51���, the conclave convened a distinguished cohort of experts and 200+ participants from across institutions, including PhD Scholars, Independent Researchers, Faculty Members, and Research Administrators.

Professor Gautam Menon, Dean of Research and Conclave Chair, delivered the opening address, establishing the vision for the conclave, emphasising the growing significance of research communication that is not only effective and ethical but inherently interdisciplinary.

Professor Somak Raychaudhury, Vice-Chancellor of 51���, in his address reinforced the institution's foundational commitment to coupling a rigorous research environment with accessible public outreach.

The conclave was attended senior government, policy, and research stakeholders, including Prof. (Dr) Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, Executive Committee of NAAC; and Chairman, National Educational Technology Forum (NETF) and National Board of Accreditation (NBA); Dr Rajnikant Srivastava, Chair (Disease Elimination), ICMR; and Professor (Dr) K Vijay Raghavan, Chair, Science Advisory Council, 51���, among others.

Professor (Dr) K Vijay Raghavan, reflecting upon the indispensable role of communication, said, “We should invest in research that is curiosity-driven, sparks excitement, and challenges the human mind, ensuring that the outcomes of such work are accessible to everyone.” Delivering the Distinguished Lecture, Professor (Dr) Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, Executive Committee, NAAC, emphasised upon the importance of asking better questions. Calling for more emphasis on high-impact research, he said, “Quantity-wise, we have leapfrogged, but in terms of quality, we have a long way to go”.

Dr Anurag Agrawal, Dean of BioSciences and Health Research at Trivedi School of Biosciences and Head of the Koita Centre for Digital Health, 51���, delivered a talk focused on healthcare communication and highlighted the significance of effective communication and how it can bridge the gap between information and solution.

The conclave featured engaging plenary lectures, fireside chats (panel discussions), a distinguished lecture and interactive workshops on Grant Writing, Research Integrity, and Enhancing Research Communication through visuals to equip participants with food for thought, practical knowledge and insights to communicate research effectively and thoughtfully. The talks focused on translating complexity research communication to engage wide audiences, and ensuring that research outcomes reach society meaningfully were well-received by the attendees.

There were panel discussions on interdisciplinary communication, how AI is reshaping healthcare communication, and Science in Communication. The distinguished lectures also revolved around interdisciplinary areas, including sciences and humanities. The key topics of lectures ranged from the Indian perspective on Science communication and policy, to AI, Creators and Credibility and further exploring building coherent, sustainable, and impactful research ecosystems.

The discussions pointed out the significance of telling stories, without diluting the facts, learning tools and skills to communicate effectively and understanding the audience. The engaging discussions, questions and answers from the participants underlined how strategic communication, open access, and discoverability play a critical role in ensuring research visibility and long-term impact.

The conclave also hosted a poster presentation competition, where participants showcased their institutional strategy to communicate research and measure its impact. Highly engaging and creative presentations were made by the participants. An interdisciplinary panel of judges evaluated the posters, and six winners were selected. Five winners were supported by the Royal Society of Chemistry, and one received a Special Mention from the ResComm 2025 Organising Committee.

The conclave also marked the launch of the book “Productive Failure”, authored by Professor (Dr) Manu Kapur, Professor of Learning Sciences and Higher Education at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and published by Wiley International. The proceedings were led by Dr Shantanu Ganguly, Director of Library at 51���.

Accomplishing and advancing the vision of ethical, interdisciplinary, and impactful research communication, the Conclave concluded with a brief address from Prof. Sourav Pal, Head of the Department of Chemistry at 51���, a vote of thanks by Professor (Dr) Gautam I Menon, Dean (Research), and closing remarks from Dr Shantanu Ganguly.

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Where You Are Born, and Who You Are Born As, Still Shapes Child Health in India

Ashwini Deshpande, Professor and Head, Department of Economics, and Founding Director, Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) at 51���, talks about her recently published research paper that focuses on the role of discriminatory social norms on early childhood development.

While acknowledging the progress India has made in the fields of health and development, Professor Deshpande underlines a stubborn problem that nearly one in three children under the age of five is stunted. She emphasises that stunting is not just about being shorter than average. It reflects long-term undernutrition, causing lifelong consequences such as affecting the overall health, learning capabilities, and ability to earn a living in adulthood.

Further diving deep into the study, Professor Deshpande points out that what makes this problem more troubling is the fact that it is not shared equally. Children belonging to historically marginalised caste groups (especially Scheduled Castes, also known as Dalits) are more likely to be stunted than children from socially dominant upper-caste families.

At a surface level, these differences can be explained in purely economic terms such as poorer families have limited access to factors contributing to a child’s growth: nutritious foods, cleaner environments and healthcare. However, this explanation is incomplete because even after accounting for poverty and access to services, large caste gaps in child health remain. This poses an even deeper question: “Are social hierarchies themselves shaping children’s bodies and futures?”

Professor Deshpande’s research, in collaboration with Professor Rajesh Ramachandran from Monash University, suggests that the answer to the above question is “Yes” and that history and geography play a crucial role in child health and growth.

Here’s an insight to the research work of Professor Deshpande and Professor Ramachandran.

A Historical Boundary with Modern Consequences

To understand the role of geography, the study looks at the Vindhyas, a mountain range that cuts across central India.

For centuries, the Vindhyas marked the southern edge of what was considered the heartland of Hindu society. North of this boundary, caste hierarchies and practices such as untouchability became deeply embedded over time. South of it, social systems evolved differently, shaped by distinct histories, political movements, and challenges to caste dominance.

This historical divide matters till date. The data from the survey shows that caste-based discriminatory practices, including social exclusion and unequal treatment, are far more prevalent in northern and central India than in the south.

Here, the researchers ask an important question: whether these differences in the social environment also show up in children’s physical growth?

A Stark Pattern in the Data
The researchers first documented the scale of the problem using the nationally representative data on child health from India’s National Family Health Survey. The data suggested that across the country, Scheduled Caste children are about 50 per cent more likely to be stunted than upper-caste Hindu children. On average, these children are considerably shorter for their age, a sign of chronic deprivation.
However, these gaps are not uniform across India. The central and northern plains have the worst outcomes concentrated in them. These are the regions that also report the highest levels of caste-based discrimination.

Many districts in these areas report more than 40 per cent of Scheduled Caste children being stunted. In contrast to that, Southern India showcases relatively lower stunting rates overall and smaller caste-based gaps.

The said geographic variation provides an opportunity for deeper analysis. However, Northern and Southern states in India vary in terms of language, culture, socio-economic development, and several other dimensions. Thus, an overall comparison between these two regions would not adequately capture the role of caste-based discrimination. Hence, the researchers focused on families living close to the Vindhyas (just north and just south of the) range, within the same state. This allowed the researchers to compare the children who live in broadly similar economic and administrative settings but are exposed to different social environments shaped by history.

What Did the Researchers Find?
The results are striking. For upper-caste Hindu children, living north or south of the Vindhyas makes little difference to their chances of being stunted. But for Scheduled Caste children, it matters a great deal. Those living south of the Vindhyas are significantly less likely to be stunted than those living just north of the range.

This is to say that the benefits of the southern context are not universal. They specifically help children from groups that have historically faced caste-based exclusion. This strongly suggests that differences in social practices rather than climate, geography, or general prosperity play a key role in child health.

To be sure of this, the researchers tested other explanations. Could it simply be about income? The answer they found was ‘NO’: accounting for household wealth does not eliminate the pattern. Could it apply to all disadvantaged groups? Again, NO: the researchers did not see the same north-south divide for groups that are poor but were not traditionally subject to caste discrimination.

Why Does This Matter?
Childhood stunting is a serious health issue which is deeply shaped by social institutions. The research findings show that discrimination and exclusion can quite literally get 'under the skin', shaping children’s bodies from the earliest years of life.

Reflecting upon the study and its findings, Professor Deshpande says, "History may not be destiny, but it casts a long shadow and children pay the price with deficits that carry over into their adult lives."

The study suggests that policies that focus only on food, sanitation, or healthcare, while essential, are not enough. In order to give every child a fair start, India must also confront the social hierarchies that continue to disadvantage some children simply because of who they are and where they are born.

- Edited by Priyanka (Research and Development Office)
This blog has been adapted from the original research article, available here:

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Ashoka Biology Major Awarded SVP Futures Award for Paleontology Research

Saketh Sundararajan, a fourth-year Biology major at 51���, has received the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology’s Futures Award.

Saketh received an award of 5000 USD, which supported his summer research experience at the Natural History Museum (under Dr Anjali Goswami), as well as at University College London (under Dr Ryan Felice).

Speaking about this enriching research experience, Saketh says, “At the NHM, I worked on CT scans of fossil mammal skulls, attempting to capture their shape variation using techniques like geometric and landmark-free morphometrics. At UCL, I trained in various methods in phylogenetic comparative methods, and learnt to analyse trait evolution in a macroevolutionary framework. This experience strengthened both my quantitative and analytical skills and provided a strong foundation for my ongoing research interests.”

Saketh is currently working on a thesis project in Professor Balaji's lab at 51���.

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The Company and the Problem of Sovereignty on the Coast: Insights from a History Scholar’s Recent Publication

Saanika is a PhD Scholar in the department of History at 51���, and her doctoral project investigates the idea of sovereignty through the lens of the English East India Company and its entanglements with the local political actors on the south Konkan coast. As a part of her ongoing scholarly research work, Saanika’s article was selected for publication in the special issue of the Coastal Studies and Society Journal called “Coastal Imaginaries”.

The Issue explores how coastlines and waterfronts have been diversely perceived and represented to reflect certain social anxieties and cultural values. It stems from an understanding of the coast as a liminal space where boundaries of all kinds were negotiated and contested.

Saanika’s article speaks to both the themes of anxiety and liminality through a study of the English East India Company’s pursuit of sovereignty at Bankot in the latter half of the eighteenth century. It also queries the issues of power and social control by studying the Company’s engagement with both the Marathas and the inhabitants of Bankot, underlining the divide between the Company’s perception of control and the reality on the ground.

She approaches the body politic of the Company through its on-ground praxis, moving away from generalised and homogenous understandings of the Company by focusing on how regional contingencies made Company rule diverse across the subcontinent. The research also shifts the political focus away from the inland to the coast, where she studies how sovereignty was internally carved through interactions.

Bankot, located south of Bombay, was acquired by the Company in 1756 through an Anglo-Maratha naval agreement. While a singular dot on the western rim of the Indian subcontinent, Saanika sees Bankot as representative of various other settlements on the south Konkan coast, which were all cast in a state of political liminality and fluidity at this time. Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a large number of Asian and European factions had emerged along the coastline, leaving coastal borders ill-defined and contested. Competition over maritime and coastal control was hence a crucial feature of the eighteenth-century western coast, and in turn, Bankot. The growth of these factions also meant a rise in employment opportunities that, in turn, made the coast more mobile. This proved a double-edged sword for the Company as it allowed more revenue-makers to enter its settlements, but also raised novel problems about control.

Saanika’s research for the article relies on archival material from the Maharashtra State Archives, including diaries and correspondence of the Resident at Bankot. These sources reveal how the Company’s imagination of sovereignty centred on an anxiety about the Maratha state’s power in the region, which could hinder its dual aims of acquiring revenue and increasing inhabitants.

The research work highlights that to become the uncontested sovereign, the Company had to define the limits of its territory, negotiate dues with other political entities, control the flow of revenue from agriculture and trade, check incursions from land and sea, and assert its authority over subjects. All of these goals were obstructed by the Marathas using a mix of petty diplomatic and violent tactics; the Company in turn responded with the political use of military power, a feature of fitna, choosing to keep threats in check over direct military confrontation. The study finds that the English often emulated political practices that were already found in the subcontinent.

The research article specifically studies the English East India Company’s operational anxieties in dealing with the settlement of Bankot. The author argues that borders were fluid, which provoked fears about regulations and sovereignty in the minds of those who managed the Company. As the space was politically contested, the Company was anxious to promote its own distinct idea of subjecthood to maintain political and economic control over the region. Moreover, the Company’s imagined sovereignty often clashed with the political discontent present in the coastal region, largely owing to the fluidity characterising both boundaries and subjecthood.

Concluding on her findings, Saanika says, “I see the coast not as a passive geographical landscape but as a dynamic space that was actively shaped by human imagination, cultural encounters and contested power dynamics. I hence assert the need for studying the coast as a pertinent political frontier for eighteenth-century transformations.” She highlights that more scholarly attention is required on these very localised aspects of coastal relationships, which in turn defined the colonialism of later years.

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Predators, Pools, and the Art of Risk-Taking: Lessons from Mosquito Mothers

Professor Manvi Sharma’s focuses on how animals respond to danger and behave differently, ranging from risk-aversion to boldly facing predators. The study shows that while animal decision-making may appear to be “inconsistent” or “nonsensical”, in reality, their choices can reflect logical and sensible responses to the unpredictable and messy world around them.

Professor Manvi Sharma from 51��� and Professor Kavita Isvaran from the Indian Institute of Science worked together to find answers to the question: Why do animals that face danger behave so differently? Why are some animals highly risk-averse, while others face predators boldly?

Professor Sharma and Professor Isvaran explored this puzzle by studying a simple yet revealing system: rock pools on a sheet of rock where the mosquito Aedes vexans lays eggs, and dragonfly nymphs (Bradinopyga geminata) eat the mosquito larvae. By measuring predator numbers across space and time, the researchers explored if predation risk is predictable, i.e., you can tell where danger will be, or unpredictable, i.e., it is a roll of the dice, and how female mosquitoes respond to the nature of this risk when choosing egg-laying sites.

The professors studied the rock-pool ecosystem on the Rishi Valley School campus in Andhra Pradesh, India, mapping 89 rock pools and sampling them monthly for dragonfly nymphs during the breeding season to quantify predation risk associated with pools of different sizes. What they found was surprising! While unpacking these findings, Professor Sharma offers an interesting stock market analogy. She says, “You can think of pools as fund investment portfolios: small-sized pools that rarely have predators, large ones that almost always do – these are the reliable funds, but the medium-sized pools are a draw of luck – these are the extremely unpredictable funds.”

Next, the researchers designed carefully controlled experiments to test how mosquito mothers are investing in egg-laying when faced with these pools.

For field experiments, 31 pools were used: researchers added or removed dragonfly nymphs in a rotating design, then collected eggs laid on cloth strips (ovistrips) placed along pool edges every 24 hours. The team conducted these manipulative trials for two years and used statistical models to tease apart predictable versus unpredictable variation and female responses.

Mosquito mothers consistently avoided large pools (reliable danger), especially when predators were present. What surprised the researchers was that mosquito behaviour changed with the season: when background risk was low, females preferred predator-free pools, but when predators were common everywhere, females stopped discriminating - likely because searching for a rare, safe spot became too costly and time-consuming. There was only weak evidence that females behaved more unpredictably when pools themselves were unpredictable, though medium pools did show more variable egg-laying. Overall, females appear to respond to predictable signals strongly and treat unpredictable signals more flexibly - much like a wise mutual fund manager!

This study shows why it may seem that animal decision-making is “inconsistent” or “nonsensical”, but in fact, their choices can reflect a sensible response to a messy world. By measuring both the landscape of predation risk and prey behaviour in the wild, the paper reveals that predictable danger (big, predator-filled pools) leads to consistent avoidance. In contrast, unpredictable danger can favour flexible or bet-hedging strategies (spreading eggs across multiple environments). These insights matter not only for understanding how traits persist under variable selection but also for practical applications, such as vector-control management, where understanding mosquito oviposition rules could inform control strategies.

Professor Sharma and Professor Isvaran’s study also provides a neat field template for studying how predictable vs unpredictable selection shapes behaviour in other systems.

- Edited by Priyanka (Research and Development Office)
This blog has been adapted from the original research article, available here:

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51��� Centres Expo 2025

51��� hosted the second edition of the Centres Expo on 18 November 2025, bringing together all the research and practice centres at Ashoka to the Mess Lawns. Themed ‘Unlocking Potential’, this year’s Expo invited the Ashoka community to discover the remarkable initiatives, interdisciplinary collaborations, and meaningful work being undertaken by the diverse centres.

The Expo featured stalls from 18 centres, including Archives of Contemporary India, Ashoka Centre for a People-Centric Energy Transition, Centre for China Studies, Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability, The Centre for the Creative and the Critical, Safexpress Centre for Data, Learning, and Decision Sciences, Centre for Data Science and Analytics, Centre for Digitalisation, AI and Society, InfoEdge Centre for Entrepreneurship, Centre for Health Analytics, Research and Trends, Centre for Interdisciplinary Archaeological Research, Centre for Social and Behaviour Change, Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy, Centre for Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Centre for Translation, Isaac Centre for Public Policy, Koita Centre for Digital Health, and the Research and Development Office.

Each stall highlighted the centre’s ongoing projects, upcoming programmes, and avenues for student engagement - from internships and research opportunities to volunteer roles and event collaborations.
To make the experience more interactive, two engaging student activities - the Centres Expo Passport Challenge and the Ultimate Treasure Hunt were organised in collaboration with the Resident Assistants and Jazbaa, respectively. Both activities saw enthusiastic participation, encouraging students to visit multiple stalls, solve clues, collect stamps, and note down interesting insights along the way. The participants got a chance to win Blue Tokai coupons and also gain a deeper understanding of the pioneering work being done by the University’s centres.

Overall, Centres Expo 2025 saw active participation from Ashoka’s faculty, students and staff members, in line with the University’s collaborative spirit and shared commitment to advancing knowledge and creating meaningful social impact. The event concluded with a strengthened resolve to work together towards meaningful outcomes.

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“If Being Okay Means Divorce, Then I Choose Depression”: How do Indian Women Psychiatric Patients Navigate Normalcy and Illness?

Women’s stories of distress reflect a complex interplay between societal ideals and personal suffering. Professor Annie Baxi’s research work tries to understand this complex relationship, noting that the same systems that constrain women also, interestingly, offer them a sense of belonging, self-worth and purpose. In this article, she talks about her recently published research paper on Mental Illness Narratives Among Indian Women with Psychiatric Diagnoses, published in the Journal of Constructivist Psychology, and shares her key observations.

Talking further about her recent research, Professor Baxi underlines that the traditional trends in psychiatric practices primarily focus on framing mental illness through either biological or psychological explanations. They do not pay enough attention to the moral and cultural factors that define both suffering and recovery for the patients. Whereas, in India, mental illness is inseparable from the social scripts that define what it means to be a “normal” woman, wife, or mother.

Her study explores how women, who are diagnosed with psychiatric conditions, build their identity around their illness and find meaning within the intersecting frameworks of normalcy and patienthood.

The study was conducted at a private mental health hospital in New Delhi, using a qualitative, constructivist approach with interviews and focus groups. The analysis focused on how women articulate their suffering through culturally resonant idioms, such as sacrifice and caregiving. In doing so, the study shifts attention from pathology to meaning, offering insight into how recovery is experienced as a process of moral negotiation, relational repair, and reclaiming dignity.

The findings revealed a dialectical tension between two competing identities:
The normal woman — self-sacrificing, emotionally restrained, and devoted to family care.
The psychiatric patient — perceived as unstable, dependent, or morally suspect.

Their narratives reflected an ongoing negotiation between submission and resistance, as well as between patienthood and personhood. Professor Baxi, through her work, emphasises that understanding these dialectics is critical to their lived experiences, constructions of illnesses and related self-image.

Participants frequently referenced expectations surrounding sacrifice, caregiving, modesty, and domestic responsibility, positioning these as central to being a “good woman.” These ideals functioned not merely as abstract values but also as socially legible ways of speaking about self and suffering. Within the psychiatric institution, where women are often seen as symptomatic rather than situated subjects, reasserting normalcy became a form of resistance, a means to reclaim personhood against the clinical gaze.

Patienthood emerged as an ambivalent, affectively charged identity, shaped by institutional practices, cultural expectations, and personal histories. It disrupts social and domestic order but also enables women to reauthor their identities. Recovery, for many, was not separation from family roles but reintegrating into them with renewed meaning and self-awareness. Thus, rather than opposing forces, normalcy and patienthood coexist as dialectical spaces through which women continuously negotiate belonging, morality, and selfhood.

Based on these findings, the study encourages society to reconsider mental health as a condition profoundly influenced by social, moral, and cultural factors. For practitioners and policymakers, the findings underscore the importance of providing relational and culturally sensitive care that prioritises belonging, dignity, and moral worth alongside symptom relief.

The study suggests that hospitals and community programs must move beyond isolation to foster social reintegration through creative, domestic, and service-based activities that align with local values of connection and care.

Reflecting upon her research journey and observations in the given field, Professor Baxi says, “As a psychologist, academic, mental health practitioner, and most importantly as a woman, I have witnessed how women’s stories of distress reflect a complex interplay between societal ideals and personal suffering. Systems and structures that constrain women’s lives often also provide them with a sense of purpose, belonging, and moral worth.”

Professor Baxi’s research points out that for Indian women, recovery is not merely freedom from symptoms but a restoration of relational balance and social usefulness. Through her research, she reinforces the idea that a dialectical approach to therapy has the potential to bridge the gap between biomedical treatments and lived experiences. It reaffirms the desire for individual identity and the desire to be relationally functional. By engaging cultural narratives rather than dismissing them, practitioners can promote more inclusive and meaningful models of healing that affirm both vulnerability and wholeness.

At a broader level, the study contributes to emerging global dialogues in psychology that seek to decolonise mental health research by situating distress within its moral and cultural ecologies. It highlights how listening to patients’ stories, especially those of women in non-Western contexts, allows us to understand mental illness as a human effort to live meaningfully within, and sometimes despite, societal expectations.

- Edited by Priyanka (Research and Development Office)
This blog has been adapted from the original research article, available here:

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51��� Organises a Networking Meet on National Research Administrators Day

Research is a journey, an ongoing process and often challenging. When researchers embark upon this quest, they don’t go alone, a caravan moves with them. A caravan of professionals, who work tirelessly to pave the way, to arrange the resources and provide the needed support to make sure the journey goes (if not smooth, always), but in the right direction, as intended. The members of this caravan are Research Administrators, skilled professionals, with an in-depth knowledge and deep-rooted passion for research. A special day has been dedicated to celebrating the spirit and contribution of these professionals — National Research Administrators Day.

The Research and Development Office at 51��� organised a meet and greet to celebrate the spirit and honour the efforts of the administrators, management professionals who work in the field of research behind the scenes but definitely serve as the backbone of the entire research ecosystem. The event was attended by not only Research Administrators from various institutions across the country, but Thought Leaders, Research Funders and Professors to come together and applaud the crucial role these professionals play to keep research efforts on track. The knowledge partner for the event was CIntelligence Private Limited, the creators of Researgence—an online repository that consolidates institutional research publication data in an easy-to-access, online format.

The event highlighted how every innovation, every quest for research, every scholarly collaboration is backed up and supported by skilled professionals, who may not be in the limelight but serve as the key pillars of strength, powering the entire research journey.

Professor Gautam Iqbal Menon, Dean, Research at Ashoka welcomed the diverse gathering and applauded the transformative role of professional research management in India’s research landscape over the past 10 years. Appreciating the contribution, Professor Menon said, “The work research administrators do is what we call a hygiene factor — you notice their absence, not their presence. As long as things run smoothly, grants go through, and documentation is done right, it seems like a simple, routine process, but in reality, immense effort goes into it.” Elaborating on the role the Research and Development Office at Ashoka plays, Professor Menon highlighted the major role the Research and Development Office at Ashoka plays in administering the Ph.D. programme with over 250 Ph.D. Students, managing an additional number of 150-200 research staff, and overseeing grant management for around 90-100 grants coming from 30-40 different granting agencies, both Indian and international.

Professor Somak Raychaudhury, Vice Chancellor of 51���, addressed the attendees and recognised the contributions of research administrators for their vital efforts, saying that just like International Women’s Day, every day is a Research Administrator’s Day. Highlighting Ashoka’s remarkable growth and vision, Professor Raychaudhury said, “With our campus expanding from 25 acres to 100 acres and research scope broadening across the sciences and non-sciences, we’re moving towards a greater number of patent applications, industry interactions, and innovations. In that direction, the role of the Research and Development Office also grows to include innovation. Therefore, the RDO should be called the RDIO — the Research, Development, and Innovation Office.”

Professor Raychaudhury also talked about the ever-expanding role of research administrators with the new emerging areas of research, such as undergraduate research with students opting for research and getting their papers published in high-impact journals.

Professor LS Shashidhara, Director National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), whose role in establishing the Research and Development Office at 51��� has been vital, attended the event online and talked about his experiences. His talk focused on how research administrator bodies should function within a university ecosystem, and he pointed out that with growth in research, the operational procedure becomes more complex and requires defined research administration systems to manage operations effectively.

He applauded the work of Ashoka’s Research and Development Office, which goes beyond routine administrative work and expands into supporting innovation, creating new research pathways and offering a strong foundation for scholarly work to thrive.

Professor K VijayRaghavan, Chair, Science Advisory Council, 51���, also joined the session online and addressed the gathering, focusing on the complexities and various types of challenges research managers face while navigating through their day-to-day role of managing everything behind the scenes. He also highlighted the importance of integrating AI tools into research management to keep pace with the rapidly evolving technological landscape.

Director of NCBS Dr Anirban Chakraborty, Registrar and Head of Research and Development (R&D) at TCG CREST, Kolkata, delivered a keynote lecture titled “The Future of Research Management in India: Challenges and Opportunities.”

Dr Chakraborty’s talk noted how ‘Research Administration’ was a term unknown in India, fifteen years ago, while at the same time, the US and the UK had already begun developing structured research management systems.

He highlighted the importance of initiatives such as the Wellcome Trust and NCBS programs, which helped introduce structured research management roles in India, thereby fostering a cohort of capable research managers. He applauded Ashoka’s liberal and inclusive culture, which has been helpful in establishing a robust research management system within the university.

Outlining the main challenges that research managers encounter, Dr Chakraborty talked about including funding instability, administrative hurdles, institutional complexities, inequitable research opportunities, human resource gaps, and policy-driven limitations

While addressing these challenges, he underlined the optimistic side of the research administration sector. He highlighted emerging opportunities, including the growing demand for research managers across the country, the expanding funding ecosystem, expanding research infrastructure, digital transformations, and policy reforms.

Touching on challenges and opportunities, and looking ahead to a hopeful future for research administration, Dr Chakraborty said, “As research managers, we must be jacks of all trades and choose flexibility over rigidity to ensure growth in this ever-evolving field.” He concluded by emphasising adaptability, collaboration and policy engagement as defining skills for a promising future of research management in India.

Another key highlight of the event was a panel discussion on “Best Practices in Research and Project Management – Lessons from Academic Institutions and Funders”, moderated by Dr Aradhita Baral, Deputy Director at the Koita Centre for Digital Health, 51���. The expert panellists who participated in the discussion were Dr Madhuri Dutta (The George Institute, Delhi), Dr Vandana Gambhir (IISER, Pune), Dr Shirshendu Mukherjee (Wadhwani Foundation), Dr Richi Mahajan (DBT), Dr Dipanwita Sengupta (DBT/WT IRMI), and Prof. Sourav Pal (51���). The experts emphasised the importance of knowledge sharing, stronger networks, and patenting & innovation.

Attendees asked the panellists and speakers about potential career opportunities in the field of research management and potential gaps. The responses suggested that at present, most of the research managers in India learn on the job, and there’s scope for formal training/courses and internship opportunities to bridge the gap.

Speakers and panellists further noted the significance of collaborative initiatives such as conferences, workshops and networking events to discuss these challenges and pave the way for a better tomorrow in the field of research management.

Sheevendra Sharma, Vice President of CIntelligence, showcased Researgence - The Research Information Management system at the event and presented a walk-through presentation to highlight how it can meticulously manage and showcase the research data in one place.

Researgence is a third-party platform, managed by Cintelligence Pvt Ltd, and it meticulously manages the research publications of the University. For Ashoka, this Research Information Management System serves as a centralised repository that showcases the university’s research via faculty profiles, interactive dashboards, and department-wise insights.

In the concluding session, Dr Poornima Prabhakaran, Director of the Centre for Health Analytics, Research, and Trends, lauded the contributions of the Research and Development Office (RDO) in providing end-to-end support to research projects and highlighted its potential to offer training to aspiring research administrators.

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Nipah Virus, its challenges, and need for therapeutic advancements: An Insight into Dr. Kumar’s Research. Kumar’s Recent Research Work

Dr Kumar has been focusing on developing novel antiviral strategies for emerging viruses. His Lab at 51��� primarily focuses on replicating the transcription mechanisms of pathogenic viruses and exploring the therapeutic potential of neutralising monoclonal antibodies against viral infections. Moving further in this direction, Dr Kumar shares insights from his recently published review on the Nipah virus (a deadly zoonotic pathogen)

The article covers the pathogenesis, genome, diagnosis, and treatment aspects related to Nipah virus, as presented in the review. The review also discusses clinical features, immune response, diagnostic approaches, and therapeutic strategies for NiV, all essential for the prevention and management of the Nipah virus outbreaks in the future. Nipah virus (NiV) is a deadly zoonotic pathogen with mortality rate ranging from 40%-70%. The virus is highly contagious, and it is responsible for recurrent sporadic outbreaks in India.

NiV is a negative-sense, single-stranded RNA virus with a genome of approximately 18.2 kb, encoding six structural proteins—N (nucleocapsid), P (phosphoprotein), M (matrix), F (fusion), G (attachment), and L (large polymerase)—and three accessory proteins (C, V, and W) that help the virus evade the immune response. The F and G glycoproteins mediate binding to host receptors and viral entry, while N, L, and P proteins are essential for viral replication and transcription. NiV infection causes severe respiratory illness and encephalitis in humans.

The history of NiV traces back to Sungai Malaysia in 1998-1999, when it was first identified during an outbreak, where the infection was spread in humans from infected pigs. Since then, there have been repeated outbreaks of the virus in Bangladesh and India (especially in Kerala). In the past few years, nearly each year has noticed multiple NiV outbreaks, the latest being in Kerala in July 2025.

Since 2018, the NiV outbreaks have been recurring almost every year. This increases the concern about the virus’s continued spread in the endemic areas and also highlights the urgent need to develop advanced diagnostic and therapeutic solutions to fight the Nipah virus.

Providing further insights on the virus, Dr. Kumar explains that The natural reservoir of NiV is the Pteropus fruit bat, which excretes the virus through saliva, urine, and feces. NiV spreads in humans via bat-contaminated food or through other reservoir hosts. Human-to-human transmission of NiV has also been documented.

Detailing on the genotypes of the virus, Dr Kumar shares that two main genotypes have been identified:

• The Malaysian (NiV-MY) strain
• The Bangladesh/Indian (NiV-BD/IN) strain

Taking into account the high mortality,contagiousness and pandemic potential, WHO has classified NiV as a high-priority pathogen.

Dr Kumar's review shares the currently available diagnostic methods for NiV detection, which include RT-PCR, ELISA, immunohistochemistry, and emerging CRISPR-based assays. An indigenous PCR-based diagnostic kit—Truenat™ Nipah PoC system, built by the National Institute of Virology, Pune, jointly with Molbio Diagnostics Pvt. Ltd. has shown 97% sensitivity and 100% specificity (approx).

Touching upon the therapeutic aspect the review underlines that with several vaccine candidates under trial, at present, there’s no approved antiviral drug or vaccine for NiV infection. Looking at available medical support interventions the neutralising monoclonal antibody mAb102.4 stands as the promising option, and it is approved in India for emergency-use cases.

Reflecting upon the research findings, Dr Kumar emphasises “Considering the frequency of recent outbreaks and reports of high fatality rates in both India and Bangladesh, it must be addressed as a global health priority to accelerate the development of antiviral and NiV vaccines.” He further suggests that integrating molecular research, clinical insights, and real-time surveillance can help in offering timely responses to the NiV outbreaks in the future.

Dr Kumar concludes that it continues to be a high risk zoonotic pathogen with high epidemic and pandemic potential. Since the virus has a wide host range and also the capacity for human-to-human transmission, followed by high case fatality rate, it becomes necessary on a global scale to continue with vigilance and preparedness to address these challenges.

Even though there has been significant progress in understanding its genome transmission, and pathogenesis, the absence of approved antivirals and vaccines pose a greater challenge and underline the need for further research in this field. To address these gaps, there should be efforts in prioritising multidisciplinary collaborations that bring together virologists, clinicians, epidemiologists, and public health experts to work on advancing the diagnostics and therapeutics for NiV.

Dr. Kumar’s review further suggests that strengthening of bat surveillance networks could also help in preventing the risks of the recurrences of the virus spread. Expansion of rapid testing instruction and implementation of ‘One Health’ approaches (integrating human, animal, and environmental health) is also crucial in minimising the spillover risk.

- Edited by Priyanka (Research and Development Office)
This blog has been adapted from the original research article, available here:

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Using Large Language Models for Generating Multi-Level Commit Messages: Insights from Professor Partha Pratim Das’s Recent Research Publication

In software development processes today, hundreds or even thousands of changes are made to the code every day. Each change is stored as a commit in a version control system like Git, and ideally, every commit is accompanied by a short description called a commit message. These messages tell other developers what has changed and why. Unfortunately, many commit messages are vague (fixed bug or minor update) or are completely missing. Research shows that nearly half of the commit messages lack important details, and some 14% are empty. This makes it difficult for developers to understand past work, track down bugs, or maintain large projects.

This collaborative study by Mr. Abhishek Kumar and Ms. Sandhya Sankar under the joint supervision of Professor Partha Pratim Chakrabarti of Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kharagpur and Professor Partha Pratim Das, Department of Computer Science, 51���, addresses the abovementioned challenge by asking Can Large Language Models (LLMs) generate better commit messages automatically, especially for large and complex code changes?

The researchers focused on three key questions:

• How effective are LLMs at generating commit messages for large code changes?
• Is a single commit message enough when many files are changed?
• Would a new multilevel approach, combining general and file-specific messages, be more useful to developers?

The seek answers to these questions, the team carried out their research in the following three phases:

• Dataset Preparation: The team carefully curated a data set of nearly 1,000 real-world software commits, focusing on large code changes (some with up to 8,000 tokens of content). As a next step, they carefully removed trivial or auto-generated messages (like version updates) to ensure quality.
• Commit Message Generation: In the second phase, they used state-of-the-art LLMs (GPT-4o, LLaMA 3.1, and Mistral) to generate two types of messages: general diff-level messages that summarise the whole commit and file-level messages for each changed file. For both, the team uses specially designed prompts to guide the models.
• Evaluation: In the final phase, the team combined automatic metrics (like BLEU, ROUGE, METEOR, CIDEr) with human evaluations by expert developers. A survey with 50 developers to gather real-world opinions on single vs. multi-level commit messages was also conducted to get further insights.

Completion of these three phases revealed the following key findings:

• LLMs outperform older methods: Traditional rule-based or shallow machine learning models performed poorly, while modern LLMs generated more accurate and relevant commit messages.
• GPT-4o and LLaMA 3.1 stand out: LLaMA 70B achieved the best results in automated tests, but human evaluators often preferred the output of GPT-4o. Interestingly, LLMs sometimes produced better messages than the original human-written ones.
• Developers prefer multilevel messages: 64% of surveyed developers preferred the proposed multilevel approach. They said it improved clarity and saved time during code reviews, especially for large commits.

The research shows that AI can play a practical role in software engineering by reducing the burden of writing detailed commit messages. It benefits the developers in faster onboarding of multiple ways, including faster onboarding of new team members, better debugging through effectively tracing the bugs back, and improved collaboration as clear documentation minimises misunderstandings amongst developer groups.

Speaking about the core of the study, Professor Partha Pratim Das notes, “Our study shows that multi-level commit message generation with AI offers a real solution to an everyday pain point in software development.”

Professor Das also underlines that future research in this field could extend this approach by capturing relationships between changes across multiple files, exploring lightweight open-source LLMs to reduce costs and developing new evaluation methods that better reflect human preferences.

To conclude, poor quality, inconsistent, and vague commit messages lead to frustrating challenges developers face to understand past work, track down bugs or work on large collaborative work, ultimately reducing their productivity and wasting the potential.

The study demonstrates that LLMs can enhance developer productivity and software maintainability. By combining general summaries with detailed file-level insights, developers gain a clearer, more structured view of code changes. It is believed that this approach can become a standard feature in future development tools, making collaboration smoother and software projects easier to manage.

Edited by Priyanka, Academic Communications, Research and Development Office, 51���

Readers can access the original publication here:

Authors: Abhishek Kumar, Sandhya Sankar, Partha Pratim Das, Partha Pratim Chakrabarti

- Edited by Priyanka (Research and Development Office)
This blog has been adapted from the original research article, available here:

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Axis Bank Post-doctoral Programme at 51���

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Tiling Properly: Exploring Symmetry and Structure in Space

We encounter different ways to tile a plane in our daily lives. The most common example is the tiling of a plane using squares. One can find similar examples of tilings by hexagons or triangles. It is natural to wonder about the number of “novel” ways one can tile a space using tiles of a particular shape. Each of these tilings remains unchanged under certain symmetries. For instance, if a plane is tiled with squares, shifting the entire arrangement by the length of the square’s side maintains the overall configuration. The collection of all such possible moves is called the symmetry group of the tiling. 

In the 1980s, Margulis discovered surprising ways of tiling a space such that the symmetry group is as ‘large as possible.’ Meanwhile, Feynman, aiming to understand the behaviour of elementary particles, proposed his theory of path integrals. The collection of such paths is expected to form a Teichmuller space, though its details are yet to be ironed out. On the other hand, Teichmuller spaces can also be seen as particular instances of collections of proper tilings. In the 1990s, Hitchin conceptualized spaces that are higher analogues of Teichmuller spaces while trying to understand the solutions of equations which govern most fundamental forces of nature—namely the Yang-Mills equations. More recently, Labourie has proposed a more geometric description of such higher-Teichmuller spaces.

Inspired by the work of Labourie, an immediate goal of Sourav Ghosh, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at 51���, is to understand proper tilings of spaces, developed using  Margulis’ methods, in terms of eigenvalue gaps of matrices corresponding to the symmetry groups of the tilings. More broadly, his research aims to connect the study of space tilings to higher-Teichmuller theory.

In their study, Dr Ghosh and his team have classified a large class of proper tilings of spaces, which are obtained using Margulis’ method, in terms of eigenvalue data. More interestingly, they have shown that these proper tilings are essentially fully determined by a finite collection of eigenvalue data, comparable to how a triangle is determined by the length of its sides. They have also constructed a metric using the eigenvalue data to detect how different two tilings are from each other.

Higher-Teichmuller spaces are promising candidates for representing the collection of ‘Feynman paths’. Finding the ‘correct’ contender through experiments is challenging, as it requires technological advancements not yet achieved. However, as Arnold once quipped, “Mathematics is the part of physics where experiments are cheap.” Where all else fails, the rigour of Mathematics yields a way forward. Dr. Ghosh’s work contributes to this effort by enhancing the understanding of higher-Teichmuller spaces.

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Our Focus in 2025 is to Grow in New, Especially Interdisciplinary, Directions: Professor Gautam Menon, Dean, Research

As 51��� embarks into the next decade, there is an increasing focus on expanding interdisciplinary research capabilities that bridge the gap between the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. In an exclusive conversation with us, Professor Gautam I. Menon, Dean of Research and Professor of Physics and Biology at 51���, details Ashoka’s research vision for 2025, the collaborative efforts under the Trivedi School of Biosciences, and the significant strides being made in integrating the humanities and social sciences with ongoing work in the Sciences.

What is 51���'s vision for its research ecosystem in 2025? How does Ashoka plan to position itself as a leading hub for interdisciplinary research in India that bridges science, humanities, and social sciences?

Professor Menon: Our focus in 2025 will be to consolidate the progress we have made over the last few years while growing in new, especially interdisciplinary, directions. The Trivedi School of Biosciences is now a leading biology department in the country, with new centres such as the Koita

Centre for Digital Health is working at the intersection of medicine, big data, and machine learning. A very substantial grant we’ve received from the Harish and Bina Shah Foundation to set up a School of Humanities will further enhance the already high profile of the Humanities at Ashoka. The challenge for us in 2025 and beyond will be to integrate such parallel efforts. The sciences are already talking to each other. Seeding conversations connecting the sciences to the social sciences and humanities, including in areas such as the ethics of AI, climate change-driven inequality, the social consequences of urban heat, as well as philosophical questions around data privacy, should lead to collaborations that are unique in India.

What strategies is Ashoka using to engage more undergraduate and postgraduate students in meaningful research opportunities?

Professor Menon: The great advantage with being young is that, if you are well-prepared and have the right opportunities at the right time, you can explore questions that could potentially open up new areas of investigation. We offer multiple internships, projects, and ESP (Experiential Learning) projects. Ashoka students have access to a broad range of research opportunities both on-campus and off-campus for independent project work. These projects, aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) and Ashoka’s research framework, are central to enabling students to work independently in new areas of research. Supporting them is vital to how Ashoka sees the importance of student research.

How does the Research and Development Office (RDO) plan to enhance collaborations with international universities, research institutes, and industry?

Professor Menon: A very important pillar of what we plan to do going forward is to make sure that we establish sound working research relationships and student exchange programs with a number of prominent universities both in India and abroad. This will ensure that our students, whether at the undergraduate, graduate, or PhD levels, have access to a diverse range of opportunities that our country and institution cannot solely provide. The RDO cannot handle everything alone. We have a focused effort directed at the internationalisation of our research ecosystem, with contributions from initiatives such as Ashoka Global and Ashoka Global Research Alliance ( AGRA). The RDO’s role is to support this thrust, ensuring that the university provides the necessary infrastructure, support, guidance, and resources to faculty and students in these collaborations.

Are there any upcoming initiatives to expand research infrastructure or funding opportunities at Ashoka?

Professor Menon: We are currently in discussions with multiple funders interested in supporting advanced research. While I cannot share specific details at this stage, I can assure you that exciting developments are on the horizon. Keep an eye on announcements from the RDO, as these upcoming initiatives will significantly enhance Ashoka’s national and international research impact.

As a leader in climate research, how do you envision expanding Ashoka’s contributions in this critical area? What new projects or programmes can we expect in 2025?

Professor Menon: One of the areas where Ashoka is already making an impact is the intersection of climate, environment, and health. The Centre for Health Analytics Research and Training (CHART) is deeply involved in such efforts, quantifying the extent of air pollution in India and its consequences for health. The Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability (3CS) works across multiple departments, supporting initiatives such as long-term studies of the environment as well as the changing agroecology of the Eastern Ghats. Our goal is to bring together more researchers working in these fields and strengthen collaborations across disciplines.

We are particularly interested in issues connecting climate change, health and society, and how understanding these connections might help us adapt better to climate change. Given the urgency of these challenges, our research in this field will be increasingly vital for the country in the next few decades. I would like to see Ashoka at the forefront of research relevant to these questions.

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Climate Recipes: An Intergenerational Archive of Lived Wisdom

With climate change emerging as a pressing problem, Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi, Visiting Faculty of Visual Arts, 51��� and Srinivas Mangipudi (artist/curator) co-initiated a project called ‘. If left unchecked, climate change can damage our ecosystem. This research project was initiated to serve as an archive of wisdom and advice from individuals committed to the issues of land and the environment. The idea is to document intergenerational wisdom across different regions of the country that are prototypes of climate resilience and sustainability.

Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi and Srinivas Mangipudi came out with the Goa edition, a 130-page book for which they interviewed twenty-five experts from the Goan community. Over six months of meeting and interacting with individuals from different fields and documenting their knowledge, both authors experienced a shift in their habits and found a deeper meaning in simple acts towards saving the environment. These included environmentalists, scientists, architects, farmers, conservationists, historians, and poets. The book conveys their lived experiences and offers ‘life recipes’ to protect our planet and its environment in the face of climate challenges. Climate Recipes premiered as part of the ’ art exhibition at the Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts, Panaji in 2023. After curating Climate Recipes, the curators believe that insights from people belonging to various fields can help us reboot our daily approaches to life and better support the environment. These ‘recipes’ provide life strategies to tackle climate change, drawing from the native knowledge of experts from Goa.

For example, Rajeev Kumar Chaturvedi, Assistant Professor, BITS Pilani, Goa, suggests that we should curb our greed by letting go of personalised vehicles and appliances in favour of shared solutions. Tallulah D’Silva, a sustainable architect and founder of Architecture T, emphasises that our approach to architecture should be gradual, considerate of the environment, and involve sustainable practices. Nirmal Kulkarni, a field ecologist and director of Wildernest Nature Resort, advocates for learning from the forest and its plants and animals, which serve as our mentors in climate resilience and adaptation.

Climate Recipes is also expanding with new editions for Andhra Pradesh & Telangana, Bengaluru, and Bhitarkanika. With the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana editions, the aim is to highlight natural farming, agroecology, biodiversity restoration, and community well-being. In Bengaluru, the project plans to adopt a neighbourhood-centric approach to understanding urban ecosystems, aiming to redefine sustainable living in the city's rapid development.

In Bhitarkanika, Odisha, the focus is on balancing wildlife conservation in the national park with local economic development, promoting a sustainable coexistence between humans and wildlife with collaboration from the Odisha Government and other partners. Thus, with all its editions, Climate Recipes is dedicated to providing knowledgeable insights from individuals across different parts of the country and fields. The focus remains steadfast on commitment to land and environmental stability.

Climate Recipes project is supported by Socratus Collective Wisdom Corporation and Pollinator.

- Written by Kangna Verma and Yukti Arora (Academic Communications, RDO, 51���)

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Charting the Path Towards Becoming a Research University

With Ashoka stepping into its second decade, the last few years have seen a significant push towards increasing research capabilities across disciplines, and an effort to expand the Sciences at Ashoka. We caught up with Dipankar Bhattacharya (Sunanda and Santimay Basu Chair for Astrophysics and Head of Department, Physics) and Projit Mukharji (Head of Department and Professor of History) to discuss how their respective departments are poised for growth and collaboration in the arena of research.

Q: Both of you have joined Ashoka at a crucial juncture, with the University pivoting to both the Sciences and research. How do you see your department evolving to address both these threads?

Projit: The History Department at Ashoka is widely recognized as one of the foremost in the country. Research has been a part of our profile even before the university-wide pivot. The new direction the University has embarked on will allow us to further amplify our existing emphasis on research. The introduction and expansion of the Sciences is also enabling us to build on existing strengths. My colleagues, Nayanjot Lahiri and Kalyan Sekhar Chakraborty, for instance, have developed a close working relationship with the Department of Biology through their work at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies. Similarly, strong ties have been forged with environmental scientists. My own work in the History of Science resonates with multiple Science departments.

Dipankar: I agree with what Projit is saying. Just like the History Department, the Physics faculty has a strong research focus, with a steady output. At present, two members of the Physics faculty are experimentalists, and they are in the process of developing their laboratory facilities at Ashoka. These labs already engage several PhD scholars and senior undergraduates in ongoing research programs. This activity is definitely poised for significant growth. Going forward, we expect to double the number of faculty members and look forward to a postdoctoral program that can serve as a major boost to our research output. We are also aiming to expand from our current research focus towards areas like quantum science, complex systems, and emergent phenomena.

Q: Ashoka is also one of the first universities to offer Astronomy as a discipline to undergraduate students. Dipankar, could you elaborate on how the department hopes to build and grow the Astrophysics program?

Dipankar: The Astronomy Minor was launched in January 2023, offering a unique curriculum that covers much of modern Astronomy at an undergraduate level. The next step would be to introduce an Interdisciplinary Major in Physics and Astronomy in due course. We are also exploring the development of new course offerings in collaboration with the humanities departments. As our laboratory facilities expand, more hands-on components will be introduced. Over time, we plan to add research activities in emerging areas like exoplanets, observational cosmology with large surveys, and multi-messenger astronomy. In the next few years, researchers in India are poised to gain access to large international astronomical facilities, and it will be our goal to train and involve Ashoka students in using these facilities for state-of-the-art astronomical research.

Q: What are some areas of growth that the Department of History will focus on in the coming years?

Projit: In the longer term, I would love to see us teaching more non-Indian histories, particularly African history and the histories of other parts of Asia. Having worked for two decades in Europe and North America, I have seen how world-class universities like Oxford and Harvard teach histories from various parts of the world. In India, the tendency is to focus almost exclusively on Indian history. However, if we want to attract students from other parts of the world, or produce students who can function in an increasingly globalized world, we must educate them on the deeper – and often shared – histories of India with our Asian and African neighbors.

Q: In your opinion, what makes interdisciplinary research important in today’s context? How is Ashoka equipped to handle this type of work?

Dipankar: Ashoka is well on its way towards cultivating a research ecosystem that transcends disciplinary boundaries, and many of our departments exemplify this. Physics, in particular, offers numerous opportunities to develop collaborative and cross-disciplinary research with other departments. The department already has a significant overlap with Biology through the study of biomaterials and epidemiology. Other developing collaborations include those with the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability, as well as the Departments of Chemistry and Computer Science.

Projit: None of the contemporary global issues that we face today – climate change, global pandemics, increasing war, and violence – can be tackled by any single discipline. By the time today’s students become scientists, policymakers, economists, or business leaders, this trend will be even more pronounced. Given the ever-growing complexity of our socio-technical infrastructures, future challenges will require us to think across disciplines. Ashoka’s unique blend of a liberal arts curriculum and an emphasis on research is ideal for equipping students for this transdisciplinary future. The bane of Indian higher education is over-specialization from an early stage. On the other hand, some efforts to remedy this have led to clubbing many distinct disciplines into a single department. Ashoka’s model avoids these pitfalls.

Interviewee: Dipankar Bhattacharya, Head and Faculty of the Department of Physics and Projit B. Mukharji, Head and Faculty of the Department of History

Interviewer: Yukti Arora (Academic Communications, RDO) and Sreya Roy Chowdhury (Strategic Communication, Development Team)

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Bridging Academia and Industry: A Conversation with Prof Partha Pratim Das

Q1. Your career has spanned both academia and industry, with roles ranging from faculty to CEO. What motivated your transition from academics to industry and also a subsequent return to academia?

I’m someone who enjoys exploring new avenues. I joined IIT Kharagpur in 1988 as a Computer Science faculty member and stayed until 1998. In 1993, I co-founded Kernel Computers, the institute’s first faculty-led startup, to bridge the gap between academia and industry. This dual role as an academic and industry professional taught me that it’s tough to manage both simultaneously. So, I left IIT in 1998 and started my own company, A Quaint Technology. Later, I joined Interra Systems as Engineering Head and worked there for 11 years. After realizing that industry thrives on customer focus, I decided to return to academia in 2011 to create industry-relevant courses. Teaching has always been my passion, and even during my industry years, I served as a visiting faculty at Calcutta University for eight years. Both industry and academia have their own charm, and I truly value my experience in both.

Q2. Could you share insights into the differences between managing academic institutions, and leading an organization in the private sector? How did these roles shape your leadership style?

In academia, there are three pillars: Teaching, where you shape students' learning and mentor their personal growth; Research, where you identify relevant problems and work with students and colleagues to find solutions, contributing to your growth as a teacher; and Projects, where you secure external funding to support cutting-edge research.

In the private sector, the focus shifts entirely to the customer. I used to ask newcomers, “Why does a company exist?” The answer is simple: to make money, while providing value to customers. In industry, success is determined not just by creating solutions but by meeting customer requirements with high quality.

This focus on customer-at-the-center influenced my academic approach when I returned to academics in 2011. I viewed students as customers investing their aspirations, but this perspective wasn’t widely accepted in academia. Another key difference between industry and academia is that, in industry, it’s less about how you create a solution and more about whether it meets the requirements. Quality is a crucial factor. Balancing both worlds has shaped my leadership style to be outcome-driven and customer-centric.

Q3. Your areas of interest include data science, software engineering, food computing, digital learning, and digital heritage. What initially drew your interest to these diverse fields, and how do they connect to your current research?

My interest in computer science has always been driven by creating meaningful societal applications. Early in my career, I worked on automating the intricate design process of Indian silk sarees like Baluchari and Banarasi. After transitioning back from the industry, I wanted to explore computing in non-traditional areas. I delved into digital heritage, focusing on Indian classical dance like Bharat Natyam, using AI to create tutoring systems.

My interest in food computing stemmed from the link between food, nutrition, and chronic diseases. At Ashoka, I leveraged the interdisciplinary environment to develop digital food models that personalize nutrition and wellness, addressing why diets often fail. I am collaborating with the Trivedi School of Biosciences on various interdisciplinary projects. The concept involves digitally representing food and managing decisions like recipes, ingredients, nutrition, and wellness. It also looks after matching foods to individuals based on what's beneficial for them. While dietitians recommend food based on health parameters, they often overlook enjoyment, which is why most diets fail after two weeks.

Data Science connects all these interests, allowing me to integrate computing techniques into diverse areas like humanities and social sciences. I’m not solely a data science researcher; rather, I apply its techniques to interdisciplinary fields, with the aim of enhancing the research potential across disciplines at Ashoka.

Q4. Having been at the forefront of software development and entrepreneurship, how do you think India’s tech industry has evolved over the years? What key factors do you believe have contributed to its growth?

India’s tech industry has grown significantly in numbers, but its impact remains debatable. Historically, it has largely been a service industry, learning from others and offering solutions based on those insights. Unique innovations like UPI framework and ISRO’s achievements stand out, but these successes are limited to specific areas.

India’s strength lies in its technically educated workforce with solid mathematical and analytical skills. However, overproduction of software developers has led to a major employment crisis.

During my first start-up in IIT Kharagpur, we had to convince the Board of Governors for several months for why a faculty should start a startup? One of my friends once told me a small story: a couple with two daughters were married. The younger daughter and her husband were highly respected in the society, because the younger daughter's husband worked as a top executive in a company. Whereas, the elder daughter and her husband were not so respected because the elder daughter’s husband ran a company. The bottom line of the story being, the younger son-in-law worked in the company of the elder son-in-law. This story subtly describes the way society looked at startups. Hence, the mindset for entrepreneurship was very different back in the day.

Despite this, there’s been a positive shift in entrepreneurial mindset. In the past, startups were undervalued, but now they are gaining recognition.

I’m particularly hopeful about the potential in AI, where India can take the lead. Although societal perceptions are changing, with startups no longer looked down upon, we still need more leadership and innovation, particularly in the space of Artificial Intelligence, to truly make a mark globally.

Q5. What current projects or research are you most excited about, how do you see 51���’s environment and resources contributing to the success of these initiatives?

Currently, I’m excited about food computing research at Ashoka, adopting an interdisciplinary approach by collaborating with the biology and sociology departments. Given food's multi-dimensional nature, I’m working to make this a university-wide initiative while building partnerships with private, governmental institutions, and NGOs. I believe this is an area where Ashoka has a unique edge compared to other institutions.

Additionally, I’m focusing on interdisciplinary research using data science techniques. We’ve launched a unique outreach program called ‘Data Science for Social Impact’ to promote these efforts. Over the next two years, I aim to grow the Data Science Center at Ashoka, serving as an integrated platform across various departments to streamline data processes and promote better data science practices. This center will elevate our research capabilities and create a collaborative space for impactful projects.

Interviewee: Prof Partha Pratim Das, Professor of Computer Science, 51���

Interviewer: Kangna Verma and Yukti Arora, Academic Communications, RDO, 51���

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Research Administrators Driving 51���’s Research Ecosystem Forward

Research administration is crucial to the success of academic institutions, ensuring that research initiatives are managed effectively and efficiently. On National Research Administrators Day, we celebrate those working behind the scenes to support researchers, manage projects, and navigate the complexities of funding, compliance, collaborations, and communications. At 51���, the Research Development Office (RDO), led by Prof. Gautam Menon (Dean of Research) and Prof. Imroze Khan (Assistant Dean of Research), plays an integral role in streamlining processes and supporting an environment where research can thrive.

Gunisha Dhawan
M.Sc. Clinical Microbiology from Glasgow Caledonian University, UK

Gunisha manages scholar management at RDO. She oversees research projects, ensuring compliance with academic standards and funding agency guidelines. Her role includes budgeting, scheduling, and resource allocation for PhD programs, while ensuring proper completion of formalities during PhD tenures. Working closely with PIs, she ensures that resource allocation is compliant with funding agencies. Gunisha's experience has deepened her understanding of university operations and strengthened her expertise in research management.

Dr. Hemansi
Ph.D. in Microbiology, Central University of Haryana, India

Hemansi manages the Research Infrastructure Management vertical at RDO, overseeing post-award processes, facilitating collaborations, and procurement for intra- and extramural projects. She recently added patent management to her responsibilities, streamlining applications to protect innovative research. She received an IRMI travel award to attend the 2024 EARMA conference, gaining insights into EU research administration. She finds great purpose in helping researchers navigate complex administrative landscapes, aligning them with resources to achieve their goals. Her vision is to create a seamless, innovative research ecosystem at Ashoka, enhancing infrastructure, promoting intellectual property, and fostering global collaborations while implementing best practices in biosecurity and risk management.

Mukul Layak
M.Com.

Mukul handles post-award grant management and events at RDO. He manages intramural and extramural grants, ensuring financial reconciliation, reporting, and compliance. His responsibilities include updating sanction orders, expenses, and maintaining purchase records across platforms. Through his efforts in streamlining processes and ensuring compliance, he contributes to the effective management and growth of Ashoka’s research ecosystem.

Pankaj Chhabra
MBA (Finance) and CA (Inter)

Pankaj recently transitioned from Ashoka’s Finance team to RDO. He is involved in post-grant management, budgeting, reconciliation and finalisation of UCs, and also serves as the nodal officer for UGC and CSIR, ensuring support for PhD students supported by these agencies. Pankaj’s goal is to bridge the gap between Finance and RDO, delivering real-time grant financial data to improve research financial management.

Dr. Rajat Srivastava
Ph.D. in Plant Sciences, University of Hyderabad, India

Rajat’s role encompasses streamlining grant submissions, maintaining comprehensive databases, and overseeing the entire lifecycle of research personnel. He manages the hiring of students and staff, prepares contracts, and handles all aspects of the manpower process. His vision in scholar management is to foster a supportive and efficient environment for researchers, ensuring they have the resources and structure they need to succeed in their projects.

Dr Shruti Shrivastava
Ph.D. in Molecular Cell Biology, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad, India

Shruti handles grants management, scholar management, research publications, agreements, and policy implementation. She recognizes that research management in higher education is a specialised field, and her research background has been instrumental in her success. As the global research ecosystem evolves, she sees advanced training in research management and strategic planning as essential for the field's growth and looks forward to further advancing her career. She is also the recipient of an IRMI travel award, which she used to attend the 2024 EARMA conference. Shruti looks forward to continuing her contribution to the evolving landscape of research administration.

Dr. Sidhartha Bhattacharyya
Ph.D. in Geology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, USA

Sidhartha supports Ashoka faculty and departments with research facility setup, maintenance, and operations. He manages lab purchases, coordinates requisitions, and liaises with the Project and Maintenance team on infrastructure, equipment management and lab safety. Looking ahead, he plans to organise and participate in technical meetings with faculty and vendors to procure advanced equipment. He also aims to host vendor roadshows on campus to strengthen collaborations with 51���.

Dr. Yukti Arora
Ph.D. in Material Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India

Yukti oversees academic communication efforts at Ashoka and her work is crucial in strengthening Ashoka's research ecosystem by ensuring that research outputs are effectively communicated and recognized beyond academic circles. She plays a key role in coordinating between the Research, Business and Development, Outreach, and Media Offices, facilitating outreach, fundraising, and partnership-building initiatives. Her contributions have been instrumental in the conceptualization and execution of various communication and public engagement initiatives.

As we celebrate National Research Administrators Day, we recognize the invaluable contributions of these professionals in building a future-ready research ecosystem at 51���. Happy National Research Administrators Day!

Written by Dr Yukti Arora, Academic Communications, RDO, 51���

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Academia, Policy and Finance : Prachi Mishra’s insights on Global Economics and Research

Born and brought up in Patna, Bihar, Prachi Mishra, Professor of Economics and Director and Head of the Isaac Center for Public Policy at 51���, completed her PhD in Economics from Columbia University. She began her professional journey in Washington DC at the International Monetary Fund. Despite the global exposure, her drive to come back and contribute to India led her to work with the Indian Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, the Ministry of Finance, and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). She later broadened her experience in the private sector at Goldman Sachs.

One of her most rewarding projects during this time was, developing the intellectual framework and drafting the report of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Committee in 2017. This project addressed the changing global and domestic economic landscapes and the need to revise India's fiscal rules to enhance transparency, flexibility, and credibility.

Historically, India had experienced periods of macroeconomic instability, often caused by unsustainable fiscal policies, such as in the 1980s and during the 1991 Balance of Payments crisis. The government had introduced the FRBM Law in 2003, but by 2017, the economic landscape had shifted. India was becoming more financially connected to the global economy, and new challenges like secular stagnation, uncertainties in the Eurozone, significant debt burdens, and changing fiscal rules worldwide made it clear that India needed to update its approach. Many countries had already adopted fiscal rules with built-in flexibility, transparency, and independent oversight. The time was opportune for a review of India’s fiscal framework.

“I enjoyed both the intellectual challenge of shaping a new fiscal framework for India and the process itself, which involved consultations with stakeholders and lively debates within the committee”, Prof. Prachi shared.

Another key initiative she enjoyed was collaborating with the Human Resource Department at the RBI to establish the Strategic Research Unit. This unit, staffed with both internal personnel and directly recruited PhD economists, was tasked with delivering high-quality research and analysis to address the operational challenges across various departments of the Bank. Human resource management in a large emerging economy like India is indeed significantly more complex compared to countries with more developed institutional frameworks and greater human capital.

At Ashoka, she is working on several research projects. One of them focuses on reducing high public debt and rising debt servicing costs, which are key concerns for policymakers in India and globally. In India, nearly 40% of government revenue goes towards debt servicing, compared to just 10% on average for emerging markets. This high spending on interest payments limits funds available for economic support during crises like COVID-19, as well as for crucial social investments in health and education, where India still spends significantly less than its peers.

In today’s interconnected global economy, decisions made in advanced economies often have significant effects on emerging markets. One of Prof. Prachi’s research areas focuses on how these policy shifts impact financial markets in emerging countries, a topic she has studied for nearly a decade. A key moment in this work occurred on May 22, 2013, when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke hinted at “tapering” (or the reversal of quantitative easing policies by a central bank to stimulate economic growth). Emerging markets reacted sharply, and as part of India’s G20 delegation to Moscow, the collective concern was raised that while aggressive monetary easing could support recovery in the US, Europe, and Japan by increasing demand for exports, it also triggered “spillover” effects for emerging markets—widening interest rate differentials, increasing capital flows, appreciating currencies, and driving up stock and asset prices. This experience has been central to shaping her research agenda on spillovers.

Having worked in both academic and financial sectors, when asked about the key challenges of each and how to bridge the gap between academic research and practical policy making?

She states, “For academia, especially in India, the big challenge is to attract world class faculty. The intellectual ecosystem is dominated by the West, and all emerging economies face binding resource constraints.

Despite all challenges, engaging with Indian students and faculty is rewarding in several ways. Research and teaching in a large emerging market is way more interesting and challenging too, compared to the West.

The financial industry is very fast paced. The challenges there are different – limited bandwidth of clients, little time for academic rigour.

Engagement at all levels is crucial to bridge the gap between academic research, financial markets, and policy making. 51��� need to boost research on policy relevant questions and proactively present the results to policymakers, enabling them to draw conclusions from evidence-based research.”

For Prof. Prachi, research and academia have always been her passion. When asked about her long term goals and how 51��� can contribute to her professional growth, she mentions, “ I aim to work with colleagues to provide innovative perspectives on key questions global economies face - high public debt, high inflation, monetary transmission, political economy issues, etc.”

51��� and the newly established Isaac Center for Public Policy (ICPP) provide a unique chance to blend policy with academics, teaching, research, and engage with a large dynamic community of young students”

As a final piece of advice for those beginning their journey in economic research or policy, Prof. Prachi emphasises the importance of maintaining a critical mindset: “Summers' Law (named after Larry Summers) states, 'It takes just as much time to write an unimportant paper as an important one.' Read, recognize contributions, but don’t be awed by them, question everything.” This guiding principle, drawn from her own extensive career, encourages aspiring economists to approach their work with a curious mind.

Interview conducted by Kangna Verma and Yukti Arora, Academic Communications, RDO, 51���

51���

The Contemporary Hindu Nationalism and Indian Environmentalism

Prof. Mukul Sharma’s revised edition of Green and Saffron: Hindu Nationalism and Indian Environmental Politics revisits his pioneering study of the intersection between environmentalism and Hindu nationalism. Originally published in 2012, this updated edition with the new title , “Green and Saffron: The RSS, Modi, and Indian Environmental Politics”, continues to explore the ways Indian environmental discourse and policies have been influenced by a Hindu nationalist agenda.

The book challenges two common claims about environmental politics. First, it questions the idea that environmental ideology and politics always align with progressive views. Second, it disputes the notion that environmental ideology transcends the progressive/conservative, right/left divide. In this context, the book comprehensively analyses how environmental rhetoric has been used to support and extend the reach of Hindutva, a—an ideology central to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its affiliates like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The term “Green and Saffron” metaphorically represents this fusion, with “Saffron” symbolising Hindu nationalism and “Green” indicating environmental concerns.

The updated edition deals in-depth with at least five distinctive new features: the ideological and political expansion of ecological discourse in contemporary India through Hindu nationalist politics and its civil society supporters, the wide-ranging environmental discourse and activities of the RSS and its affiliated organisations since 2014, the role of the BJP government in promoting a religion-centred ecology, the saffronisation of the politics of climate change and renewable energy, and projections of PM Modi as an environmental leader both nationally and globally. This edition has an insightful foreword by Prof. Jonathan Olsen, who has previously published ground-breaking research on right-wing ecology in historical and contemporary Germany. The book’s previous case studies have been updated with ‘postscripts.’

In this new edition, Prof. Sharma refines his argument that contemporary Indian politics reflects both the “Greening of Saffron” and the “Saffronizing of Green.” The former denotes the BJP and RSS incorporating environmental discourse into a nationalist framework, using it to further their cultural and political agenda. The latter describes how parts of the environmental movement have adapted to align with this nationalist discourse, thus blending ecological concerns with Hindu nationalist ideology.

The book’s updated edition retains the core insights of the original while expanding on new developments. The second chapter provides an in-depth look at the ideological evolution of these organisations and their gradual emphasis on environmental issues within their nationalist discourse.

The book’s backbone remains its detailed case studies: Anna Hazare’s watershed management initiative in Ralegan Siddhi, the Chipko Movement leader Sunderlal Bahuguna’s opposition to the Tehri Dam, and the forest revival project in Vrindavan. Prof. Sharma carefully demonstrates how each case illustrates the blending of environmental conservation with Hindu nationalist values. In Ralegan Siddhi, Anna Hazare’s environmental efforts are shown to be influenced by Hindu nationalist ideas, emphasising moral authority and nationalistic rhetoric. Sunderlal Bahuguna’s resistance to the Tehri Dam reflects a convergence of environmental and religious concerns, while the Vrindavan project intertwines environmental policy with Hindu myths and values.

A notable addition in this edition is a chapter addressing India’s response to global climate change. The author critiques how the Modi administration has used climate change initiatives to advance its nationalist agenda while sidelining independent environmental organisations. The Governing party’s embrace of climate action is evaluated as a strategic move to enhance his political standing both domestically and internationally, Prof. Sharma highlights how climate change mitigation has been framed as a continuation of ancient Hindu traditions, intertwining modern environmentalism with nationalist themes.

Overall, the book critically examines how environmentalism and Hindu nationalism have become intertwined in India’s political landscape. By connecting ecological issues with nationalist sentiments, the author reveals the complex ways in which environmental discourse can be used for political purposes. His analysis highlights the potential risks of this convergence, particularly the exclusionary and ideologically driven nature of current environmental policies in India. By highlighting the contemporary features of Hindutva environmentalism and the convergence of Green and Saffron, the book also outlines future areas of research in this field that have hitherto been unexplored.

This revised edition of Green and Saffron not only provides new insights into the relationship between environmentalism and nationalism but also serves as a timely reminder of how political ideologies can shape and influence environmental discourse and policy. Prof Sharma’s book is a valuable resource for understanding the intricate dynamics of environmental politics in contemporary India.

Written by Dr Yukti Arora and Ms Kangna Verma - Academic Communications, RDO, 51���

Reference:

51���

Taming the Elephant: Publicly Auditable Yet Privacy-Preserving Electoral Rolls

Election security is a critical concern. While much of the focus is on securing the voting process, electronic voting machines (EVMs) and backend systems, the security and privacy of electoral rolls, or voter lists, are often overlooked. The months-long voter registration process is vulnerable to both administrative errors and active manipulation. Common issues include the addition of ineligible voters, the malicious removal of eligible voters, and duplicate entries. Making electoral rolls public is a common approach to ensure integrity through public audits. However, this raises significant privacy concerns, as voter lists contain sensitive information that can be exploited for targeted manipulation in elections.

Prashant Agrawal, a Research Assistant at 51���’s Centre for Digitisation, AI, and Society, along with his co-authors, has proposed a protocol that provides public auditability of electoral rolls while maintaining voter privacy. This protocol addresses various threats, including electoral roll manipulation, ballot stuffing, voter denials, and privacy violations. This secure electoral roll protocol eliminates the need for a trusted authority to issue eligibility credentials. Instead, it relies on legally mandated criteria such as age and citizenship to determine voter eligibility. It also eliminates the need for voters to safeguard any secrets, allowing them to participate "bare-handed."

The core idea is to publish an electoral roll with encrypted voter identity information and then decrypt and verify a small random sample of these entries. Statistical sampling provides strong guarantees that any large-scale eligibility fraud would be detected efficiently. For an election with million voters, verifying just a few thousand entries is typically sufficient. This approach also prevents voter profiling by revealing the identity information of only a small fraction of random voters.

However, statistical sampling alone cannot detect duplicate entries in the electoral roll. Deduplication is a challenging issue and although systems like Aadhaar exist, their deduplication processes are not publicly verifiable. Nevertheless, even with a trusted deduplicated identity system like Aadhaar, directly using it for electoral processes could compromise voter privacy. Therefore, the proposed protocol introduces a secondary, election-specific identity that is unlinkable to the primary identity system yet retains its deduplication guarantees, ensuring both voter privacy and electoral integrity.

Even with a completely accurate electoral roll, there is no guarantee that votes are recorded only against the names of voters who actually cast their votes. To prevent ballot stuffing, the protocol incorporates a secure liveness detection mechanism, such as capturing a facial photograph of the voter holding a specific placard, attested by a trusted hardware execution module. Alternative liveness detection methods from computer vision literature can also be employed.

Finally, the protocol addresses the issue of eligible voters being wrongly denied registration or the opportunity to vote. Both registration and vote casting are conducted under public oversight, with all voters receiving appropriate receipts. These receipts allow voters to partially verify their validity on the spot, and the correctness of denial decisions can be audited by an independent auditor without revealing voters' sensitive identity information. A random sample of voters verifying their receipts ensures protection against large-scale voter denials while maintaining privacy.

In conclusion, the proposed protocol offers practical protection against electoral roll manipulation, ballot stuffing, and various attacks on voter privacy. It is highly efficient, requiring, for example, the verification of only about 2,500 random voters out of a million to detect eligibility fraud rates of 2% or higher, while exposing the identity information of at most 1% of voters. By ensuring that electoral rolls are both verifiable and privacy-preserving, this protocol sets a new standard for secure and fair elections.

Ref Article:
Publicly Auditable Privacy-Preserving Electoral Rolls

Authors:
Prashant Agrawal, Mahabir Prasad Jhanwar, Subodh Vishnu Sharma, Subhashis Banerjee

Edited by Yukti Arora and Kangna Verma, Academic Communication, RDO, 51���

51���

Exploring the role of topology in biological phase transitions

Phase transitions where matter changes from one form to another due to altering parameters such as temperature, are common in nature.  At a fundamental level, many phase transitions can be understood as a competition between energy and entropy  (disorder). Because of these underlying universal properties, physical theories once developed for phase transitions in non-living matter, turn out to be very effective at describing biological processes as well. One such biological process is the melting of DNA, where the two strands making up the double helix unwind and separate from each other. 

Circular DNA (cDNA), found in viruses and bacteria, behaves differently from linear DNA in humans due to its complex topology. cDNA is more stable and has a higher melting temperature. Topology, a branch of mathematics, examines the connections between geometric shapes that can be smoothly transformed into each other without cutting or tearing – as an old joke goes, a donut and a coffee mug look the same in topology, because they both have one hole. Souradeep aims to understand DNA melting in circular DNA, and specifically how the topology of circular DNA affects the melting phase transition. 

Using statistical physics models and dynamical simulations run on Ashoka’s High-Performance-Computing cluster, Souradeep’s research investigates how DNA melting is affected by basic topological constraint – gluing the two ends of a DNA chain together and making it circular. He found that in the absence of any further twisting (known as supercoiling), circular DNA behaved similarly to linear DNA, when the DNA molecule was very long. Just as the Earth appears flat to us instead of curved due to its immense size, simple circular DNA also could not recognize its own curvature if it became very long. 

Biological systems are enormously complex and hard to grasp in their totality – this is where interdisciplinary approaches from physics can help delineate the importance of different aspects of biological systems.  It helps provide a generalized framework, e.g. how much of any biomolecule’s behavior can be understood from its geometry and topology alone? Souradeep aims to contribute to the interdisciplinary effort to unravel the mysteries of our biology.

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Edited by Yukti Arora and Kangna Verma (Academic Communications, RDO)

51���

Celebrating a Research Milestone: Ashoka’s First Science Ph.D. Graduate from the Department of Biology

51��� proudly celebrates the graduation of Basabi Bagchi from the Department of Biology, marking her as the first graduate from the sciences. Under the supervision of Prof. Imroze Khan, Basabi conducted research in the field of Evolutionary Immunology. Since childhood, she has been fascinated by the natural world and its mechanisms, particularly intrigued by the interplay between pathogens and their hosts, with a specific focus on Evolutionary Biology, the study of how species evolve and adapt over time.

Prof. Imroze Khan’s research in Evolutionary Immunology instantly resonated with Basabi’s interest. Her eagerness to understand various facets of immune system evolution led her to choose 51��� for her Ph.D. As one of the pioneering students in the Department of Biology, Basabi encountered unique and sometimes challenging experiences during the initial months of her Ph.D. She played a key role in setting up a new laboratory space, an initially overwhelming task that proved immensely valuable for her. This opportunity allowed her to grasp the intricate details associated with establishing a new lab from scratch, from equipment set up to ensuring safety standards. This experience not only enhanced her practical laboratory skills, but also deepened her appreciation for the logistics involved in creating a research environment.

The immune responses of our body against harmful diseases can cause unintended damage to the healthy tissues and cause mutations in the DNA sequence. Basabi’s research focused on studying the transgenerational inheritance of genetic errors. She worked with a species of beetle, Tribolium castaneum, infecting them to observe how mutations induced by infection could be passed down to future generations. This work showed how infection in parents can lead to progressive decline in progeny fitness over generations

She then delved deep to understand whether evolution could offer a solution to mitigate these harmful effects? Further experiments with Tribolium lines subjected to intense pathogen exposures over multiple generations helped answer this question. Astonishingly, she found that the evolved lines exhibited a significant reduction in mutation transmission to subsequent generations and continued to produce healthy offspring despite facing infections. This suggested a rapid evolution of germline repair mechanisms to counteract the infection. Thus, her study revealed the transmission of mutations could have an unrecognized cost of immunity. It also demonstrates the ability of organisms to adapt to adverse conditions.

She recalls her research journey as a Ph.D. scholar at 51��� to be immensely fulfilling. The university’s emphasis on interdisciplinary learning has played an instrumental role in shaping her academic journey. The faculty and peers at Ashoka helped cultivate a supportive research environment with a strong emphasis on open communication and collaboration. During Basabi’s time at Ashoka, she had the opportunity to attend various seminars, workshops, and conferences held on campus, which greatly expanded her perspective on different areas of interdisciplinary sciences.

Additionally, the Research and Development Office at 51��� empowers Ph.D. scholars to participate in conferences and workshops at both national and international levels. This support enables Basabi and her peers to connect with leading researchers in their respective fields.

Currently engaged in post-doctoral research at the University of Montana, Basabi's doctoral experience has equipped her to explore new projects and deepen her understanding of Evolutionary Biology. With a passion for both research and teaching, she aspires to pursue a career in academia. 51��� extends heartfelt congratulations to Basabi Bagchi and wishes her continued success as she embarks on this exciting new chapter.

Written by Kangna Verma (Intern, Academic Communications, RDO) and edited by Yukti Arora (Senior Manager, Academic Communications, RDO)

51���

Cellular Chronicles: Unravelling the role of Mitochondria in Ageing and Related Diseases

Akshara Kulkarni�� is from the ASP batch of 2024 pursuing research under the supervision of Prof. Kasturi Mitra at the Department of Biology. Mitochondria, known as cellular powerhouses, also influence various cellular processes, such as cell division, cell death, calcium and redox signalling. Senescence, where cells permanently stop dividing, contributes to ageing and age-related diseases. Malfunctioning mitochondria are a key factor in this. Exploring the role mitochondria could play in senescence, then, becomes an important question to further the understanding of age-related diseases, their mechanism and potential treatments.

Mitochondria form a dynamic network within cells, continually undergoing fission (fragmentation) and fusion (joining) events that affect their structural configuration (shape). Maintaining a nuanced balance between these processes is crucial for a cell's optimal functioning.�� Quantitative methods are necessary to grasp any nuanced cellular property. Prof. Mitra’s research group, having developed quantitative single-cell level analyses of mitochondrial structure-function (MitoSinCe²), is now extending this approach to investigate this relationship at the level of single mitochondria (MitoSiM²). An exploration at this level is expected to uncover the heterogeneity that mitochondria display even within a single cell, further refining the understanding of the nuanced links between mitochondria and various cellular processes.

The primary objective of Akshara’s project is to gain quantitative insights into how mitochondrial structure influences the establishment of the senescent cell fate (when cells permanently cease further division). This will be achieved through the use of the MitoSiM² approach, which involves monitoring single mitochondria.

In this research project, Akshara aims to first develop a quality control pipeline for MitoSiM² images to yield most accurate results, and then apply the method to study the role of mitochondria in senescence. The lab has defined a pipeline for MitoSiM² on live-cell images; she aims to similarly validate the approach for fixed-cell images so that she can link mitochondrial structure to levels of various protein expressions in cells. Using high-resolution fluorescence microscopy techniques, Akshara plans to measure structural details of mitochondrial networking properties with senescent markers and other relavent proteins in senescent cells. In her experiments, senescence will be induced using strong oxidising agents in human keratinocytes (skin cells).

Additionally, Akshara aims to analyse the data generated from experiments performed. Quality-approved images will be analysed using the MitoSiM² approach. This will help studying; senescence in a quantitative manner. The group expects to address questions such as whether mitochondria in senescent cells tend to be longer or shorter, more connected, or less, and how a particular structural configuration affects the senescent properties of the cell.

Disease characterisation at the cellular level is the first step towards advancing care and treatment. Consequently, long term research goals involving the refinement of the understanding of cellular workings could pave the way for treatment innovations. By using a quantitative approach, Akshara and the larger research team, aim to explore the factors that drive senescence, thereby deepening the understanding of the specific role mitochondria may play in aging and diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer, where there are high numbers of senescent cells.

Prof. Mitra expects this work to contribute to the larger field of mitochondrial biology by quantitatively illustrating the specific configuration of mitochondria that enable a certain cellular state, like they have already demonstrated for a mitochondria-primed stem cell state. Therefore, this line of work is expected to have significant impact in studying the nuanced role of mitochondria in healthy as well as various diseased states.����

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Edited by Dr Yukti Arora

51���

From Molecules to Medicine: Sourav Chatterjee’s Odyssey in Chemistry and Beyond

Embarking on a professional journey after completing a master's in chemistry is a pivotal moment, and Sourav Chatterjee, Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry at 51���, shares his captivating story with us. The absence of guidance on career planning led him to start his career at pharmaceutical research companies, where the need for a clear path became evident. Despite the initial ambiguity, a pivotal moment of advice sparked the decision to pursue a Ph.D., setting the stage for a career driven by a passion for understanding natural phenomena.

Choosing chemistry as a career was inevitable for Sourav. With a natural inclination towards mathematics and a deep interest in understanding the intricacies of substances, the journey into the structural architecture of materials began. Chemistry at the university level proved to be even more fascinating for Sourav, offering a broad palette for specialisation after the first degree.

Sourav’s primary research focus during his Ph.D. stint was around developing new reaction methodologies, designing optically pure catalysts and ligands, and the use of sustainable enzymes to investigate stereoselective reaction outcomes. Stereoselective reactions are like guiding puzzle pieces to fit in a preferred way. In chemistry, it means a reaction prefers producing a specific arrangement of atoms in a molecule. It's like aiming for a particular handshake while overcoming other possibilities.

The diverse postdoctoral experience at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, India, followed by a stint at The Scripps Research Institute, Florida, USA, and lastly at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA, laid the foundation for a multidisciplinary exploration of complex research problems. Bridging the realms of chemistry and biology demanded a skill set in both fields and through the three aforementioned postdoctoral stints, he acquired the expertise and confidence to leverage his training in chemistry to unravel mechanistic aspects of various biological phenomena. It demanded a strong desire to learn and a hopeful mindset that helped Sourav overcome these disciplinary hurdles. The field of chemical biology hinges on two key players: biological macromolecules (DNA, RNA, proteins) and small molecules (e.g. exogens, such as nutrients, drugs, etc.). A good chemical biologist essentially needs to use these two categories of molecules to solve complex biological problems. 

Highlighting the importance of interdisciplinary research, Sourav emphasises its role in fostering creative understanding, improving problem-solving strategies, and broadening horizons. The collaborative nature of interdisciplinary research not only enhances research outcomes but also opens doors to explore diverse subject areas.

At 51���, his research group focuses on using chemistry tools to understand and modulate proteins' function in disease models, particularly exploring protein post-translational modifications and their impact on diseases like cancer, obesity, and neurodegeneration.

In discussing the impact of his research, Sourav envisions practical applications in drug discovery. The translational aspect of his work holds the potential to contribute significantly to healthcare, creating opportunities for industry-academia collaboration. Identifying new drug targets, molecules, and biomarkers can usher in a new era of scientific and medical advancements.

With a keen eye on the future, Sourav outlines the challenges in his research area. Despite the significant advancements in the field of protein research and drug development, scientific research in this field faces several challenges. Considering the diverse and dynamic nature of protein modifications, understanding the intricate network of these modifications sometimes becomes challenging. The existing tools to monitor protein modification sometimes lack high sensitivity or specificity. Developing accurate predictive models that help study the interaction of proteins with molecules (these can be drug molecules) is not always straightforward. Enhancing the selectivity of the target site to reduce possible side effects is often found challenging. It is essential to consider that not all proteins are promising therapeutic targets. Simultaneously, many therapeutically relevant protein targets lack well-defined binding pockets or have complex structures, posing challenges for traditional small molecule drug design.

Addressing these challenges requires a multidisciplinary approach involving advanced computational methods, structural biology techniques, high-throughput screening, and innovative drug design and synthesis strategies. At Ashoka, there is a scope for interdisciplinary collaboration, where researchers from various disciplines frequently collaborate. 

Getting support from the university is crucial when starting a career in scientific research, as it comes with uncertainties and challenges.  Additional support from the University makes it easier to overcome these challenges, particularly in setting up a research lab, which involves significant costs such as buying essential equipment, developing basic infrastructure, and budgeting for materials. Financial help from the university can cover these initial setup costs.

51���, in particular, provides essential support to facilitate the establishment of a research lab. The budding centralised instrumentation facility at Ashoka is especially beneficial for new PIs that can offer access to advanced equipment that might be too expensive for individual labs to purchase. Looking for new funding opportunities is essential, especially at the beginning of your career. Ashoka helps to explore these opportunities. They provide resources and support for researchers to apply for extramural grants. 

In conclusion, Sourav’s journey, spanning from chemistry to chemical biology, is a testament to the power of passion, perseverance, and the pursuit of knowledge. His impactful research will not only contribute to the scientific community but also hold promise for transformative applications in healthcare and beyond.

(Interview conducted by Dr Yukti Arora, Senior Manager, Academic Communications, Research and Development Office, 51���)

51���

Addressing the challenge of antimicrobial resistance using innovative data approaches ��

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a complex and interdisciplinary public health challenge at a global level. Seven lakh people lose their lives every year to the disease that is caused by antibiotic-resistant pathogens. This number is projected to increase up to one crore by 2050 if we do not intervene. Over the past few years, numerous international organisations and national governments have launched initiatives to tackle the challenge of AMR. We now have identified many important factors that play a role in the AMR crisis. For instance, the increased use of antibiotics in humans, animals and agriculture increases the evolution of drug resistance. Similarly, reduced usage of prophylactic measures, such as vaccines, results in the increased usage of antibiotics and in turn increases AMR. 

Widespread surveillance is essential across healthcare centres, agricultural sectors, animal farms, and wastewater for effectively combating AMR. However, AMR surveillance and studies traditionally focus on specific drug-bug combinations, like carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae. 

Carbapenems serve as the last-resort antibiotics, reserved for treating infections that do not respond to more commonly used antibiotics. Klebsiella pneumoniae, a bacteria resistant to most known antibiotics, has become a significant concern for healthcare workers. This resistance poses a heightened threat to patients with advanced age, compromised immune systems, or prolonged hospitalisation, making them particularly susceptible to such infections.

While wastewater and environmental surveillance aims to detect Klebsiella and genes conferring carbapenem resistance, it is crucial to note that genes for resistance to one antibiotic often coexist with those for resistance to others. This complex relationship is also mirrored in their resistance profiles, where resistance to multiple antibiotics is commonly observed together. 

To address these complexities, Dr Shraddha Karve and Dr Rintu Kutum, Faculty Fellows at the Trivedi School of Biosciences and the Department of Computer Sciences, respectively, proposed a novel analysis approach using Klebsiella as a proof of concept. They looked at the resistance profile of Klebsiella for a set of common antibiotics across publicly available global surveillance data and grouped all the possible resistance profiles as a 'subtype' from the data.

A resistance profile is a summary that shows how a microorganism, such as a bacterium, responds to different antibiotics. It indicates which antibiotics are effective in treating the microorganism and which ones it has developed resistance to. This information is essential for guiding healthcare decisions, helping to choose the most effective treatments and understanding patterns of antibiotic resistance in populations.

The researchers then looked at the predominant subtypes across different geographical regions and time (monthly). They further checked how different climatic variables, such as precipitation and temperature, correlate with the abundance of individual subtypes.

As a result of this comprehensive study done by Ashoka faculty fellows, it is shown that only a couple of subtypes dominate the landscape. Two subtypes, one that is sensitive to all the antibiotics and the other that is resistant to all antibiotics are predominant. Intermediate subtypes that are sensitive to a few antibiotics and resistant to others are not that common. This result reflects that resistance to different antibiotics goes hand in hand. Genes that make the bacteria resistant are also likely to be linked very tightly.  

These results call for a holistic approach to studying AMR beyond a single drug-bug combination. It underlines the need to take into consideration the entire resistance profile of a bug for effective surveillance, diagnosis, and treatment. 

This idea was proposed as a part of the ’. The team, comprising four members from Ashoka—Dr Shraddha Karve, Dr Rintu Kutum, Vasundhara Karthikeyan and Ragul N (ASP’23, CS), alongside a collaborator Dr Debojit Kumar Sarma, Scientist-C, from ICMR-National Institute of Research in Environmental Health, secured the prestigious innovation award for their groundbreaking idea.

Approach: To accomplish this goal a custom-made computational workflow (please see the page for details) was used. Briefly, those five antibiotics were shortlisted that were available in public datasets^# and are used to treat Klebsiella infections. The researchers then generated all the possible ‘subtypes’ i.e. a combined resistance profile, in the dataset. For example, the Klebsiella isolate that is resistant to all five antibiotics will be under the subtype RRRRR (where ‘R’ stands for ‘resistant’) and the Klebsiella isolate that is sensitive to the first antibiotic but resistant to the rest will be under the subtype SRRRR (where ‘S’ stands for sensitive). Over ten thousand isolates of Klebsiella that belonged to ~30 different subtype categories, were analysed.��

(Edited by Dr Yukti Arora)

51���

Chemical Insights Unleashed: Mastering Analytical Techniques for Real-World Impact

Guuleed Cali (ASP 23), undertook a comprehensive research initiative under the expert guidance of Prof. Munmun Ghosh and Prof. Deepak Asthana at the Department of Chemistry. The focal point of this research was the exploration of both fundamental principles and practical applications associated with a myriad of analytical methods. These methods included X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GCMS), infrared spectroscopy (IR), and ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis).

The journey embarked with an insightful examination of the electromagnetic spectrum, shedding light on its significance in the realm of analytical methods. Subsequently, the study delved into meticulous explanations of the principles underpinning each technique, elucidating their unique capabilities in detecting and analysing chemical substances. Through the detailed analysis of experimental data, the research significantly contributed to an enhanced comprehension of these analytical approaches and their adeptness in discerning chemical substances, even within intricate mixtures.

The project served as a crucible for fostering essential research skills, honing critical thinking prowess, and nurturing problem-solving abilities. This experiential learning was manifested through the application of these advanced techniques in real-world scenarios, thereby recognizing their substantial contributions to fields such as pharmaceuticals and materials science. The endeavour not only widened Guuleed’s intellectual horizons but also added valuable insights to the collective knowledge pool of the scientific community.

Furthermore, the research underscored the pivotal role of analytical methods in the detection and characterization of chemical components within complex mixtures. The implications of such precision extended to crucial domains like forensic science and environmental monitoring, where the accurate identification of chemical substances holds paramount importance.

In conclusion, Guuleed Cali’s project has multifaceted contributions, spanning from a nuanced understanding of analytical techniques to practical applications in real-world scenarios, rendering it an invaluable asset in advancing the frontiers of scientific knowledge.

Edited by Dr Yukti Arora

51���

Sikh Memorials for 1984

Public history is a well-established discipline globally. However, there is relatively little scholarship in this field in India and South Asia (critical studies on museum and heritage politics, in particular). My research focuses on museums and memorials built by the Sikh community in India, and how Sikh heritage is produced and consumed in popular ways through visual culture, museums and heritage-related projects.

The Sikh case is particularly worthwhile for our attention: a large number of Sikh museums and memorials have been built in independent India. These monuments to Sikh history are commissioned both by religious groups (like the gurdwara committees) and by governments (especially in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi). The first of these was the Central Sikh Museum in the Golden Temple, Amritsar, built as early as 1958. The more recent and prominent ones include the Guru Tegh Bahadur Memorial (Singhu border, Delhi) and the Virasat e Khalsa (Khalsa Heritage Complex, Anandpur Sahib). The question of Sikh identity, the recognition of its history and the community’s place in the Indian nation-state have been key questions influencing Sikh politics in independent India.

And, these issues find expression in the popular culture, museums and memorials of the Sikhs. New projects commemorating Sikh history continue to be announced.

My article, , looks at two memorial projects which commemorate victims of the violent events of the year 1984. In June 1984, the Indian government ordered an army operation in the Golden Temple, Sikhism’s holiest shrine, which caused massive damage to the sacred complex and a large number of casualties. In a related series of events, November 1984 saw targeted killings of Sikhs in major cities of North India, including Delhi. The Sikh community remembers 1984 with great anger and a deep sense of hurt. It is only recently that the Sikhs have built memorials to remember these events. Gurdwara Yaadgaar Shaheedan (Gurdwara Martyrs’ Memorial) was built in the Golden Temple complex, Amritsar, Punjab in 2013, and the Wall of Truth: Sikh Genocide Memorial was inaugurated in Gurdwara Rakabganj, New Delhi in 2017. While both memorials commemorate related events and are built by the same group of people, they differ completely in the choice of nomenclature, design and even the justification given for their creation. One is in the form of a Sikh shrine, justified exclusively in religious terms, and the other draws upon global templates for the memorialisation of atrocities. This paper discusses the differences between these memorials and their relevance in the memorial politics of contemporary India.

Reference Article:

Kanika Singh (31 Oct 2023): “It is a Gurdwara, Not a Memorial.”: The Politics and Aesthetics of Sikh Memorials for 1984, South Asian Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/02666030.2023.2270839

51���

A Unique Epoch in Hyderabad’s Urban Evolution

Aman Krishna is from the ASP batch of 2024 pursuing research under the supervision of Prof. Gaurav Garg. His thesis investigates the pivotal period in Hyderabad's urban development triggered by the calamitous flood of 1908, leading to the establishment of the City Improvement Board (CIB) in 1912. Tasked with the reconstruction of the city, the CIB embarked on a mission involving public buildings, parks, slum clearance, and various city improvement initiatives.

Aman’s research encompasses understanding how the Nizam of Hyderabad strategically utilised the aftermath of the 1908 flood to build a legacy of monumental structures symbolising the city's progress. Additionally, it aims to analyse the distinctive operations of the CIB within a princely state, drawing comparisons with other boards in colonial cities, including Secunderabad. The study also explores the evolving architectural styles and shifting focus of the CIB's buildings, with a particular focus on the contributions of architect Vincent Esch.

To conduct this research, primary sources from the Telangana State Archives and the National Archives (New Delhi)  have been extensively used, including the Annual Records of the City Improvement Board and other reports. Secondary sources include a range of works such as books, articles, etc., on other improvement boards in the subcontinent, Indo-Saracenic architecture, and relevant studies on Hyderabad and Esch.

The anticipated findings of Aman’s research will cover the evolution of the urban development of Hyderabad by focussing on the role of monumental architecture as the face of development of the city. The study aims to explore how Esch’s Osmanian style evolved to become a more general Indo-Saracenic identity under the CIB’s own architects. This exploration is contextualised against the backdrop of Indo-Saracenic architecture, Esch's legacy, and the general urban development of subcontinental cities.

The study's significance lies in uncovering Hyderabad's journey through monumental architecture, providing a nuanced perspective on urban development and architectural history. By using a unique architectural style as a lens, Aman’s thesis contributes to the understanding of urban evolution and architectural trends. The comparative analysis of a princely state's influence on urban development offers distinctive insights applicable to contemporary urban planning.

In essence, the thesis offers a comprehensive exploration of Hyderabad's urban development through the lens of architecture, shedding light on influential factors and key personalities that shaped the city's narrative.

Edited by Dr Yukti Arora and Sanyukta Singh

51���

Exploring the Intersection between Computer Science and Social Development

During his time as an undergraduate Computer Science major at 51���, Soham De (ASP23) has collaborated with almost a dozen researchers from around the world to work on ‘Information and Communication Technologies for Development’ (ICT4D). Primarily, his focus has been on understanding how propaganda and misinformation spreads on Twitter. Soham and the larger research team has published multiple papers analysing the subtle aspects of how politicians use Twitter, their interactions with defence personnel, how journalists create and spread information, and the penetration and reception of fact-checking environments on the platform.

Over the last year, Soham has observed that online Twitter communities, such as those formed after Sushant Singh Rajput's death, structurally resemble conventional cults. Such communities have a "leadership" group that generates opinions, a group of "preachers" who spread these opinions, and a dedicated "defence" cohort to counter ideological rivals. Soham and the larger research team have also identified an amalgamation of two conditions—a fragmented audience of fact-checkers and a low overlap in the stories covered by these fact-checkers—which they believe explains, in part, the ineffectiveness of misinformation curbing mechanisms. He has also been interested in the recent shift from using hashtags to using taglines, which was initiated as a means to "fly under the radar" of Twitter's automated account deletion algorithms.

Soham mentioned that, as a principle, he believes modern technologies such as Natural Language Processing, Neural Networks, etc., are important but on their own also incomplete while doing any serious work in the field of ICT4D. It is for this reason that Soham's research has utilized a careful blend of tools his Computer Science degree equipped him with and research methods often seen in sociology studies. The raw data scraped from Twitter is indeed filtered and treated by deep learning models, but the team also manually combs through the filtered data for labelling and conducts interviews to contextualize the results.

In the near future, Soham hopes to expand the scope of his research to include the multifaceted aspects of online communities in the Global South. According to Soham, this is an incredibly interesting demographic from an ICT4D perspective because a large fraction of social media users within this demographic are also first-generation internet users. This scenario lends itself to an important and nuanced study of the bottom-up and top-down forces that shape our online political discourse and society at large. In the meanwhile, researchers like Soham would continue to tap into the potential of information technologies and contribute to driving the engines of development.

51���

Catalysing Sustainability: Magnetic Iron Carbide in Transforming CO₂ to Value-Added Products

Over the last two and a half centuries, the Earth has witnessed a concerning surge in the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. A staggering increase of 143.5 parts per million (ppm) has been recorded, and what is even more alarming is that a significant portion of this rise—120 ppm, to be precise—has occurred in a mere forty-year span. This rapid escalation in CO₂ levels poses a formidable threat to our global environment, necessitating urgent attention and proactive measures.

The urgency of addressing this issue is underscored by its significant impact on our planet. The rising levels of CO₂ are a key driver of climate change, contributing to global warming and its associated consequences, such as more frequent and severe weather events, rising sea levels, and disruptions to ecosystems. In response to this looming crisis, the international community has come together under the umbrella of the Paris Climate Agreement, a landmark accord that outlines ambitious targets to mitigate climate change.

The Paris Climate Agreement aims to limit the global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with efforts directed towards achieving a more stringent 1.5-degree Celsius target. Additionally, the agreement envisions a world that is carbon-neutral by 2050—a vision that requires a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO₂. While these goals are commendable and imperative for the survival of our planet, the path to achieving them is riddled with challenges.

A major hurdle in realising the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement is the undeniable fact that essential human activities, particularly industrial processes, are significant contributors to CO₂ emissions. These emissions result from the combustion of fossil fuels, industrial processes, and deforestation, among other human-induced activities. Tackling climate change, therefore, demands not only a reduction in these emissions but also innovative and sustainable solutions that allow for the continuation of essential industrial processes.

One such solution gaining attention is the onsite capture and conversion of CO₂ into value-added products. This approach presents a unique opportunity to mitigate the environmental impact of CO₂ emissions without compromising the ongoing industrial activities that fuel our economies. The use of catalysts in this process has shown promise, with heterogeneous catalysts, in particular, demonstrating commercial potential in various industrial applications.

This , led by Vidya D. Avasare, Professor of Chemistry at 51���, brings the focus to iron carbide (Fe₂C). This catalyst is chosen for its distinctive qualities: sustainability, air stability, high magnetism, and cost-effectiveness. These attributes make iron carbide a compelling candidate for the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide—an essential step in converting CO₂ into valuable products.

Researchers thoroughly examine the catalytic performance of iron carbide using the Density Functional Theory (DFT) method. This theoretical approach allows for a deep dive into the molecular-level interactions and reactions that take place during the hydrogenation of CO₂. The results of these theoretical calculations paint a promising picture. Iron carbide emerges as an excellent catalyst, showcasing remarkable efficiency in converting CO₂ into C1 products, including formic acid (HCOOH), formaldehyde (HCHO), methanol (CH₃OH), and methane (CH₄).

The significance of these C1 products extends beyond their role as by-products. Methanol and formic acid, in particular, emerge as promising materials for hydrogen storage in fuel cell applications. This opens up new avenues for the utilisation of the products generated through the hydrogenation of CO₂, contributing to advancements in sustainable energy storage technologies.

Expanding the scope of their investigation, the researchers explore the catalytic capabilities of Fe₂C in C—C cross-coupling reactions. These reactions involve the combination of formaldehyde with various alcohols, such as methanol, ethanol, and propanol, leading to the formation of ethanol, propanol, and butanol, respectively. This diversification of product outcomes showcases the versatility of Fe₂C as a catalyst, with the potential to yield a range of valuable chemical compounds.

A notable finding in the study is the ease with which Fe₂C (Iron Carbide, Catalyst) facilitates the dehydration reaction on its surface, transforming ethanol into ethylene. This opens up possibilities for synthesising higher derivatives of alkane, alkene, and alcohols from carbon dioxide. The ability to produce ethylene is particularly noteworthy, considering its significance in various industrial processes.

The broader implications of these findings are profound. The products obtained through the catalytic hydrogenation of carbon dioxide—methane, methanol, ethanol, propanol, butanol, and ethylene—hold significant applications across diverse industries. From pharmaceuticals to chemicals, polymers to textiles, and transportation, the potential impact on various sectors is substantial. That aligns with the overarching goal of creating a circular carbon economy—a system where carbon is continuously recycled, minimising waste and environmental impact.

In conclusion, the study on the catalytic performance of Fe₂C in the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide represents a pivotal contribution to the ongoing efforts to address climate change. The findings not only highlight the potential of Fe₂C as a catalyst but also shed light on the broader applications of the products generated through this process. The synthesis of valuable chemicals from CO₂, coupled with the diverse industrial applications of these products, positions catalytic hydrogenation as a promising avenue in the quest for a sustainable and circular carbon economy. As we navigate the complexities of climate change, innovative solutions like these offer hope for a future where environmental sustainability and industrial progress can coexist harmoniously.

(Edited by Dr Yukti Arora)

Reference Article:

, ACS Appl. Energy Mater. 2023, 6, 21, 10748–10760

Authors: Madhu Samolia and Vidya Avasare

51���

Exploring the Intersection of Science and History: In Conversation with Projit B. Mukharji

Could you provide some insights into your professional journey and shed light on what ignited your interest in the histories of science and medicine in modern South Asia?

While in school, I developed a fondness for both science and history. However, upon entering college in 1996, I discovered a lack of viable options for combining these interests. Moreover, science and history seemed, in a way, diametrically opposed. Science appeared to be a static entity; once discovered, final and impervious to historical influence. So the history of science, if ever mentioned, became a list of names and dates of discoveries—useful only for quizzes and little else.

What intrigued me, however, was precisely the historicality of scientific knowledge. Why were certain discoveries only made at certain times and at certain places? Why did a truth once considered absolute become obsolete with a subsequent revelation? On a broader scale, I questioned how society, culture, and politics shape scientific knowledge.

What sparked your interest in becoming a researcher, and how did you decide to specialise in History?

My journey into research was sparked by the scholarly legacy of my grandparents who held university degrees and valued intellectual pursuits. Their influence, coupled with the guidance of charismatic teachers like Prof. Gautam Bhadra, Prof. Majid Hayat Siddiqi and Prof. David Arnold, shaped my path. My maternal grandfather’s maxim, “Swadeshe pujyate raja; vidhwan sarvata pujyate” underscored the universal honour accorded to scholars.

Initially drawn to Philosophy to blend my interests in science and society, I found its extreme abstraction unsatisfying. A pivotal moment came when a friend recommended Michael Foucault’s work, leading me to history—a discipline offering concrete exploration of questions about knowledge, scientific conclusions, and social contexts.

Could you kindly recount any captivating anecdotes from your experience, whether they be eye-openers, challenges, or interesting insights?

Well, here is an eye-opener: I was interested in how British imperialism might have shaped the great scientific achievements of the 19^th CE. For this, I thought I would look at Charles Darwin’s papers. I was surprised to find that his ideas about the role of “sexual selection” in evolution had been deeply shaped by his associations with British India. Though he had never come to India, his ideas were deeply moulded by reports of bird-fighting in India. He received these reports first through his own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin’s acquaintance with Persian poetry, second, by his own fascination with Lord Byron’s poetic romances set in the Orient and, finally, by actual reports sent to him by friends stationed in India narrating how elite Indians like Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh patronised bird-fights as entertainment. Everyone who reads Darwin attends to his arguments and conclusions, but looking closely at his evidence and his interpretation and asking how he arrived at them, revealed to me the extent to which the British Raj and one specific cultural feature of it, vis. bird-fighting had shaped one of the intellectual giants of modern science.

Could you elaborate on your current research area and discuss the importance you place on conducting interdisciplinary research in your work?

I am currently engaged in two research areas. The first explores how human genetics is reshaping our understanding of human diversity, particularly in the reimagining of social differences as biological distinctions. This work culminated in a finished monograph titled Brown Skins, White Coats: Race Science in India, 1920-66 (University of Chicago Press, 2023). 

The second project, for which I was recently awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, delves into a forgotten 1950s and 60s initiative to scientifically explore claims of reincarnation. This endeavour, conducted at Indian universities with international collaborations, especially with the Soviet Union, aimed to radically redefine the concept of “science” for a newly independent India.

While my initial interest in the history of science stemmed from curiosity, what has sustained my commitment is the belief that the influence of science in modern societies is too vast to be confined to scientists alone. The recent pandemic highlighted how scientific matters quickly transcend into realms of politics, economics, culture, religion, and justice. While scientists excel in developing vaccines, decisions on vaccine production, public persuasion, and the delicate balance between religious rituals and contagion risk require a blend of scientific and societal expertise. This, I believe, goes beyond mere interdisciplinarity; I see it as transdisciplinary work. The term “interdisciplinarity” often becomes a hasty amalgamation of ideas, neglecting fundamental methodological differences. True interdisciplinary collaboration takes time to develop. Transdisciplinarity, in my perspective, acknowledges and respects the unique methods and standards of each discipline, recognising that sometimes these methods may not align seamlessly. In essence, my work is transdisciplinary, navigating the intricacies of diverse disciplines rather than hastily combining them.

Could you elaborate on the impact or importance of your research?

Reiterating, I believe that science rightfully holds a privileged role in modern societies. But since both contemporary science and contemporary societies are complex, multifaceted entities, we need to develop specialised expertise in studying their interactions. In this context, history provides a range of insights not only about how science shapes society but also how specific societies shape distinct forms of science–either enabling or impeding particular discoveries and insights. This is what I hope my work does–emphasising the significance of unravelling the interplay between science and society.

How do you view the impact of academia in moulding the narrative surrounding science and medicine?

The History of Science and the related field of Science Technology Studies can play a multifaceted role in shaping the discourse around science and medicine. First, it can help us craft better science policies to foster innovation and scientific breakthroughs. Second, it can make science itself less technocratic and more democratic and responsive to social needs. Third, it can illuminate more effective and equitable ways of applying science to social needs. Since charity begins at home, most immediately, I believe that at a liberal arts university like Ashoka, it can be the bridge that connects the sciences and the humanities, helping us transcend the so-called ‘two cultures problem’ that divides academia.

How do you perceive the current challenges and opportunities in the field of the history of science in South Asia?

I believe that many individuals in South Asia still hold an asocial and ahistorical conception of science, viewing it simply as the pursuit of truth with everything else categorised as false. The nuanced relationship between society and science often goes unrecognised. Additionally, there is a prevailing perception that the humanities contribute little directly to scientific endeavours. Discussions of interdisciplinarity typically emphasise a one-way street where science enriches the humanities, rarely the reverse. The early tracking system in our schools that forces people to choose between “science”, “humanities”, “commerce” etc. also aggravates this situation. The primary challenge lies in convincing people that science is far more than a binary of true and false; it is intricately shaped in myriad ways by the society in which it is born and applied.

How will Ashoka support you in your professional journey, and finally, could you share your vision and plans for the department's future?

After nearly twenty years abroad, I returned to India. As a tenured full professor at one of the top Ivy League universities, many would argue I was in an ideal position in my career, perhaps even in a culmination of it. However, for me, the decision to return to India was fueled by a desire to contribute to building the field here. While there have been one or two historians of science in India in the past, the discipline as a whole has never truly taken off. I believe this is partly due to the absence of a liberal arts model that facilitates the fruitful integration of humanities and sciences. In this regard, Ashoka stands in an ideal position to bring about this much-needed transformation.

I am currently in the History department, which is already recognised as one of the foremost departments in the country. However, my vision extends beyond national boundaries—I aspire to elevate our department to global prominence. To achieve this, I believe we must break away from the traditional framework that has defined History departments in India. To be truly global, we cannot solely focus on Indian history. In top-tier foreign universities like Cambridge or Harvard, History departments encompass specialists covering diverse parts of the world. We should adopt a similar approach. Just as American departments teach Indian or African history, we should offer courses on American or British history to contribute to the rich global tapestry of historical knowledge.

In the long run, I would love to see more opportunities for pursuing the History of Science at Ashoka. In the US and Europe, the History of Science is a distinct department with its own professional association, independent of general History departments. Starting next year, I will be the co-editor of the main professional journal for this association, and its office will be based in Ashoka. This positions Ashoka to become a hub for exploring ways to provide greater exposure to the discipline for our students.

(Interview conducted by Dr Yukti Arora, Senior Manager, Academic Communications, Research and Development Office, 51���)

51���

Do women prefer female police officers?

In their recent exploring attitudes towards law enforcement, Sharon Barnhardt, Director of Research at the Centre for Social and Behavioural Change at 51���, and Nirvikar Jassal, Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science, bring a nuanced perspective by examining the often-overlooked influence of gender. This topic is critical for two reasons. First, from a public policy perspective, the existence of women-only police stations and women’s help desks in police stations could discourage victims from reporting crimes if women and their families do not want their complaints to be assigned to female officers. 

Second, from a career perspective, female officers are routinely assigned to ‘women's cases’, which are among the most challenging to clear. For example, rape and dowry harassment often happen behind closed doors, making the gathering of witness testimony or forensic evidence nearly impossible. 

Their analysis of a nationally representative survey conducted by CSDS-Common Cause revealed that a majority of Indians believe women lack the ‘physical force or forceful behaviour’ required for police work. The question arises: Is this perception due to their gender or because female officers are typically assigned different cases—those that many citizens prefer to see handled with physical force? To address this, Prof. Barnhardt and her team designed an experiment to unravel how citizens perceive female and male police officers handling the same case. Their research sheds light on the intricate relationships among gender, violent crime, and public trust in law enforcement.

NDTV affiliates helped in creating video bulletins, wherein a news anchor from a fictional channel called ‘KDTV’ reported on crimes. Some of these crimes were related to violence against women (VAW includes rape and dowry harassment), while others were generic violent crimes such as murder and kidnapping.

Within the context of these news bulletins, the variation was introduced in the officer in charge of the ongoing investigation, alternating between Shri Kumar and Shrimati Kumar. The challenge lay in making the officer's gender salient without introducing other potential differences between Shri and Shrimati Kumar. A makeup artist and theatre troupe helped the team overcome this hurdle. Photos of a single actor donning the uniforms of a policeman and a policewoman were taken. These images were featured in the news bulletin while the journalist narrated the details of the case and investigation.

All respondents were presented with precisely one news bulletin, wherein the news story randomly incorporated variations in crime type and officer gender. Subsequently, the researchers gauged how respondents evaluated officer performance. Consistent with previous research, inquiries were posed regarding trust, efficacy, and procedural fairness, which were amalgamated into a unified 'legitimacy' index.

The results indicate that, overall,  both female and male respondents do not exhibit a preference for policewomen over policemen. However, the nature of the crime under consideration influenced the officer's legitimacy in an unexpected direction. Police legitimacy is higher when a male officer investigates VAW. Policewomen are perceived as less effective and less trustworthy in VAW cases, and this effect is more pronounced among female respondents. Interestingly, female officers garner greater legitimacy in regular crimes, as male respondents believe they will be more fair in such cases compared to male officers. While the differences are small, they are statistically significant.

To be clear, these findings do uncover discrimination against the female officer in the videos. She is taking precisely the same actions as her male counterpart in exactly the same VAW case, yet respondents rate her performance less favourably. The source of this discrimination may stem from citizens' expectations that, to be ‘considered effective’, police should employ physical force in VAW cases, and the female officer is found wanting.

These nuanced findings underscore the need for tailored approaches in law enforcement strategies, recognising the importance of police legitimacy in any democratic society. Additionally, there is a need for female victims to feel comfortable approaching the police and professional considerations for women who work as police officers should be taken into account. 

Careful research has already demonstrated the benefits of help desks for women (Sukthankar et al., 2022), but women-only police stations can backfire and reduce reporting (Jassal, 2020). Crimes against women are generally under-reported; many women never make it to a police station. The research highlights a surprising possibility: for a woman who has suffered a violent act, the anticipation of meeting a female officer may act as a barrier to stepping forward because she believes the officer assigned to her case will be less effective than others around.

Reconsidering assumptions about what women want from the police and examining case assignments can enhance citizens' perceptions of police legitimacy. Some states have used quotas to get more women into the forces, but how would they compete and get promoted if they are over-assigned hard-to-clear VAW cases? Police leadership can leverage administrative data to investigate whether gender-based case assignments hinder women’s equal opportunities for performance and advancement within the police force.

(Written by Dr Sharon Barnhardt, Director - Research, Centre for Social and Behaviour Change
Edited by Dr Yukti Arora, Senior Manager, Academic Communications, Research and Development Office)

References articles:

• Jassal, Nirvikar, and Sharon Barnhardt. "Do women prefer in-group police officers? Survey and experimental evidence from India." Comparative Political Studies (2023): 00104140231194070.
• Jassal, Nirvikar. "Gender, law enforcement, and access to justice: Evidence from all-women police stations in India." American Political Science Review 114, no. 4 (2020): 1035-1054.
• Sukhtankar, Sandip, Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner, and Akshay Mangla. "Policing in patriarchy: An experimental evaluation of reforms to improve police responsiveness to women in India." Science 377, no. 6602 (2022): 191-198.

51���

When and why did sleep evolve?

Sleep is familiar to all of us, as a state we enter into and exit from daily with seemingly boring regularity. Yet, despite its familiarity, many aspects of sleep remain mysterious. 

A recent in the Journal of Experimental Biology, authored by Krishna Melnattur, Assistant Professor of Biology and Psychology at 51���, takes a comparative approach to the study of sleep. It examines sleep across various taxa to identify unifying themes. While our personal experience of sleep and dreams might lead us to think of sleep as being a particularly human experience, it might surprise many to learn that sleep is nearly universal among animals (Fig. 1). Sleep states have been defined in animals ranging from mammals to cnidarians, such as jellyfish and Hydra – creatures lacking proper brains. Crucially, sleep in these animals with small brains and nerve nets has much in common with our own. Prof. Melnattur’s group at 51��� employs the fly Drosophila to understand mechanisms of sleep control and function. Flies, like humans, sleep through the night. Caffeine keeps flies awake, while antihistamines make them drowsy. Fly sleep also seems to perform similar functions – sleep-depriving flies impaired learning and memory. Recent research suggests that Drosophila sleep might also have distinct stages,�� similar to humans, including a “REM-like” state where the brain activity resembles the awake state. Thus, the presence of multiple sleep stages might be an evolutionarily ancient phenomenon. Indeed, the article also highlights studies that describe multiple sleep stages in several invertebrate species, including the octopus and cuttlefish.

One interesting, albeit somewhat neglected, aspect of sleep highlighted in the article is the plasticity of sleep, meaning that it is modifiable. This plasticity of sleep is seen in response to ecological niches that species inhabit and the individual experiences of animals throughout their lifetimes. Some particularly striking examples of sleep plasticity are highlighted in Fig. 2. Ashoka researchers investigate this phenomenon in the lab by examining how different sleep modulatory inputs, such as social enrichment (housing animals in groups), immune challenge, starvation etc. are integrated into the fly brain.��

The article concludes with a discussion of the conservation of sleep function across taxa. In particular, the need for sleep to consolidate memories has been observed in animals ranging from mammals with billions of neurons to nematode worms with ~300 neurons. 

At Ashoka, Prof. Melnattur’s group, in collaboration with Prof. Debayan Gupta and the Mphasis Maker Space,�� is exploring the effect of sleep on spatial learning. They are jointly developing a spatial learning assay that trains flies to navigate to a ‘cool’ spot on a warm plate using distal visual cues as guidance. Using a similar assay, Dr. Melnattur had previously demonstrated that aged flies exhibited declines in spatial learning.�� Interestingly, these learning defects in aged flies could be reversed by enhancing the sleep of aged flies. These results are particularly exciting as they suggest that sleep can not only consolidate memory in a healthy brain but also restore functioning in an impaired brain. Sleep, therefore, holds the potential to function as a therapeutic agent.�� Prof. Melnattur’s research group is actively investigating the mechanisms by which sleep carries out this restorative function.

Reference Article: , Journal of Experimental Biology, July 2023 | Volume 226 | Issue 14

Authors:  Rhea Lakhiani, Sahana Shanavas, Krishna Melnattur

Rhea Lakhiani and Sahana Shanavas are the two former ASP students.

Edited by Dr Yukti Arora 

51���

Exploring Life’s Origins: A journey through interdisciplinarity

From my early school days, I had an insatiable curiosity for exploring new frontiers. Science projects were my playground, and I was eager to understand the underlying principles behind them. The complex yet well-coordinated biological systems fascinated me and I was always inclined towards learning the mechanistic aspects that underpinned their functioning.

My professional journey has been a thrilling adventure, filled with diverse scientific disciplines and fascinating experiences. It all began when I embarked on a research path that led me through the worlds of bioinformatics, biochemistry, organic chemistry, biophysics, and the intriguing realm of RNA enzymes (ribozymes). 

I completed my master’s thesis at IIT Bombay, in bioinformatics while simultaneously working on a biochemistry-related project as a VSRP student at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. This dual exposure set the stage for my academic pursuits. Subsequently, I ventured to Germany, where I had the privilege of working in an organic chemistry lab at Heidelberg University. 

My fascination with enzymes and their evolution guided my Ph.D. journey, which focused on RNA enzymes and in vitro evolution. During this time, I experienced my own ‘Eureka moment’ when I evolved a catalytic function from a pool of random RNA sequences. The Ph.D. period also introduced me to the captivating field of the Origins of Life. 

After completing my Ph.D., I embarked on a postdoctoral research adventure at ESPCI Paris, where I explored self-replicating RNA networks. This project involved cutting-edge techniques like droplet-based microfluidics and single-cell sequencing. What made this experience even more enriching was the fact that one of my mentors was a physicist, enabling me to approach biological research problems from a quantitative perspective and that made me feel at ease while working with theorists. 

Upon returning to India, I further extended my work on RNA networks at Simons Centre for the Study of Living Machines, National Centre for the Biological Sciences. The journey has been nothing short of eye-opening, continually pushing me to explore the edges of various scientific disciplines. 

My research at 51��� is focused on developing synthetic chemical systems with the ultimate goal of constructing “life-like” chemical entities. I am also deeply interested in unravelling the behaviour of functional RNAs in complex environments. We know that biological systems are incredibly complex and highly regulated. However, life on the early Earth likely started with interactions among simple abiotic chemicals. Despite knowing the basic ingredients, we are still missing the recipe. It requires integrating properties of self-replication, heredity, variation, and selection in a compartmentalised system (‘protocells’) which can undergo cycles of growth and division. To address the question of whether life can emerge from collections of interacting molecules forming self-sustaining networks, I'm using self-reproducing networks composed of RNA enzymes. To make the system evolvable, the notions of reproduction-coupled growth, variation, and selection will be introduced systematically.

Representative Image of Prof Sandeep Ameta's research

I believe that interdisciplinary research is the key to unlocking life’s mysteries and is essential to address questions related to the Origins of Life or the development of synthetic "life-like" systems. The problem of Origins has historically been approached from discipline-specific angles. However, in the last decade, we have witnessed researchers with diverse skill sets coming together to tackle these profound questions. Collaboration across disciplines is the only way to unlock these mysteries. This becomes even more important for the Indian context where only a handful of research groups are interested in solving the problem of Origins. One of my missions is also to gather like-minded individuals and foster a robust research ecosystem dedicated to addressing the mysteries of the Origins of Life from various angles.

My affiliation with 51��� has been instrumental in my professional journey. The institution’s openness to diverse research aspects makes it an ideal place for nurturing interdisciplinary research. The Trivedi School of Biosciences at 51��� boasts a diverse mix of researchers and experts, creating a vibrant and collaborative environment. Here, different disciplines seamlessly intertwine, providing the perfect atmosphere for addressing the research problems that intrigue me. Ashoka is rapidly evolving and equipped with cutting-edge tools necessary for our research. Most importantly, the people here are incredibly helpful and supportive, making it a place where innovative ideas and interdisciplinary exploration thrive.

(Interview conducted by Dr Yukti Arora)

51���

51��� signs MoU with University of Groningen to Strengthen Academic Ties

51��� and the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen their academic ties. Through this partnership, the universities seek to facilitate joint research activities. Additionally, they aim to enable the exchange of students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as researchers and faculty.

Furthermore, both institutions will actively engage in conferences, meetings, and other academic events to foster a vibrant intellectual environment for collaborative work. By promoting innovative collaborations, knowledge sharing, and the exchange of best practises, this partnership will generate substantial benefits for students, faculty and researchers at both the institutions.

The MoU lays the groundwork for a long-lasting partnership between these two institutions. Driven by a shared goal of advancing interdisciplinary research, promoting intellectual growth, and making a positive societal impact, this partnership exemplifies the universities’ unwavering commitment to fostering academic excellence and facilitating cross-cultural learning.

Reflecting on the significance of this collaboration, Somak Raychaudhury, Vice-Chancellor, 51���, stated, “We are delighted to announce our partnership with the esteemed University of Groningen, one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands, well-regarded for its longstanding tradition of academic excellence. This collaboration will bring together our efforts to establish an environment of innovative research and academic excellence, while promoting cultural understanding and global perspectives. This partnership aligns perfectly with Ashoka’s goals of stimulating international collaborations and fostering diversity within the realm of higher education.”

“The MoU with the University of Groningen is an important milestone for Ashoka, as we continue to push boundaries in terms of collaborations, especially for research and innovation. Our faculty members and students are actively engaged in a wide range of research projects, spanning fields such as condensed matter physics, epidemiology, machine learning, astronomy and astrophysics, big data methods, and other distinctive scientific fields. This partnership will further enlarge our envelope of opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations, through an open exchange of ideas, academic material, scholars and students”, said Professor Gautam Menon, Dean of Research, 51���. 

Professor Lorenzo Squintani, Scientific Director of the at the University of Groningen said, “The collaboration with 51��� is of strategic importance for our community members active in the fields of energy transition and climate change. I am certain that this MoU will foster exchanges and partnerships of mutual benefits for our universities.”

51���

Cultivating Connections: The Indian Plant Humanities Project

The Indian Plant Humanities project aims to create a living archive of writing and art on plant life, the first of its kind anywhere in the world. This project is led by Sumana Roy, Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing, with the support of the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability (3CS) at 51���. Professor Roy has recently been awarded the Omega Resilience Awards (ORA Fellowship) for her project titled: “Shaping the discipline of Plant Humanities in India to rekindle the relationships between communities and their botanical worlds”.

The Indian Plant Humanities project was started with the support of respected scholars in Plant Humanities from Harvard, Syracuse, The Linnean Society of London, the University of Sussex, and the Yale Center for British Art. The archive in the making will consist of works by writers, artists, philosophers, and scientists from the Indian sub-continent over the last two millennia and will also make them accessible by translating them into English.   

This project is important, as no such archive currently exists, and by creating it, we celebrate the richness, uniqueness, and diversity of thought and works in the Indian subcontinent, and by translating it to English, allow for it to be celebrated globally. It is also the first of its kind – one where a living archive, created by Indians belonging to various linguistic cultures, will help change the way we think about ‘climate change’. This archive will gather creative and critical thinking on the botanical from different genres of literature, including music and spiritual philosophy, to remind us of our ancestry in thought on what has come to be called the non-human, a nomenclature based on a distinction that would not have existed in pre-colonial societies such as ours. 

To make this historic task a reality, the project has brought onboard researchers from India, the UK, and the US to collect and curate a bibliography across languages and themes. Currently, these researchers are working on themes such as plant life in the Indian Himalayan region and Indian plantationocene (human-caused environmental change) and working on languages such as Odia, Bangla, Sanskrit, Hindi, Axomiya, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Konkani, Nepali, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Mizo, etc. These bibliographies and research, along with English translations, will be compiled into an anthology.  

Apart from creating an anthology, the archive will allow the Indian Plant Humanities project to develop a section on Indian plant life in the University library and share research findings through talks by writers and scholars in the field, among others. Most importantly, the discipline of Plant Humanities does not exist currently in India – there is no organised or institutionalised system of thought on plant life outside of botanical sciences. The archive and the anthology will allow 51��� to be the first university to offer study programmes and courses on the Indian Plant Humanities.     

A brief report about the Indian Plant Humanities symposium, held in February 2022, can be found .

Edited by Dr Yukti Arora and Sanchit Toor

51���

Breakthrough Research Grants

51��� is delighted to announce the launch of our first co-funded Breakthrough Research Grant with Gupta-Klinsky India Institute at John Hopkins (GKII). This funding opportunity supports pilot projects led by faculty members from 51���, and Johns Hopkins University that involve interdisciplinary collaborations. The current research grant is focused on health data research. Click Here to learn more.

Funding

The GKII-51��� Breakthrough Research Grant will support up to 2 proposals at $60,000 each. Funding will be provided for an 18-month project timeline with work commencing in October 2023 (inclusive of submission to IRB and related processes).

Key Dates

·    Application Due: 11:00 pm EDT, Wednesday, August 23, 2023

·    Award Announcement: September 2023

Questions?

Contact us at GKII-AUseedgrant@outlook.com. We are here to support you through the process and to connect you with JHU researchers with specific areas of expertise, as needed.

51���

Dalit Ecologies: Unveiling the Interplay between Caste, Environment, and Identity in India

In 1997, Gail Omvedt, a renowned sociologist and author of influential books on Dalit politics, anti-caste movements, and women's struggles, published an article Why Dalits Dislike Environmentalists. This article shed light on the disconnect between two powerful social movements in India: the anti-caste movement and the environmental movement. During the early 2000s, several Dalits and anti-caste intellectuals, such as Kancha Ilaiah, Gopal Guru, Chandrabhan Prasad, and Goldy George, raised questions about the ecological and political paths taken by environmentalism in India. They argued that the environmental movements showed little concern for the nationalist, casteist, hegemonic social, and natural structures that prevail in the country. These served as a foundation for Mukul Sharma, Professor, Environmental Studies, 51���, in developing a research interest in exploring the intricate interplay between Dalits, caste, and the environment, along with the concept of Dalit ecologies. He is also influenced by and draws upon rich academic and political work from other parts of the world that revolves around 'Black ecologies,' 'Racial ecologies,' and 'Feminist ecologies.' These works analyze the interrelation between race, gender, and environmentalism through an interdisciplinary lens of race and gender studies, as well as socio-political ecology.

Prof. Sharma’s research delves into the intricate and inseparable connection between caste and environment in India. It explores how Dalit experiences and narratives consistently highlight the everyday ecological challenges they face and how Dalits express their environmental experiences and aspirations. Prof. Sharma has found that nature, entwined with fear and violence, horror and hardship, bloodbath and war, makes the environmental experiences of Dalits distinctive and different. Images of the land evoke deep-seated caste anxieties related to labour, blood, and bondage. In arid regions, Dalits must often sacrifice their lives, to recharge ponds and water resources. From village to city, and temple to school, caste metaphors of pollution, impurity, and dirt permeate places and spaces, reinforcing the imaginary threats associated with the presence of Dalits.  

Prof. Sharma has extensively studied life narratives, stories and songs of agricultural and bonded labourers, as well as the writings of prominent Dalit ideologues, leaders and writers. Additionally, he has explored the myths, memories and metaphors of Dalits around nature along with their organisations and movements. Collectively, these sources shed light on Dalits’ attempts at defining themselves through heterogeneous means. For his forthcoming book Dalit Ecologies: Caste and Environment Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2024), he has conducted extensive fieldwork, interviews, and conversations in the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, and Punjab.

Prof. Sharma grapples with several research questions, such as how are caste hierarchies perpetuated through the exploitation of nature. What role do purity and pollution play in this context? What are the underlying principles that determine access and exclusion? Can we assign a caste to water? How do caste dynamics shape irrigation networks within villages? Furthermore, he explores why and how caste and its associated culture influence notions of pure and impure food, impacting our dietary choices and preferences. His group is also investigating how the use of animals is classified as either legitimate or illegitimate based on caste. Additionally, Prof. Sharma is also exploring how the physical and social environments, characterized by segregated areas known by different names like Chamar tola in the north, Cheri and Hulgeri in the south, and Wadas in the west of India, as well as the practice of untouchability (associated with pollution, filth, stigma, and isolation), serve as material contexts for the formation of Dalit environmental subjectivity.

By examining the dialectical relationship between caste, Dalits, and the environment, one can reassess the intersection of nature and caste as cultural carriers. Despite being an integral part of nature, humans have a significant impact on the environment.  In India, nature itself is influenced by caste, and caste has historically been ingrained in the natural order.

 Instead of disregarding caste, developing an awareness of its presence in nature can help establish a new political space for environmental struggles. By viewing Indian environmental politics through the perspectives and actions of Dalits and their diverse movements across the country, we can uncover a new ecological paradigm—an observable Dalit environmental public space—that often exists beyond the dominant discursive framework.

Dalit environmentalism is an ongoing and evolving endeavour. However, its lack of visibility can also be attributed to the dominance of upper-caste individuals who operate within the realm of secular modernity and citizenship. 

To bridge the understanding of caste, Dalits, and environmentalism, it is crucial to explore the varied ways in which individuals perceive and engage with the environment. By uncovering the hidden aspects of secular environmentalism and its implications, we can foster a deeper comprehension of the complexities surrounding caste, Dalits, and environmental activism. Over time and across different contexts, the exploration of connections between gender and the environment, race and the environment, ethnicity and culture, gender and caste, as well as class and power, has paved the way for new political opportunities. 

Through this research, Prof. Mukul Sharma aims to make a modest contribution to such ongoing efforts.

Edited by Dr Yukti Arora

Reference Articles:

, Environment and Society, 13(1), 78-97

, Economic and Political Weekly (Engage), Vol. 58, Issue 13, 1 April

Author: Mukul Sharma 

51���

Why Did the Emperor Become a Pilgrim?

In 1562, the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) travelled westward from Agra on a hunting expedition. He eventually landed up at the shrine of Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti (d. 1236) in Ajmer. Originally from Khurasan, Muinuddin was one of the earliest and most revered Sufi saints of South Asia. This would be the first of Akbar’s many pilgrimages to the shrine. In the 18 years between 1562 and 1579, he would visit Ajmer as many as 17 times. 

Akbar’s fascination with this shrine had as much to do with his engagements with religion as with political and strategic considerations for his empire. Let us consider the issue of religion first. The young emperor was keen to project himself as a pious king during the first half of his reign. The Chishtiyyas were a popular Sufi order in South Asia and Muinuddin’s dargah was a particularly venerated one. Associating himself with this shrine promised to lend Akbar political legitimacy. These factors must have helped him choose the Ajmer shrine as the site of his devotion and patronage.

To demonstrate his piety, Akbar would usually cover at least a part of the pilgrimage on foot in the course of the pilgrimages; on some occasions, he walked the entire way. Once in Ajmer, he would express his devotion by circumambulating the shrine, offering gifts at the Sufi’s grave and to the dargah officials, distributing alms among the devotees, and sponsoring the construction of new religious buildings in the town. He would pray at the dargah before going on important campaigns. On two occasions, he also saved certain possessions of defeated adversaries captured in the course of military campaigns and submitted them at the shrine eventually. This conveyed the idea that the victories of the Mughals in these campaigns had resulted from the blessings of the Sufi master.

Yet, for all the religious importance, Akbar’s pilgrimages to Ajmer were also shaped by political and strategic considerations. For the nascent empire, Ajmer held great strategic importance. It stood at a major nodal point of land routes in western and central India. It provided easy access to Malwa, Rajasthan, and Gujarat. Mughal forces had already conquered Malwa in 1561-62. Akbar’s frequent visits to Ajmer helped him consolidate his hold over the region. They also facilitated new expeditions against Rajput houses in Rajasthan that refused to bow down to Mughal authority. This involved the occupation of important forts like Mirtha (1562), Chitor (1567-68), and Ranthambhor (1569), as well as the conquest of Mewar (1576). The emperor’s presence in Ajmer also helped him personally lead the conquest of Gujarat in 1572–1573 and counter-insurgency operations in that region thereafter. All this helped Akbar project himself as a warrior king.

The pilgrimages showcased the dynamics of royal mobility as a form of statecraft. As the abode of the sovereign, the mobile imperial court was the prime seat of political power. As such, Akbar's journeys to and from Ajmer did not signify a break from regular administration; rather, they were an integral part of it. Away from the confines of the palace, the publicness of the pilgrimages allowed the emperor to perform the various aspects of kingship in front of a much larger audience. They gave him the scope to personally forge diplomatic ties with local chieftains, organise the production of public infrastructure, keep an eye on imperial commanders posted in neighbouring areas, and intervene in the day-to-day life of his subjects.

Interestingly, the pilgrimages stopped altogether after 1579. Aside from the changed strategic needs of the empire, this had to do with the transforming conception of Akbar’s kingship. In this new ideological paradigm inaugurated around 1580,�� Akbar was projected as a universal sovereign. The spiritual status of the living emperor overshadowed the mystical authority of the dead sufi. Having briefly enjoyed the status of an imperial shrine, Ajmer was now overshadowed in sacrality forever by the imperial court of living Mughal emperors and the monumental tombs of deceased ones.

Reference article: 

, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volume 33, Issue 2, April 2023, pp. 271 - 296.

Author: Pratyay Nath

51���

Creating history: The first Ph.D. graduate of 51���

51��� is proud to celebrate a historic milestone as we congratulate Raghvi Garg, the first-ever Ph.D. graduate from our esteemed institution. Under the guidance of her advisor, Abhinash Borah, Raghvi has embarked on a transformative journey in the Department of Economics, where she explores the intricate dynamics of individual decision-making. With a keen interest in choice theory, decision theory, and behavioral economics, Raghvi's research delves into the complexities of human behavior within social contexts. Her work not only sheds light on the theoretical foundations of decision-making but also examines its practical implications, including its impact on issues such as discrimination, gender, polarization, and conflict. Through her pioneering research, Raghvi seeks to unravel the role of behavioral biases in perpetuating regressive social phenomena, aiming to foster a deeper understanding of these pressing issues.

As we embark on Raghvi's remarkable Ashokan journey, her own reflections encapsulate a narrative of growth, determination, and intellectual exploration.

Abhinash Borah, Assistant Professor of Economics, at 51��� and Raghvi’s supervisor, says, “Raghvi has grown tremendously during her time at Ashoka and, as she graduates, is on the cusp of an exciting research career. I will forever be indebted to her for her leading role in the growth of my research group at Ashoka. Our research group's core focus is Decision Theory. This field is a bedrock of modern economic theory. Still, it has historically not been at the forefront of research in India. Raghvi deserves great credit not only for the quality of her work but for her leadership in facilitating this research agenda to grow at Ashoka.

The impressive thing about Raghvi's young research portfolio is its diversity and range. Her Ph.D. thesis looks at normatively constrained decision-making and uses this paradigm to study phenomena like self-control, social influence, and the effect of social norms on behaviour. At the same time, she has been working on applied theory questions as she believes in connecting theory with empirics. From an applied perspective, Raghvi is interested in questions of discrimination, polarization, and conflict. In the years to come, I expect her research to feature prominently in leading peer-reviewed journals in economics.”

Celebrating this milestone, Pramath Raj Sinha, Chairperson, Board of Trustees, 51��� says, “This is a historically momentous and a coming-of-age event in Ashoka’s journey to becoming India’s finest university. We want our Ph.D.’s to be the most sought-after academics and thought leaders out of an Indian institution globally. This is Ashoka’s direct contribution to nation-building in meeting the critical need of high-quality academics and researchers in India.”&�Բ�����;

51���

Global Humanities Initiative: To permanently transform the way we teach, research and think about the Humanities

In 2020 Cambridge University, recognizing Ashoka’s strength in the Humanities, asked if we would be their South Asian partner in the ‘Global Humanities Initiative’ (GHI).  The GHI is an exciting and ambitious collaboration between Cambridge and seven universities from outside Europe and North America, aiming to reanimate and redirect the study of the Humanities.  As they said:

“Over the last decades, outstanding new universities have sprung up around the world and especially in South, Southeast, and East Asia. We cannot afford not to engage with them, and not just because our student bodies include a growing number hailing from these regions. Our scholarship will become parochial if we do not develop a rich set of links with these new universities.”
(Handbook of The Global Humanities Initiative, University of Cambridge)

The project was a response to two main factors. 

(1) Many Cambridge students felt that Humanities tend to be taught from a narrowly Eurocentric point of view, its canonical works and presuppositions having been insufficiently decolonized:

(2) The most pressing issues of the day — such as environment, migration, populism, the polarization of society, violent conflict, economic inequality, and the impact of new technologies and new media — require genuinely global perspectives and collaboration between universities located in diverse contexts.

The aim of the project is thus, by focussing on big picture questions from a plurality of global perspectives, to ‘reimagine the future by rethinking the past and present’.

The following have been the main activities during the last year.

(1) We conducted monthly symposia with leading thinkers on the themes of the place and future of globalisation, the potentials and pitfalls that confront humanity, and the diverse cultural, historical and intellectual tools that might help forge a more hopeful future. 

(2) We are developing a Global Humanities Certificate aimed at Masters Students. 

Ashoka will admit a select group of students into the program. They will take:

• an online ‘Core Course’ co-taught by faculty from various partner institutions and lasting for the length of a semester.  Their classmates will be the students at Cambridge and the other partner institutions
• a 3-week ‘Summer Institute’, when the Ashoka students will travel to Cambridge, meet all of the students from the other partner institutions, and collaborate with them on capstone projects

The aim is “for students to graduate with a ready-made network of global connections, equipped to act as global leaders in their specialization, and at ease in working in a variety of cultural settings”. 

(3) A ‘faculty mobility programme’ has been instituted, which provides funding for Ashoka faculty to spend time in Cambridge, and Cambridge faculty to spend time in Ashoka, in order to develop teaching and research collaborations.  The following travel grants have been awarded for this academic year:

Malvika Maheshwari visited Cambridge to work on the politics and administration of aesthetics in postcolonial India and to collaborate with Cambridge faculty on joint teaching projects. 

Kranti Saran travelled to Cambridge in the Spring to co-teach a graduate-level seminar on Indian political thought with Prof. Shruti Kapila from Cambridge. Their classes explored political ideas found in Indian epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and brought them into dialogue with contemporary debates. The point is to read the texts as sources of new political ideas that reframe and reshape contemporary debates in political theory.

Martin Crowley and Subha Mukherji travelled from Cambridge to Ashoka to collaborate with Gil Harris and Sumana Roy on a project entitled ‘Migrant Ecologies’, which investigates the manifold ways in which worlds are unmade and remade as a result of displacement.

Website: 

Twitter: 

Edited by Dr Yukti Arora

51���

51��� bags a prestigious research grant of Rs 9.50 Crores from the Department of Science and Technology under the PURSE (Promotion of University Research and Scientific Excellence) scheme

The Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India has given a grant of INR 9.50 Crore to 51��� under its ‘Promotion of University Research and Scientific Excellence’ (PURSE) programme to accelerate research on the “Holistic View of Disease Dynamics in Indian Context”. The utilisation period of the grant is 4 years.

INR 1 crore out of the total sanctioned amount will be utilised for the analysis of ancient DNA samples from archaeological findings from various sites - a uniquely interdisciplinary project spanning from Disease Biology to History (Archaeology), supported by the Department of Science and Technology.

The grant will be deployed for Ashoka’s ongoing research on historical evolution of various diseases in India, with a focus on their relation with climatic factors, food habits, demographic variations, age, gender and socio-economic background of individuals. Further, to train students across a range of disciplines to answer critical questions around such diseases. This will pave way for development of human resource capacity as well as effective counter-strategies that are specifically suitable for the Indian context.

 “Addressing the dynamic concerns around prevailing infectious diseases and potential future outbreaks effectively requires an interdisciplinary approach, that takes into account inputs from natural as well as social sciences. At Ashoka, this approach is the bedrock of our educational offerings and research initiatives. Our excellent faculty body, as well as continued investments in research infrastructure, makes us well-positioned to take on such challenges. We are grateful to the Department of Science and Technology for recognising Ashoka’s research strength, and extending this prestigious grant for further research work”, said Professor Somak Ray Chaudhury, Vice Chancellor, 51���.

Speaking on the need for such a research initiative, Dr. Anurag Agrawal, Dean, BioSciences and Health Research, Trivedi School of Biosciences, 51���, said, “In recent years, while on one side we have observed the emergence of a large number of novel infectious agents like COVID-19, on the other many old diseases like Tuberculosis are coming back along with new pathogen variants and causing major public health problems. We do not have sufficient means of predicting what kind of pathogen is likely to emerge as the next big threat, especially in the Indian context. Therefore, this research initiative will prepare the ground for medical practitioners, experts and policymakers to develop cutting edge solutions to such threats.”

Ashoka is currently making a big push into R&D, particularly by strengthening its capacity and offerings in natural sciences. It is developing a new science campus next to the existing one in Sonepat (Haryana). The new campus will house schools for biosciences, physical sciences, mathematics and advanced computing, in addition to a dedicated science park and research laboratories. The university has also commenced various cutting-edge research projects; it has entered into collaborations with industry and several other eminent institutions for R&D in areas such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, genome analysis and novel rare diseases, to name a few.

Launched in 2009, the main objective of DST-PURSE program is to strengthen the research capacity of performing Indian Universities, provide support for nurturing the research ecosystem, and strengthening the R&D base of the universities in the country. Ashoka is one of the 12 leading universities who have received the grant under the DST-PURSE 2022 scheme.

51���

How to measure time in a different way

All clocks require complex mechanics/electronics to function, usually for counting the number of oscillations of some base frequency or to keep the base frequency stable. The complexity begs the question, ‘How can we be certain a clock provides the correct time?’ An analogy can be found within cryptography, ‘How can we be sure that our communication is secure?’ This latter question has been solved by quantum mechanics, where any act of eavesdropping is revealed in the transmitted data. Likewise, researchers have now shown that a quantum watch will exhibit a signature that validates its accuracy. Any mistakes, drifts, errors, or failures of the quantum watch will change the signatures and hence be discovered. Here, a clock and a watch have been differentiated as follows. A clock requires keeping track of time, a watch simply provides the time. The quantum watch provides a fingerprint representing a specific time, and hence only requires interaction when initiating and reading out the time. Therefore, the quantum watch is the only watch, since all other devices require keeping track of time.  

The developed quantum watch consists of a helium atom that is excited by using a laser pulse to a highly excited bound state of Coloumb potential known as the Rydberg state. The evolution of the system is monitored by using another laser pulse by ionizing the excited electron and detecting it with the electron analyzer. The experiment was performed by Susmita Saha, Assistant Professor, at 51��� and her colleagues at the HELIOS laboratory at Uppsala University, Sweden. By coherently exciting more than one Rydberg state, a complex oscillatory pattern is observed (see the bottom panel of Fig. 1). Researchers refer to these oscillations as quasi-unique beat signatures (QUBS), since they provide a fingerprint of how much time has evolved since the wave packet was created. 

This quantum watch measures time in a completely different way, not by counting the clock's ticks as it is usually done, but by obtaining time fingerprints and therefore showing the time very accurately on the femtosecond (10^-15) timescale without using a counter. Not having a counter is quite advantageous, as it helps to get around the necessity to find time zero (the starting point of the experiment) as it is already imprinted in the measured photoelectron yield. Analogically, the information about where the tape measure starts are imprinted in the number one reads on the tape measure after measuring a certain distance.  By using this watch, the researchers have determined that their experimental setup has a drift of about 1 femtosecond (10^-15)/ picosecond (10^-12) when changing the path length of the pump beam using a delay stage. These experiments are typically used to measure ultrafast phenomena such as the movement of atoms inside the matter, etc. 

This work is recently published in the Physical Review Research journal https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.043041.

Edited by Dr Yukti Arora

Reference Article:

, Phys. Rev. Research , October 2022 | Volume 4 | Article 043041

Authors: 

M. Berholts^1,2, R. Knut², R. Stefanuik², H. Wikmark², S. Saha^2,3, and J. Söderström²

¹Department of Physics, University of Tartu, EST-50411 Tartu, Estonia

²Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Uppsala, SE-75120 Uppsala, Sweden

³Department of Physics, 51���, IN-131029 Sonipat, India

51���

Why is the participation of Indian women in paid work declining?

The low and declining level of female labour force participation (FLFP) has been the subject of intense academic and policy debate. There is a great deal of attention on social norms that might constrain women’s labour supply or their ability to work: the overwhelming burden of domestic work, pressures of childcare or elderly care, the stigma attached to working outside the home, fear of sexual violence and so forth. 

The focus on a binary indicator -- in or out of the labour force-- implicitly leads us to think about labour force participation as a labour supply issue. Women typically report lower rates of unemployment compared to men; therefore, when they are not employed, the default assumption is that they must have voluntarily chosen to exit the labour force.

Cultural norms do matter: South Asia in general, and India and Pakistan in particular, have among the most unequal gender divisions of domestic chores. My research with Naila Kabeer shows that the social norm of being predominantly responsible for domestic chores is an important constraint to Indian women's ability to participate in paid work.  However, national-level survey data has repeatedly documented Indian women's willingness to work if work was available either at or near their homes.

The persistently low level of FLFP in India over the decades indicates a state of permanence or stationarity in women's LFP status. Additionally, the decline since 2004 suggests a transition in one direction (exit out of the labour force from an already low level), but not in the other direction (entry into the labour force). 

Using nationally representative longitudinal data, where the respondents are interviewed three times in a calendar year, Jitendra Singh (Ph.D. student at 51���) and I present novel evidence which shows that women frequently enter and exit the workforce over short intervals. This employment volatility is not explained by supply-side factors: marriage, motherhood, childcare etc. We show that women work when they find work, suggesting that the declining LFPR is an artefact of insufficient jobs and declining demand for women’s work. 

Figure 1 shows that over time, the share of agriculture in total employment has declined. Between 1993-94 and 2019-20, the proportion of workers who were employed in agriculture fell from 63% to 44%. The share of manufacturing and services has risen. This reflects the process of structural transformation. 

Agriculture employed over 75% of female workers in the early 1990s, and in 2019-20, employs 58%: a decline of 17 percentage points. The share of manufacturing among female workers has increased by one percentage point, and that of services has risen with fluctuations, but not sufficiently to absorb the declining agricultural opportunities. 

The first-order issue related to employment in India over the last three decades is the lack of adequate job opportunities for men and women, described as ``jobless growth” as well as precarity and informality of labour markets. The post-1991 economic growth was driven by sectors such as information and technology (IT) which are not labour-intensive. Since 2016, there has been a deceleration of economic growth, which means that both growth (jobless or not), as well as jobs, are matters of concern. 

To increase female LFPR, we need to boost job creation as well as make them accessible to women. 

Edited by Dr Yukti Arora 

Reference articles: 

1. , WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-130 | World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

Authors: Ashwini Deshpande and Naila Kabeer

2. , IZA Discussion Paper No. 14639, 2021.

Authors: Ashwini Deshpande and Jitendra Singh

51���

Ashoka student attends Google Research Week

I started off as an Economics major at Ashoka but ended up switching my major in my second year. My switch to Computer Science in my second year was propelled by my budding interest in Machine Learning research. The CS Department played a pivotal role in fuelling my research curiosity which eventually led me to secure a place at Research Week with Google 2023. 

The event was organised by Google Research India in Bangalore and was designed for working professionals, Ph.D. students, and final-year Masters/Undergraduate students. It included a series of lectures, career panels, and research discussion sessions led by pioneering researchers in the field of Machine Learning. Due to the exclusive nature of the program, the selection process was very comprehensive and competitive. Applicants were required to make their candidature by delineating their previous research experience and future research plans. The application also included evaluative questions which were aimed at testing a person’s research and scientific thinking. 

The program was geared towards fostering research specifically related to machine learning and was divided into three tracks: ML Foundations, Computer Vision, and Natural Language Understanding. Each applicant was required to submit a statement highlighting their interest, experience, motivation, and future research plans for a specific track. Although I am currently dabbling in computational social science research for my capstone project, I worked extensively in the field of computer vision during my internship at Microsoft Research India last year. Therefore, I was selected for the computer vision track and had the opportunity to interact with researchers who are at the forefront of this field globally.

The keynote speech was delivered by Dr Jeff Dean, the head of Google AI, wherein he highlighted the various Google AI projects currently in progress and their contribution to advancing technology. Some prominent researchers from the industry, including Gaurav Aggarwal, Prateek Jain, Steve Blackburn, and Praneeth Netrapalli, also presented their research. The speakers expanded upon some of the projects announced in the Google for India 2022 summit when Sundar Pichai visited India. These AI projects revolving around advancing the Indian agricultural ecosystem and preventive healthcare, prompted young researchers like myself to ground our research in meaningful problems to make a difference.

I also had the opportunity to attend some extremely fascinating technical sessions in which researchers like Dr Praneeth Netrapalli talked about their graceful solutions to fundamental, yet extremely significant machine learning problems such as non-robust features and simplicity biases in neural networks. During these technical sessions, I was amazed by the ingenuity of the research questions being discussed. One project, for instance, tackled if lip movements and multimodal input (including speech, text, and vision) could train a model for tasks such as speech generation. 

Amongst the many distinguished researchers that attended the event, I was extremely excited to get the opportunity to interact with Dr Angela Yao from the National University of Singapore. Her research session on modelling regression-type models in computer vision as classification tasks for a variety of application areas had me hooked right from the beginning. Dr Yao was also a part of the panel discussion on pursuing research careers in academia and the industry. This fireside chat-type session was the perfect platform for young computer scientists to get their non-technical questions answered. Further, it was refreshing to hear encouraging words from a successful woman in Stem such as Dr Yao. During this panel, Dr Steve Blackburn from the Google Brain team also shared his personal anecdotes while guiding us on career pathways and research directions. 

Dr Manish Gupta, the Director of Google Research, was another prominent speaker who shared his experience of establishing the Google Research India laboratory right from the time of its inception. The most enriching part of the program, however, was the informal interactions I had with the speakers, research scientists, the team from Google, and the bright participants.

With participants from reputed engineering colleges such as the IITs, IIITs, BITs, etc, I felt grateful and proud to be able to participate in and contribute to this symposium. Having this experience as a non-engineer woman in STEM made the experience even more exhilarating. I hope that more women with diverse backgrounds and research interests can access conferences of this scale.

At the end of this event, I was fortunate to have met some amazing people, senior academics and students alike, who are carrying out trailblazing and socially impactful research. Apart from being exposed to the thought process behind how high-quality research is carried out, I have also been able to understand the relevance and impact of AI for Social Good. I am glad to have returned with a profusion of research ideas and a renewed motivation to pursue research projects that positively impact the global population on a large scale.

Isha Singh (ASP'23) is currently completing her advanced major in Computer Science. She interned at Microsoft Research India last year and has worked on research projects in computer vision and computational social sciences.

51���

Behavioural Science in Uttar Pradesh and beyond

51���'s Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC) is dedicated to advancing knowledge and understanding of human behaviour and social systems through rigorous research and innovative approaches.  We design, execute, and analyse empirical studies to understand human behaviour, particularly in low-resource settings. This is a critical endeavour because most of our knowledge about human behaviour comes from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic)  samples.

We conduct cutting-edge research across various social science disciplines, including psychology, sociology, public health, and economics. Our experiments test new hypotheses for behaviour change and measure the impact of a behaviourally-informed policy intervention in the field. For example, we are exploring questions such as: What kind of intervention works best to increase confidence in using digital and financial services? What determines tax evasion behaviour? How can we harness the power of behavioural biases to promote positive social change? 

One of our research initiatives is the Pop-UP Lab, a mobile lab based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh (UP).  This lab combines traditional research methods with real-time data collection and analysis techniques. The goal is to gain insight into how people and groups make decisions in the contexts in which they live.

Our lab studies are designed to be highly interdisciplinary and collaborative, drawing on the expertise of experts from various fields, including sociology, economics, psychology, neuroscience and public policy. Our goal is to create a dynamic and inclusive research community that is dedicated to advancing our understanding of the complex and ever-changing social world.

For example, in collaboration with Professor Sanjit Dhami, University of Leicester, we ran a lab study to investigate if tax evasion depends on income sources. We compared labour income earned in a tedious experimental task to non-labour income, which was randomly given to participants. We showed that loss aversion, which is a tendency to feel more pain from losses than pleasure from gains, moral costs, and risk preferences play a key role in explaining source-dependent tax evasion. Interestingly, for labour income, risk aversion can make people even more cautious about paying taxes if they are loss averse. Tax evasion tends to increase when tax rates are high and decrease when the risk of getting caught and fines are high.

In addition to our lab studies, we are also committed to fostering collaboration between academics, practitioners, and policymakers. We engage in dialogue with experts from the public, private, and non-profit sectors to ensure that our research is grounded in real-world experience and relevant to contemporary societal challenges.

The Centre for Social and Behaviour Change is proud to be at the forefront of cutting-edge research and innovation in the social sciences. We are dedicated to advancing our understanding of human behaviour and social systems and to using that knowledge to impact the world positively. If you are a student,  we invite you to join us in our quest to create a better future for all by signing up for our research studies .

Authors: Dr Narges Hajimoladarvish, Bijoyetri Samaddar

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Conference Report – The Himalayas from Its Edges: Mobilities, Networks, Geographies

The Himalayan ranges, which suture a vast and varied physical and socio-cultural landscape, have escaped critical scholarly understanding from state-centered approaches. In an attempt to understand the Himalayas as a cross-border space, an interdisciplinary conference titled The Himalayas from Its Edges: Mobilities, Networks, Geographies was held at 51��� on 27-28 January 2023. It was jointly convened by Dr. Swargajyoti Gohain and Dr. Sayantani Mukherjee from 51��� and Dr. Dibyesh Anand and Dr. Nitasha Kaul from the University of Westminster, London. Sneha Roychoudhury, PhD candidate, Sociology and Anthropology and Kimsen Kipgen, senior manager, Ashoka Centre for China Studies, along with Ashoka’s student volunteers, oversaw the conference organisation. The conference was supported by the Research and Development Office, 51��� through the Axis Bank grant. As one of the first of its kind in India, the conference brought together twenty-seven scholars from various disciplines and institutions across India and the world to discuss the Himalayas in their historical and contemporary sense. The conference was open to the public and was attended by many scholars and students.

Dr. Carole McGranahan, Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado, Boulder gave the keynote address, in which she spoke on the themes of social death, impermanence and theoretical storytelling through the story of the Pandatsangs, a Tibetan family with whom she has worked closely. Dr McGranahan held an informal discussion session with students on the second day of the conference where she responded to questions pertaining to her research, fieldwork and career as an anthropologist, and explained theoretical storytelling as a way to bring together ethnography as method and theory. The session was coordinated by Anirudh Raghavan, PhD scholar, Sociology and Anthropology.

The first panel on day one of the conference consisting of Dr. Uttam Lal, Sikkim University, Dr. Sanjukta Datta, 51���, and Gokul KS, PhD candidate, IIT Madras discussed the histories of connection and their manifestations or remnants through the lost trails or the archeological remains or through cinematic landscapes. The session was chaired by Dr. Vasudha Pande, former faculty, Lady Sriram college, Delhi University.

The second panel with Dr. Kaustubh Deka, Dibrugarh University, Dr. Eloise Wright, 51���, and Dr. Swatahsiddha Sarkar, Centre for Himalayan Studies, University of North Bengal, talked about the processes of history making whether through the state in the case of Arunachal Pradesh or through literary metaphors in the kingdom of Dali, in present day Yunnan. Dr. Sarkar emphasized the need to be critical with the Himalayan geography and to understand the region on its own terms. Dr. Karin Polit, University of Tübingen was chair and discussant for this panel.

The Himalayas, since ages, have been a node of cultural exchange not only among humans but non-humans too, some of which have withstood time whereas others are facing imminent erasure. The papers by Dr. Jigme Yeshe, University of Calcutta, Sneha Roychoudhury and Dr Manvi Sharma, 51��� demonstrated these processes in Darjeeling, Sikkim, and Ladakh respectively in this panel, chaired by Himani Upadhyaya, PhD candidate, 51���.

Panelists on the second day attempted to nuance the vast geography of the Himalayas through specific entry points. The papers by Dr. Tsewang Dorji, Tibet Policy Institute, Dr Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, Institute of Chinese Studies and Dr. Aniket Alam, IIIT, Hyderabad, tried to understand the histories of the region through historical documents and state-making infrastructural technologies like dams. Dr. Tanka Subba, former Vice-Chancellor, Sikkim University was chair and discussant.

The fifth panel of the conference, chaired by Dr. Nitasha Kaul, explored the impact of imperial, national, and colonial state-making processes in the Himalayas. Ugyan Choedup, PhD candidate, Pennsylvania State University, spoke about the exile Tibetans’ contact with modernity and their confusion and inadequacy in the early 1950s. Dr. Sonika Gupta, IIT Madras, discussed the fraught relations that local people of Arunachal Pradesh have with Tibetan exiles. Dr. Gowhar Fazili analysed the nationalist and communal undertones that alienate Kashmiri Pandits and Muslim communities which once shared a common history.

The next set of papers by Dr. Tenzin Desal, Tibet Policy Institute, Madhura Balasubramaniam, PhD candidate, IIT Madras and Dr. Swati Chawla, OP Jindal Global University went on to show that writing history is a political act which has consequences in the present times. Dr Dibyesh Anand chaired this panel.    

The conference concluded with a roundtable on Himalayan futures by the four co-organisers titled What Next?

Written by Tenzing Palmo

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A talk by ��Dr. Ananyo Bhattacharya followed by a 30-45 minute panel discussion with Ashoka Faculty.
Prof. Subhashis Banerjee (Com Sc), Prof. Ratul Lahkar (Economics) and ��Prof. Krishna Maddaly (Mathematics) will be the panellists.

A talk by Mark McCaughrean followed by a moderated discussion and Q&A. by Prof. Bikram Phookun (Physics)

Date: 27th January 2023
Venue: AC 04, Room No: 304

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Decolonisation of India’s International Relations: An Empty Prospect?

In January 2020, enabled by a grant provided by 51��� the Department of International Relations hosted a conference titled ‘The Limits of Decolonization’. The sessions repeatedly veered toward a question that occupies a prominent part of our contemporary discourse: is the moment now finally ripe for ‘real’ Decolonization to be achieved? 

The current political wisdom has it that an elitist, Westernized set of voices crafted policy in their own interests, alienating, in the process, a set of authentically ‘Indian’ set of values, that would have presumably projected a stronger, more masculine image to the world. A variety of political gestures, ranging from a debate to institute Hindi as the national language, to the showcasing of an alternative leadership of India’s independence movement, have thus been taken in an apparent bid to reverse the damage caused by India’s post-Independence leadership. These positions have a critical bearing, both for India’s domestic, as well as internationalist self-image.  

However, as many panelists at the conference showed, this process of attempting to ‘Decolonize’ is far more complex than what a simple eye-catching and ultimately hollow series of political announcements would suggest. What all the interventions at the conference did agree on was that a closer examination of India’s colonial past was especially relevant in understanding its modern-day international identity. A special section of the , based partly on the findings of the conference, considers the roots of many present-day approaches and decision-making structures for shaping India’s internationalist values. As a whole, the articles in this collection argue that its roots are located squarely in the requirements of the colonial state in the 19^th century. 

For one thing, knowledge systems of understanding India, as well as its interactions with the world, borrowed extensively, and were shaped with reference to, ideas about governance and international thinking created outside, and often predating, the Indian nation-state that came into being from 1947. In fact, Martin Bayly shows, in processes that straddled the dates before and after the transfer of power, the process of crafting India’s internationalist image was often a means by which its ideals of nationalism could be constituted domestically. Moreover, India, and its imagination of the world, were also constituted through a set of knowledge practices developed in relation to colonial requirements. Therefore, as Raphaelle Khan points out, institutions such as the Indian Council of World Affairs, a critical site for the development of debates on India’s position in the world, borrowed and appropriated frames of internationalist thinking created within the Indian Institute for International Affairs, a sister organization to London’s Chatham House. Similarly, Vineet Thakur shows us how the foundations of post-war diplomacy were set during the interwar period, and that Indian diplomats Srinivasa Sastri, as well as Girija Shankar Bajpai were firmly rooted in a context of Commonwealth politics, and their worldviews heavily tempered by the functioning of this organization. 

Berenice Guyot-Rechards follows the trajectory of Apa Pant, a diplomat in the Ministry of External Affairs in the early years after Independence. His duties, she reminds us, were increasingly complex: as he found himself concerned with the well-being of people who were ethnically Indian on the one hand, yet deemed to be outside the purview of the responsibility of the government of India on the other. His constraints in being able to provide acknowledgement and redressal to Indian communities settled outside the Indian nation-state, often came in the form of the need to adhere to a conception of governance that prioritized the territorial boundaries of the nation-state, as opposed to being able to address the concerns of all ethnically Indian communities in different parts of the globe. 

The process of deciding which Indians to have jurisdiction over— whether within the subcontinent or outside, was thus carried out while adhering to strictly territorialized definitions of national interest. In fact, the framework through which India deals with its neighbourhood, Elizabeth Leake points out, is in an ‘intermestic’ view: domestically informed notions of citizenry and governance shape the way in which the demarcation of the international is understood. The ways in which such ideas of governance continue to shape India’s positions in the neighbourhood are obvious but owe themselves, these articles would point to a choice to adhere to colonial notions of governance, rather than an attempt to discard them. Similarly,  Avinash Paliwal demonstrates, India’s involvement in partnerships based on the ‘Bandung Spirit’, was also, ultimately, based on its ability to utilize ‘the sinews of colonial bureaucratic ties’. Removing the traces of ‘colonialism’ from the apparatus of India’s internationalist relationships thus is in fact difficult to achieve in practice: these ties continue to be operationalised as part of India’s toolkit for foreign policy making till date. 

Ultimately the essays show, there was considerable overlap between colonial and post-colonial ideas of governance and jurisdiction, to an extent which continues to remain relevant today. Embarking on an internationalist journey on avowedly ‘decolonized’ principles, thus, will need far closer scrutiny of the extent to which our ideas of governance, administration and external relations are shaped by visions of empire from the 19th century. As these questions increasingly come to occupy a central space in Indian conversations about International Relations today, it is important for Indian universities to occupy a more prominent role in the analysis of this process.

We would like to express our gratitude to Prof. Malabika Sarkar for her generosity in her help for this project.

(Edited by Dr Yukti Arora and Saman Waheed)

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Infant Research on the Move: What’s really going on in babies’ tiny minds?

Endowed with a mind and body of their own, infants are capable to explore the world around them and achieve an intelligence that seems amazing. How do infants achieve these abilities? Examining infants seems to be more like a BINGO card puzzle where there is a certain order but the outcome at each particular time depends on the numbers in the other squares. To unravel the complex and cascading puzzle called development, researchers need to see many perspectives to explore the dynamic process of development. 

Prof. Madhavi Maganti’s lab in the Department of Psychology at 51��� investigates some of the newer perspectives for studying infants’ situations and renders opportunities to observe and understand what goes on in the minds of infants in many different ways. 

The aim of this research is inclined towards discerning the dynamics of infant cognition. Specifically, how do infants make sense of what they see, hear, and touch in their caregiving environment? From the flux of multimodal stimulation (when two or more sensory systems such as vision, hearing, and touch originate from the same source) comprising a dynamic flow of events, newborn infants are perceptually sensitive and equipped to acquire knowledge about objects and events in their caretaking environments. Researchers at Ashoka are interested in examining how these early experiences provide a newer perspective to investigate infants’ understanding of what needs to be learned in order to learn about the world around them. 

Furthermore, Prof Maganti’s lab is also explicitly focused on studying if at-risk infants* show any delays in perceiving information from the caregiving environment and if these delays may manifest as cognitive delays later in life. Studying these remarkable abilities from the neonatal period (period from birth to four weeks) has spurred infancy research towards understanding what goes on in the tiny minds of infants.

Strategy Adopted

How infants perceive events like the sight of a talking person, clapping of hands, and toy sounds from objects that have two or more modalities like visual, auditory, and tactile senses originating from the same source are examined from mother-child interactions and also from assessing these perceptual abilities using eye tracking measures.   

Specifically, the interactions are videotaped and hand-coded for fine-grained analysis of how infants make sense of maternal interactions and respond to the information. Further, for studying infants’ perceptual sensitivity to multimodal information, researchers measure infants’ looking time from eye tracking to examine if preterm infants show delays or perceive multimodal events like their term counterparts. Very little is known about these initial processes of perceiving multimodal events in at-risk infants. Therefore,  perceptual processes observed during the first year of life will help to understand how these impairments if any, can be precursors for early identification of later delays in cognitive, social and language development.          

The key findings of the study that will be published soon are hinging towards caregivers’ adaptations during face-to-face interactions between mother-child dyads with their at-risk infants. Mothers or caregivers of at-risk infants combine tactile stimulation with auditory-visual information to highlight the multimodal information and help recruit attention. These at-risk infants have low levels of alertness as they have a highly compromised neurosensory system that is not ready to detect multimodal information. Sometimes, these interactions can be overstimulating and intrusive for the infant. Ashoka researchers are in the process of testing more at-risk infants at different time points to examine if these delays in perceiving multimodal events continue in the first year.

These neonates have a higher probability of displaying delays or deficits in one or more areas of development like motor, sensory, speech, language, communication, cognition, social or emotional development when compared to the abilities of typically developing infants. This work is especially valuable as the findings from the proposed study can help to devise appropriate tools for diagnosing perceptual problems early on, so that developmental interventions can be administered earlier than in current practice. Saving brains for improving neurodevelopmental outcomes!! 

This research on infant cognition is conducted by Dr Madhavi Maganti, Assistant Professor of Psychology, 51��� along with Dr Arti Maria, Professor & Head, Department of Neonatology, Dr RML Hospital, Delhi and Dr Jill Lany, Senior Lecturer, University of Liverpool, UK, with support from Cognitive Science Research Initiative (CSRI) grant from the Department of Science and Technology.

(Edited by Dr. Yukti Arora)

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51��� signs MOA with Cornell University, USA

The Office of Global Education and Strategic Partnerships (GESP) at 51��� signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA, which provides a broad framework for cooperative programmes between the two universities. It seeks to facilitate international academic exchange, develop scientific relationships, support collaborative research activities and develop student exchange and related programmes in separate project agreements. 

According to Vanita Shastri, Dean of Global Education & Strategic Partnerships at 51���, ''We are very excited to sign the MOA with Cornell as it gives Ashoka the opportunity to work with Cornell faculty and its other Hub partners in a unique model. This will open up areas for collaborative research for students and faculty alike.”&�Բ�����;

Working with Cornell University started with Ashoka faculty and staff participating in Cornell's collaborative engagement around the world in the interdisciplinary Global Hubs salon programme in spring 2022.  8 research themes that represented across-university research strengths at Cornell and its partners were featured in various panels. Gilles Verniers from Ashoka presented his research work in ‘Democratic challenges and change,’ and Madhavi Maganti attended the session on ‘One Health.’

The conversation got further impetus with the visit of Prof. Sarah Besky, Chair of the India sub-committee for Cornell University's Global Hubs program to Ashoka in May 2022. She met with senior Deans, faculty and GESP office to discuss possible areas of collaboration.  These steps led to the final signing of the MOA with Cornell University. 

“We are so pleased to be partnering with 51���, a world-class institution with top faculty, many of whom are Cornell PhDs. The MOA we signed affirms Ashoka as a Global Hubs partner, and we hope to build collaborative and diverse opportunities for student and faculty exchange, joint research, and program development,” said Wendy Wolford, Vice Provost for International Affairs and Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Professor of Global Development. 

Professor Sarah Besky said, “I look forward to seeing our institutions develop partnerships and collaborations that build on research and teaching alignments across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. The possibilities for engagement with the signing of this MOA are open and exciting.”&�Բ�����;

51��� participated in Cornell Global Hubs’ which connects Cornell to all its partners across the globe. Senior leaders and faculty from Ashoka attended in the Global Grand Challenges Symposium held on 16-17, November 2022. The Symposium brought the Cornell community and its international partners to discuss the most urgent challenges around the world and how to work together to address these. Vanita Shastri, Dean of Global Education and Strategic Partnerships was part of two forums. The first was a panel on Knowledge: What Counts, for Whom, and to What Ends, which discussed innovations in higher education, social media, new forms of knowledge production and inequalities in access; and security, privacy, disinformation, and the role of knowledge in democracies. The second session was on Building Collaborative Research: Models, Ideas and Impact which discussed how research across partners can be best done and what are its challenges. 

The MOA signed between the two universities provides a good foundation to build innovative programmes to enhance student mobility and collaborative faculty research. “We are very excited about deepening Cornell’s connections with 51��� and enthusiastically look forward to working together to advance global education in our universities and across the Cornell Global Hubs network,” said Sebnem Ozkan, Associate Director of Global Hubs. 

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The Role of Cultural Norms in Influencing Women’s Health

Individuals in developing countries often rely on community ties to access key resources due to the absence or inaccessibility of formal institutions. For example, it is commonplace for individuals to rely on their community members (those residing in the same village, neighbourhood or belonging to the same jati/religion) for financial assistance to cover medical expenditures as access to health insurance is not universal in these countries. Reliance on one’s community ties is usually associated with the expectation that an individual would be adhering to the community’s customs and beliefs. The failure to do so usually results in the cessation of all benefits associated with such ties. Therefore, adherence to sociocultural norms is usually found to be strong in developing countries, implying that cultural norms have the potential of influencing individual behaviour and consequently welfare.

In this context, Prof. Bipasha Maity (Assistant Professor, 51���) and her co-author, Rahul Kumar, examined the role of a specific cultural norm, menstrual restrictions, on women’s health-seeking behaviours in Nepal in an impactful study published in . 

Menstrual restrictions in Nepal include a range of customs that mandate the seclusion of menstruating women from other individuals in the family and community, along with restrictions on their usual activities and mobility. These customs have arisen from the belief that menstruating women are ritually unclean and need to stay segregated to prevent them from “polluting” other individuals, kitchen spaces, crops, livestock, public spaces, etc. 

Previous studies have demonstrated that women often have no choice regarding whether to follow menstrual restriction-related rituals as they are mandated to do so on account of the prevailing social norms in the community. Moreover, childbirth is considered just as ritually unclean as menstruation. Therefore, postpartum confinement practices along the lines of menstrual restrictions followed by ceremonies involving ritual purification of the new mother and infant are widespread in Nepal. 

This motivated the researchers at 51��� to study how facing any menstrual restriction like rituals can affect women’s healthcare access around the time of childbirth. Since maternal mortality and morbidity rates in Nepal remain higher than the global average, understanding the extent to which cultural norms such as menstrual restrictions help sustain barriers to accessing maternal healthcare is of immense policy relevance.

The authors used nationally representative data called the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), 2014 collected by UNICEF for the analysis. The MICS includes rich information on the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of ever-married women of reproductive age and is the only dataset that includes information on menstrual restrictions faced by respondents. The authors chose to focus on the respondent’s place of delivery and whether assistance was received from medically trained personnel (doctors, nurses, skilled birth attendants) at the time of childbirth. This information was available for the last child born within two years from the survey. While this does not capture maternal healthcare access for one’s entire fertility history, its advantage lies in reducing recall bias about past healthcare utilization.  

Using several existing and recent advances in econometric methodologies, Ashoka researchers found that facing menstrual restrictions is indeed associated with a significantly higher likelihood of giving birth at home and receiving assistance only from informal sources (such as one’s relative/friend) at the time of giving birth. Home births and especially without the assistance of medically trained personnel have been shown to increase the risk of maternal morbidity (e.g.: uterine prolapse) and mortality through excessive blood loss, septic shock. 

The findings continue to hold even if adherence to some of the strictest customs is omitted, indicating that any ritual that mandates some isolation and restricts mobility adversely influences maternal healthcare access. However, facing any menstrual restriction was not found to influence antenatal care utilization; plausibly because the concern of ritual uncleanliness is not of paramount concern during pregnancy as it is at the time of childbirth. Therefore, menstrual restrictions are unlikely to influence healthcare utilization at a time when concerns about ritual uncleanliness are largely absent. 

This study demonstrates the role of cultural norms in impeding access to healthcare at a critical time for women and children; thereby making progress towards sustainable development goals (SDGs) slow. Further, isolation and limited healthcare access post-childbirth can exacerbate the incidence of postpartum depression and delay its diagnosis. Therefore, studying the role of cultural norms in influencing mental health is an important area of future research.

(Edited by Dr Yukti Arora)

Reference Article: , World Development Perspectives, September 2022 | Volume 27 | Article 100450

Authors: Rahul Kumar and Bipasha Maity

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Recent Advances in Data Science can effectively address issues faced by brick-mortar retailers

Imagine for a moment a world without retail stores. As a consumer, you would need to travel far and wide to obtain access to your desired products from the factories of multiple manufacturers, thereby expending both time and effort. 

Now, observe how retail stores provide a valuable service to society by making a wide variety of products from different manufacturers readily accessible to consumers under the same roof. This allows consumers the flexibility of choosing their desired products from a range of offerings from different manufacturers at various price points, thereby creating the convenience of one-stop shopping. 

Interestingly, even though online shopping has been becoming increasingly popular, brick-and-mortar retailers still retain their importance because consumers often prefer to have a shopping experience and get a “feel” of the product.

Brick-and-mortar retailers, however, face several pain points such as (a) reduced consumer foot traffic due to intense competition from online retailers, (b) disruptions in the global supply chain due to events e.g., natural disasters and wars, which adversely impact retail business sustainability (c) ever-increasing consumer expectations regarding shopping experience, (d) enormous amounts of complex data (both structured and unstructured) about products, suppliers, consumer purchase transactions and consumer data in the social media, and (e) lack of adequate retail analytics for converting the data into actionable insights. Notably, these challenges will continue to grow.��

Here, recent advances in data science can provide opportunities for effectively addressing these issues and improving retailer revenue. 

Anirban Mondal, Associate Professor of Computer Sciences at 51���, has explored how retailers can diversify their product offerings to facilitate sustainable long-term revenue earnings. Diversification enhances business resilience in the face of a wide gamut of external macro-environmental factors (e.g., economic, legal, political, social, and technological) which could potentially impact the business environment. 

For example, the ongoing war in Ukraine has caused significant supply chain disruptions globally. A high dependency on the sale of a single product may cause the retailer to suffer a significant loss in revenue in scenarios, where a sudden drop in either supply or demand for the product occurs due to sudden macro-environmental changes.��

In medium-to-large shopping malls, consumers tend to buy multiple products instead of buying only a single product. In data mining, sets of products, which are frequently bought together by consumers, are referred to as itemsets e.g., {bread, butter, jam}. 

Observe how placing itemsets in the slots of retail store shelves enables the retailer to exploit the association among the items being sold and also helps the consumers to locate their desired products in one place. This can significantly improve retailer revenue. 

In essence, strategic placement of diversified and high-revenue itemsets in a retail store is critical to improving retailer revenue. 

However, the problem of generating such itemsets is essentially combinatorial in nature, hence there is an explosion in the number of candidate itemsets; which causes memory and processing time issues.

In this regard, Prof Anirban Mondal and his research group have addressed the issue of itemset placement in retail stores in a diversified manner so as to maximize retailer revenue; the work is published in . Researchers from 51��� proposed a framework for the retrieval and placement of diversified and high-revenue itemsets of various sizes on the shelves of a retail store.

‘Our extensive performance study with both real and synthetic datasets demonstrates the effectiveness of our proposed High-Utility and Diversified Itemset Placement (HUDIP) scheme in efficiently identifying and placing high-revenue and diversified itemsets, thereby leading to improved retailer revenue’, Prof Mondal shared. 

He further added, ‘In the near future, we plan to investigate the cost-effective integration of our proposed framework into existing retail IT infrastructure. We are planning to build a Cloud-based software tool to facilitate retail stores at scale towards placing itemsets based on the knowledge of consumer purchasing patterns extracted from historical purchase transactions.’ 

Strategy/Approach developed:

Our proposed kUI (k Utility Itemset) index efficiently retrieves diversified top-λ high-revenue itemsets. The kUI index comprises multiple levels, where the k^th level corresponds to the top-revenue itemsets of size k. Instead of identifying and storing all possible itemsets, the kUI index averts the combinatorial explosion of candidate itemsets by limiting the number of itemsets stored at each level. Additionally, we propose the HUDIP (High-Utility and Diversified Itemset Placement) scheme, which exploits our proposed kUI index for placing high-revenue and diversified itemsets.��

(Edited by Dr Yukti Arora)

Reference Article: , Applied Intelligence, September 2022 | Volume 52 | Pages 14541–14559

Authors: Anirban Mondal, Raghav Mittal, Parul Chaudhary & Polepalli Krishna Reddy

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Dr. Anisha Sharma, Assistant Professor and Garima Rastogi, Ashoka alum awarded 2023 Kuznets Prize

The Kuznets Prize is awarded for the best paper published in the Journal of Population Economics in a given year. The award is named for Simon Kuznets, the 1971 Nobel Prize laureate in economics and papers are judged by the Editors of the Journal of Population Economics. 

Dr. Anisha Sharma, Assistant Professor of Economics and Garima Rastogi, an Ashoka alum, who is currently studying at Oxford University have been awarded the 2023 Kuznets Prize. Their paper is titled “” in the Journal of Population Economics (2022). 

“As a researcher, there is no greater honour than being recognised by your peers and by your senior colleagues in your field, and I am delighted that Garima’s and my paper was selected for the 2023 Prize. Personally speaking, it has been a particular pleasure to write this paper with my former undergraduate and Ashoka Scholars Programme (ASP) student,” said Dr. Sharma, who finished her Ph.D. in Economics at Oxford University in 2016 and has been an assistant professor at 51���’s Department of Economics ever since.

The annual prize honors the best article published in the Journal of Population Economics in the previous year. The prize will be awarded in a public online event during the GLO Global Conference on December 1, 2022.

Congratulating the winners, Vice Chancellor Malabika Sarkar said, "We rejoice in the recognition that Anisha and her former student Garima have received for the excellence of their research through the Kuznets Prize. It is a great moment for the University."

"All of us in the department know how talented Anisha is as a researcher. And, Garima was amongst the best students I have come across in my long teaching career. So, while I am not surprised that they wrote this excellent paper, it is wonderful to know that the world outside has also acknowledged and recognised the worth of their paper," Bhaskar Dutta, Distinguished University Professor of Economics said.

Elaborating on her paper "Unwanted daughters: The unintended consequences of a ban on sex-selective abortions on the educational attainment of women” Dr. Sharma further explained that it is about the unintended adverse consequences of a ban on prenatal sex selection on discrimination against surviving girls. 

“The PNDT Act of 1994 in India criminalised both the detection of the sex of a foetus by technologies such as ultrasound, as well as the selective abortion of female foetuses. The ban was intended to address severely male-biased sex ratios in India, and we find that while it did succeed in increasing the number of female births, it also displaced prenatal gender discrimination to a postnatal margin. While girls were more likely to be born, they were also more likely to face discrimination in parental inputs such as investments in their schooling, resulting in a widening gender gap in educational attainment. 

“These effects are concentrated among non-wealthy households that lacked the resources to evade the ban. We argue this is because surviving girls became relatively unwanted, whereas surviving boys became relatively more valued, leading to an increasing concentration of household resources on them. This underscores the weaknesses of policies that seek to promote gender equity through a top-down approach but fail to address the underlying social norms driving son preference,” she added.

Anisha Sharma maintained that Ashoka is very special in the view that it gives the faculty members many opportunities to work not just with graduate students, but with undergraduate students as well on original research projects.��

Picture Credits: https://glabor.org/

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51��� appoints Prof. Sourav Pal as Professor and Head of the Department of Chemistry

51��� announces the appointment of Prof. Sourav Pal as Professor and Head of the Department of Chemistry. Prof. Sourav Pal completed five-year tenure as Director of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata and joined 51��� in October 2022. He has previously been the Director of CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune and worked at NCL Pune for almost 33 years. In between his tenure at NCL Pune and IISER Kolkata, he was also a Senior Professor at IIT Bombay.

Prof Sourav Pal was instrumental in setting up the Electronic Structure Theory Group at NCL. He is a distinguished theoretical chemist and has contributed to methodological and conceptual developments on many-body electronic structure theory, to the area of density based chemical reactivity, as well as to catalytic and hydrogen storage materials using computational material science. Development of the many-body electronic structure methodology and application of computational chemistry have been the continuing theme of his group at IIT Bombay and IISER Kolkata as well.

He completed a 5-year integrated Master's degree in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur in 1977, and Ph.D. from Calcutta University.  Recipient of many awards and honors in recognition of his contributions to science, including the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Chemical Sciences in 2000 and SASTRA-CNR Rao Award in Chemistry & Materials Science in 2014, Prof. Pal was on the Editorial Advisory Board of the flagship Journal of Physical Chemistry and has published more than 300 papers in International peer-reviewed journals and contributed chapters to several books.  He has guided about 45 Ph.D. theses and is the author of a book titled "Mathematics in Chemistry". Prof Pal is Fellow of all National Academies of Science and Royal Society of Chemistry among many honors. He is on several scientific committees. He is presently the founding member of the Executive Board of Commonwealth Chemistry, chairman of Chemical Division Council of Bureau of Indian Standards, among many other committees.

Commenting on his appointment, Prof. Sourav Pal said "It is a very opportune time to be part of 51��� and I am delighted to lead the Department of Chemistry. Over the next decade, 51��� has made a commitment towards expanding into sciences with emphasis on conducting cutting-edge research in domains ranging from synthetic biology, chemistry of environment, renewable energy to health research where chemistry will play an important role. I am confident that over the next few years, Ashoka will produce globally recognised scientific research that will contribute to India's development.''

Sharing her thoughts on the appointment, Prof. Malabika Sarkar, Vice-Chancellor, 51��� said "We are honored to have Prof. Sourav Pal as Professor and Head of the Department of Chemistry. With his guidance and leadership as an eminent Theoretical Chemist, I am certain that Ashoka will produce world-class research in sciences that will benefit the country.''

Ashoka is on a journey towards creating a leading multidisciplinary research university with a strong focus on teaching and learning. It is expanding its sciences department with a dedicated campus adjoining the current premises at Rajiv Gandhi Education City, Delhi NCR.

51���

Forests in Flux

What determines where a certain plant grows? Is it the conditions of the site where a seed falls? Or is it dependent on how the seed got there in the first place – by air, by water, or by an animal carrier like a bird? In a forest community of thousands of plants growing in a single square kilometre, the presence and survival of each individual is dependent on the answers to these questions. Together, they form a forest which functions as a whole – to stabilise soil, store water, support biodiversity and provide natural resources. Since different forests have different characters and functions, answering these initial questions is vital to understand which kinds of forests grow where – and how they may change over time. In landscapes where local communities and economies are closely dependent on forests, the answers to these questions can determine the survival and prosperity of innumerable people. 

My research in the Mukteshwar valley of the Uttarakhand Himalayas aims to answer some of these questions with respect to the typical Oak-Pine forests which cloak the mountains of the region. While these forests have been the focus of academic work in the past, most studies have focused only on trees, my study looks at both trees and woody shrubs and how they interact with birds – in order to answer those initial questions with a finer resolution. Understanding how forests are structured and how this structure may change with time and human intervention lies at the heart of determining the future of livelihoods and sustainability in the area.��

The initial stages of my research have undoubtedly been the most exciting, since they were set against the inimitable wooded landscape and under the clear blue skies of the Mukteshwar valley. After the initial stages of experimental design and preparation with my advisors at Ashoka, I stayed in the valley for six weeks, collecting data in the forests. The Mukteshwar region is an uneven patchwork of what we identified as three distinct forest types: pine forest, dense oak forest and degraded oak forest. We surveyed each forest type through measurements of canopy densities; leaf litter depth; the species and diameters of adult trees; the species and heights of seedlings; and signs of degradation such as cutting or burning. Each day brought new challenges – from scaling difficult terrain (we walked an average of 5-6 kilometres a day), to identifying scores of plants, to reaching trees through dense and often thorny undergrowth. The challenges, however, were offset by wonderful rewards: the incredible species we encountered; lunch breaks with panoramic views; and eating fresh fruit from the local orchards.��

Back in Delhi, we began to slowly enter, clean, and analyse the data collected in the field. We had surveyed nearly 2000 adult trees and 12,200 seedlings representing over 140 species! Certain findings became initially apparent – dense oak forests showed the highest species number and density. They were also shadier and darker, providing a sheltered environment for seedling growth. On the other hand, degraded oak and pine forests faced greater human intervention in the form of cutting, lopping and grazing of trees – which threatened the survival of seedlings. We noted that degradation had a selective impact on seedling survival – favouring some species over others and skewing the composition of the forests. We are still in the process of analysing our data, but the initial findings seem to suggest a vital role of disturbance, and therefore of human activity in determining the structure of these forests.��

We can add another question to our initial line of enquiry –if a forest is cut down, what grows back in its place? Today, forests are being cleared at an astonishing rate, and research such as mine helps to identify what is the future of these sites. Comparing our data with existing data on bird diversity data from the area will help shed light on how plants and animals colonise degraded land. Potentially, this work can be used to inform policy on conservation, and better equip forest-management at the local and regional level. This also means local communities will be better able to manage and benefit from these forests. Every step of my research from conceptualisation to analysis to funding has been supported by my advisors and mentors at 51���, Shivani Krishna and Ghazala Shahabuddin, to whom I am deeply grateful. Part of this research has also been funded by the generosity of the Environmental Studies Department Summer Research Grant – for which I am very grateful.��

This article is extracted from an interview conducted by Dr. Yukti Arora 

51���

‘In science, if you think what you are doing is a burden then you are not doing it right’

Prof. Dipankar Bhattacharya’s research centres around a class of astrophysical entities classified as compact objects (which include Neutron Stars, White Dwarfs and Black Holes). His recent interest lies in investigating the origin of polarized high energy radiation in environments around these compact objects. 

‘It is an exciting field because now we have brand new, highly capable observatories that are allowing us to probe this vital, yet largely unexplored, aspect of these exotic objects.’ 

One such mission that enables these observations in the hard X-Ray regime is India’s AstroSat - a project which Prof. Bhattacharya has been associated with since its inception. 

Prof. Bhattacharya joined the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune in 2007. He worked there for 15 years before joining 51��� as the Sunanda & Santimay Basu Astrophysics Professor. 

When asked about his plan to establish Astrophysics at Ashoka, he elaborated, ‘I realised there was a great interest amongst students to learn and a great interest amongst the faculty to grow astrophysics here. Furthermore, the fact that an astrophysics program does not already exist here gives me an opportunity to guide the effort - I can grow something new from scratch. I look forward to developing unique activities at Ashoka, replicas of which are not found easily in astrophysics programmes existing elsewhere’.

Sharing his plan on a prospective data initiative at 51���, Prof Bhattacharya said ‘One of the things that I want to do is to use the vast amounts of available data to extract new inferences – this will coexist with the already running data science and machine learning projects at Ashoka. The other thing that I would like to work on is to contribute to the various kinds of computer simulations (which include gravity, fluid mechanics, radiation and electromagnetism) that have become increasingly relevant in the field recently. I wish to build the capability here so that expertise in all these domains is available. This means whenever anything interesting is on the horizon we can unleash our machinery to analyse science from all angles.’

‘In the near future I am also setting up a teaching undergraduate astronomy lab which would cover measurement methods, navigation, etc. Following this, we will set-up a data lab which would also be a part of the teaching program. It is likely that some of the people we hire may wish to build new instruments, in which case we will set-up the required instrumentation labs – but we’ll cross that bridge when we reach there’, he shared. 

Prof. Bhattacharya has worked extensively with High Performance Computing (HPCs) clusters and is teaching advanced methods in computational astrophysics and geophysics at 51���. 

‘I’ve been interested in computing since my early days as a physics student. Those were also the early days of computing itself. Though I did not have access to large computers, I was still interested in the kind of fundamental problems that computer scientists were engaging with. During my undergraduate years, we would have to write our program first on a piece of paper, then go to a card punch machine to program the cards and hand those cards to the people who would run the program. The output would then be printed and rolled around the program cards to be collected by us the next day. Sometimes all that the print out would say is ‘SYNTAX ERROR’. As a student, I worked on a summer project which required engagements with numerical work at BARC, Mumbai’, he recalled. 

Gradually, by the 1980s, there was a growing interest in computing in India and places like Institute of Mathematical Sciences, IISc, DRDO, CDoT and others had started building High Performance Computers of their own design. Today, of course, generation and analysis of astoundingly large amounts of data computationally has become an essential component of astronomy – one which India has been actively participating in. 

Scientific research seems to fail at a high rate – experiments go wrong, probes are contaminated, measurements do not deliver anticipated results, models are misrepresentative, etc. When feeling stuck on a problem, Prof. Bhattacharya says ‘letting your brain relax a bit always helps’. 

Sometimes when he goes to bed with a problem, he wakes up with a solution – he cautions, however, ‘one cannot always rely on this method.’ 

For someone who is just entering college, he recommends the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. The broad theme of the book is to inspire oneself to free their mind. Another book that he recommends as a great way of seeing interesting connections is Gödel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. He remarks, ‘The point of science is to open your mind and unfold interesting connections’.

He has two pieces of advice for students interested in physics. First, he suggests ‘one should not lose sight of the deeper concepts by strangling oneself in the algorithms required to solve a problem’. Second, he insists, ‘Enjoy your work. In science, if you think what you are doing is a burden then you are not doing it right. Science is about getting a deeper comprehension of the universe and that can never be boring.’

Interview conducted by Mr Kartik Tiwari and Dr Yukti Arora

51���

Rethinking Research Management in India: The Case of Ashoka

As a developing nation, India is consistently progressing in education, research and innovation. In the last decade, we have seen a massive expansion of science, technology, and higher education enterprises in this country. While the higher education and research sectors have expanded tremendously in terms of enrollment, the country has failed to produce an adequate number of world-class universities and research institutes. 

Researchers have analysed challenges like demand-supply gap, lack of quality, inadequate management system and infrastructure, among other factors. Worldwide higher education and research policies have been transformed by various processes that operate in a constant flux of globalisation. 

The climate for research funding is invariably determined by the national and international economic situation, which continues to be challenging. Recent surveys and reports have highlighted that research management systems in most Indian institutes and universities lack consistency of structures and suffer from lack of sharing good practices and networking. 

All of this demands proper research management systems in Indian universities, particularly those that are research-intensive, to offer support to researchers and represent institutional needs. The role of research offices in these ‘stormy seas’ is more important than ever before. A few Indian institutes are beginning to set up dedicated research offices in their system, a relatively recent development in the Indian research management system. 

A special category of research professionals trained in research management and administration is essential for these roles. They should not only excel in managing day-to-day activities but also be at the forefront of planning, executing, assessing and communicating (to the policymakers, finance people and other stockholders) various educational and research activities.

In 2018, 51��� established the Research and Development Office (RDO), intending to build the best possible research management system to support Ashoka faculty and researchers and be a good example for the country’s research ecosystem at large. 

As a research university, Ashoka has four broad areas of disciplines; arts and humanities, social sciences, economics and basic sciences. The amalgam of basic sciences in conjunction with humanities, economics and social sciences has created a vibrant environment leading to interdisciplinary research avenues. Research at the university is driven mainly by faculty and researchers from all departments/centres who have a variety of interests. Some thrust areas are bound traditionally within the same disciplines, while others are compatible with new and evolving specialised areas. Although Ashoka is a young university, the faculty and researchers are very productive, especially when compared to their peers.

RDO provides dedicated centralised support to faculty and researchers towards academic, applied and translational research activities. Currently, the office is managed through the following four functional verticals:

Grant Management: We assist the faculty and researchers in seeking funding from international and domestic funding agencies to meet requirements for research. We work closely with the faculty by helping them with pre-funding and post-funding management.

Research Infrastructure Management: We help maintain research facilities and run them as university-level facilities to maximise their utility and improve interactions between faculty and departments.

Scholar Management: We assist in recruiting research staff and Ph.D. scholars across all departments and ensure success in their research at the university.

Academic Communication: We aim to bridge the gap between science and society and create an impact on the university’s research by making it accessible to all. The focus is also on effective liaison between various offices for the smooth running of outreach and fundraising events.

The purpose of the Research and Development Office at 51��� is to champion professional standards and consistency in research administration across the university to ensure that institutional governance responsibilities and obligations are met. We add value as a support service by providing specialist advice, development of systems and training, and targeted information and governance policies. 

In 2021 we received a grant from DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance to build a new sub-vertical at RDO related to research grants advising. The Centre for Civil Society's recent report (2022) highlighted Ashoka RDO as an interesting for the various roles a university research office can provide beyond the traditional ones envisioned in the Indian scenario. Apart from its own operations through the verticals, the office has also started training workshops and facilitating industry interactions.

Developing and sustaining a vibrant research portfolio is not straightforward. The landscape in which grants and contracts are won has become increasingly competitive and global in nature. University research offices can not remain static and must be receptive to various changes. 

The case of Ashoka RDO delineates the current debate governing the promotion of proper research management systems in Indian universities in a globalised world. It is essential to motivate Indian research communities to develop a sound management support base for its researchers, without which the time and funds invested in research are not optimally utilised and risk future growth. 

(Dr. Anirban Chakraborty is Assistant Vice President - Research & Academic Development at 51���)

51���

Solving an enigma of nesting structures by nature’s architects

ফড়িঙের ডানাতেও এ জীবন দেয় ডাক
বেঁচে থাক সব্বাই, হাতে হাত রাখা থাক

— Kabir Suman, “Sara Dao” (in Bengali)

Life calls out even from a wild wasp's wing
May everyone live, hold hands and always sing

— English adaptation by Prof Arunava Sinha

For centuries now, nests of social insects such as bees, wasps, and ants have attracted the attention of ecologists. In bees and wasps* cells within the nest are usually hexagonal. This preference to build hexagonal-shaped cells was attributed to compactness. Darwin himself conducted experiments to understand how bees built these structures. It is now well known that a hexagonal lattice is the most efficient way to divide a plane into regions of equal area with the least total perimeter (honeycomb conjecture).

How do hundreds of individuals come together and build a periodic hexagonal lattice? What happens when there are errors in this construction process or tiling? Polistes wasps nesting in large numbers on the 51��� campus, allowed us to address questions such as regularity in hexagons and how the wasps were arranging them in a natural environment. Polistes wasps are social wasp species that use plant fibers for their nest construction. Unlike honeybees that use wax, nesting material used by wasps is relatively difficult to manipulate.

This puzzle on how wasps correct any errors given their non-plastic structural material drew us to this problem. We then decided to take a closer look by bringing down some of the nests made by these wasps after they completed their nesting season.

We systematically collected nests, took images with a scale, identified the vertices of individual hexagonal cells from these images, and mapped them. Using these coordinates, we analyzed how homogenous these hexagons and their organization were in relation to a periodic hexagonal net. We found that the wasps carefully laid out hexagons such that there were no gaps in between. While analyzing this, we found something astonishing in their nests.

Mathematicians have worked on principles involving continuity and deformability. While these have gained attention in understanding basic phases of matter to cosmological patterns, they were never considered relevant in the context of social insect nests.

Shivani Krishna, Assistant Professor of Biology at 51��� discusses in her study published in the what it means to have non-hexagonal cells such as pentagons and heptagons in such nests. These pentagons and heptagons were also found to always co-occur in proximity. This seems to be a very ingenious way of ensuring planarity when errors occur. For some reason, during the construction process, when a pentagon occurs by mistake, the wasps cannot simply leave it as such if they wish to continue with the construction as this may lead to a curved structure (similar to a hat). On the other hand, if a heptagon occurs, the whole system tends to be saddle-shaped. In wasp nests, to ensure the nest remains planar without curvature or distortion, which incur the cost of more material and stability issues, the wasps add a heptagon adjacent to a pentagon and vice-versa.

This is an astonishing architectural feat, where wasps can avoid deviations from planarity in their nests by fixing non-hexagonal cells using geometrical rules known primarily from crystal structures, skyrmions, protein folding, viral outer coats, etc. This opens an exciting avenue of intriguing questions at the interface of ecology and physics, cutting across multiple scales.

*Wasp is a social winged insect that has a narrow waist and a sting and is typically yellow with black stripes.

(Edited by Dr Yukti Arora)

Reference Article: , Scientific Reports, July 2022 | Volume 12 | Article 12901

51���

Understanding how mistakes made while manufacturing proteins can be good

Let's start by talking about your research journey so far:

I sometimes think that biology was ‘the most boring subject’ taught in school, concentrating on drawing skills and mugging up various terms, with no real introduction to the subject at all. Other than exposure at home, the IISc (Indian Institute of Science) Young Fellowship and the Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana (KVPY) were critical to my scientific growth.

After my Bachelor’s degree, I joined the Integrated Ph.D. program in Biological Sciences at IISc. Both during my Ph.D. and postdoctoral work as a DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance early career fellow, I was exposed to rigorous scientific training and a stimulating atmosphere of constant discussion.

You have been working extensively on mistranslation. What is the relevance and larger objective of this research?

I work at the interface of molecular biology and evolution. I try to understand how mistakes made while manufacturing proteins can affect cellular function. Specifically, work from my lab will try to understand how such errors contribute to survival in different environments, and in particular to antibiotic resistance in bacteria. We hope to start systematic mapping of environmental antibiotic resistance by surveying water samples from rivers.

Over time and with collaborations, this should help us link data from three real-world settings which often remain disconnected: the lab, the clinic, and the environment. It would also expand our understanding of the phenomena that lead to antibiotic resistance.

While we understand how DNA-based changes are transmitted across generations, the impact of protein-based changes on evolution remains poorly understood. Proteins are biomolecules responsible for carrying out most cellular functions, and their sequence and function is therefore very important to the cell. Mistakes made during the synthesis of proteins (mistranslation) lead to altered proteins, which are most often harmful but can also be beneficial when the cell is under stress.

Even though these altered proteins (unlike mutated DNA) cannot be transmitted to the next generation, mistranslation can impact several critical cellular functions including how genes are expressed, how fast they mutate, and various forms of stress resistance including resistance to antibiotics. From a fundamental science point of view, exploring information flow from protein to DNA (rather than DNA to protein) leads to an exciting new arena.

Antibiotic resistance is anticipated to be the next pandemic. Does mistranslation in microbes affect their resistance to antibiotics? What impact of this research do you envision?

From a human perspective, mistranslation-based changes in disease-causing microbes can cause serious health issues by making the microbes more antibiotic-resistant. By exploring such phenomena, I hope to expand our understanding of how such changes can impact evolution and also affect real-world problems such as antibiotic resistance.

In today’s post-pandemic atmosphere, we are all acutely aware that pathogens adapt in unexpected ways. Translation errors help organisms to exceed the coding capacity of their genomes and throw up a variety of novel phenotypes (observable physical properties of an organism), some of which are stable across generations and may contribute to virulence.

As technical advances facilitate a better understanding of molecular mechanisms in this nascent field, I am confident that we will understand and combat bacterial stress tolerance, and hence infections more efficiently. In the future, I hope that work from my lab can drive novel and diverse drug designs and help combat the global health problem of AMR.

Exploring the evolutionary impact of mistranslation is relatively a new area of research. What are the key technical/non-technical challenges that you may encounter?

There are several technical challenges. Matching a change in phenotype of an organism with one or more altered proteins is one. Disentangling genetic from epigenetic contributions to adaptation is another.

From the point of view of measuring non-genetic resistance to antibiotics, non-genetic resistance can arise in several ways; and there is no technique available for an overall identification and quantitative estimation of such phenotypes. The paucity of long-term data for clinical as well as environmental resistance trends means that correlating clinical with environmental and laboratory resistance remains a challenge. This is a roadblock that we hope to address in our work at least in part.

On a non-technical front as well, there are problems. The systems that support independent science researchers do not make it easy for anyone beyond a certain age. The age limits for applying to postdoctoral grants as well as during hiring is a hurdle for everyone, but it becomes increasingly difficult for women who have maternity-related breaks. There are now grants that specifically account for career breaks and give age concessions to women, and this is great, but the (often unstated) age rule during hiring at an early stage in your career can be very discouraging.

How will Ashoka help you in your professional journey and why did you choose to work at Ashoka?

51��� has a diverse set of accomplished biologists whom I hope to learn from and collaborate with. I think one big plus about this institution has been its focus on independent thinking and experience rather than age limits.

My impression is that the University is driven towards investing in people as individuals. This creates a low-stress and supportive atmosphere, making it easier to discuss concerns regarding work-life balance. The flexible atmosphere, support for other daily activities, and generous funding nurture a creative space that I find quite unique in today’s science ecosystem in India.

(Edited by Ms Saman Waheed. She is currently an Assistant Manager at the Office of PR & Communications, 51���.)

51���

Anirban Chakraborty on Using Perfect Mix of Ingredients for Tertiary Education

Anirban Chakraborty, Assistant Vice President- Research & Academic Development, 51�����participated in a Panel discussion on��Using Perfect Mix of Ingredients for Tertiary Education, organised by BW Businessworld during the��BW��Edunext Summit &��BW��Education 40 Under 40 Awards. The discussion focused on NEP & Indian Higher Education.

Other panelists included Prof. Partha Chatterjee, HOD - Economics, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR and Prof. (Dr.) Nitin Arora, Proctor, Amity University - Uttar Pradesh. The panel was moderated By   Ruhail Amin, Sr. Editor, BW Businessworld & Executive Editor, BW Applause.

51���

51��� Researchers Examine How Social Identities & Group Norms Shape Online Conversations

Over the last few years, we have been constantly reminded of the rapidly growing influence of social media and computer-mediated communication (CMC). While some initial research on CMC indicates that anonymity and invisibility create an equalizing effect that can eliminate stereotypes and enhance interpersonal contact, there is increasing evidence to show that it may strengthen biases because of the increased group identification and in-group salient behaviors (group salience) and reduced interpersonal cues. This is what caught Sramana Majumdar’s attention, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at 51���.

Having been interested in intergroup conflict and identity, it became apparent to her that to understand present-day group identities, norms, intergroup attitudes, prejudice, and conflict, one must adequately attend to what is happening on social media. There is a lack of psychological research, especially in understudied developing countries like India, which are also some of the largest consumers of digital media. This is what motivated Prof. Majumdar and her team of research students, including Maanya Tewatia, Devika Jamkhedkar, and Khushi Bhatia at the to examine this space, from a social psychological and intergroup contact perspective.

The main aim of the project was to examine social media interactions among Indian users, from a social psychological perspective. The researchers wanted to understand how social identity and group norms were shaping online conversations, and if that was transforming how and what we feel about ‘others’ (other group members, who identified with a different religion, gender, region, language, or nationality).
A mixed-method project was designed to address multiple aspects of social media interactions. Firstly, online surveys were conducted to note individuals’ self-reports and observations about their interactions across gender and religion on major social media platforms. Secondly, a qualitative discourse analysis of posts and comments on public Facebook forums that featured conversations around feminism was performed. This was to further understand how gender norms were reflected in these conversations, especially in the usage of common online terms like pseudo-feminism, INCELS, Manosphere, etc. Lastly, through multiple experiments, researchers at 51��� measured how the valence (negative/neutral/positive) of online posts from members of other groups, and the degree to which an individual identified with their own group, would predict attitudes towards other groups.

From the qualitative study, it was discovered that speakers conflicted over the discourse of feminism in various ways, by using traditional as well as novel terms that refer to descriptive meanings of gender categories. These included new discourses within feminism (pseudo feminism, choice feminism.) and men’s rights (Incels, MGTOW). Flaming (the use of hateful and aggressive language) was also prominent, specifically in conversations around sex and sexual choice. Here, the threat to ingroup identity was met with reactive aggression. Lastly, interactions highlighted several challenges to established meanings of feminism, by pointing towards intersectional identities.

Through comprehensive experiments, researchers at 51��� were able to capture how group categorization affected attitudes, where lower ingroup-outgroup* differentiation produced the most positive attitudes. Yet, this was different when we looked at historically segregated group identities (North Indian/ South Indian), where regional identity significantly influenced how the perception of positive vs negative online posts affected outgroup attitudes. Emotions like empathy also mediated the relationship between message valence and intergroup attitudes.

This is one of the first social psychological investigations into CMC in the Indian context, and one of the few studies overall to look at mediated social media interactions, that is, via asynchronous posts and comments. The findings not only add to and diversify work on CMC and intergroup relations but also highlight how existing social identities, history, and political realities interact with words and messages to change social dynamics.

It is anticipated that this research will contribute to our limited understanding of technology and social life by aiding informed policy around cyber safety that leverages positive contact and reduces the adverse consequences of negative experiences which could fuel further conflict and violence.

(Edited by Dr Yukti Arora and Ms Saman Waheed)

Reference Article: , Front. Psychol., Sec. Gender, Sex, and Sexualities, June 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 855947

51���

Former Principal Scientific Advisor K. VijayRaghavan to chair 51���’s Science Advisory Council

51��� today announced the setting up of a Science Advisory Council, chaired by Professor K. VijayRaghavan, Former Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India. The Council will advise the Vice-Chancellor on enhancing research, teaching and training in the Natural Sciences, Computer Science and Mathematics. The objective of this initiative is to build 51��� into a hub of high-quality scientific research and help stimulate research across India, addressing important problems that face the world today.

As Ashoka’s strong research and teaching programmes in the Natural Sciences, Computer Science and Mathematics develop, the university will also develop a meetings and workshop centre to bring in the best academics from India and abroad to conduct experimental and lecture workshops in diverse specialised subjects. These will be attended by students and researchers from all over India, particularly from universities and colleges where the research ecosystem needs strengthening. The Science Council will also help host Summer ‘Genius’ Programmes across the discipline of sciences for talented young students. With these and other related efforts, Ashoka hopes to assist in broadening the footprint of excellence in the sciences in India by democratising access and opportunities for students, while strengthening its contributions to the country and the world through original research.

The Council will also help build collaborations and forge partnerships with research institutions in order to raise resources to further enhance research capacity. Apart from this, the members of the Council will advise the Vice-Chancellor on building innovative post-graduate programmes that can make an impact on society and nurture scholars in the field. 

Founding members of the Council include Rajesh Gopakumar, Senior Professor and Director, ICTS-TIFR Bangalore; Yamuna Krishnan, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago; Priyamvada Natarajan, Professor of Astronomy & Physics at Yale University; and Somak Raychaudhury, Director, IUCAA, Pune. Membership of the Council is honorary. 51��� is also bringing in top senior, junior and non-resident faculty, visiting professors and research scholars from all across India and abroad. 

On setting up the council, Professor Malabika Sarkar, Vice-Chancellor at 51���, said “We are delighted to announce the setting up of our own Science Advisory Council that will play a strategic role in taking our ambitious Sciences programme to the next level, strengthening international interdisciplinary collaborations and pursuing important areas of scientific inquiry.”

Professor K VijayRaghavan, Former Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, who will be heading the Council, said “It gives me immense pleasure to take on this role at 51���, which has been making significant strides into various areas of cutting-edge research, aimed at solving some of the most important scientific issues of our time. The Council will play a very important role in guiding 51���’s research and development agenda as it enters the next phase of its evolution as a world-class interdisciplinary institution.”

51���

Ashoka faculty Bann-Seng Tan awarded prestigious grant

The 2022 Spring Centennial Center Research Grants, worth 2500 USD, is to support his research project, “The Logic of Authoritarian Reactions to Natural Disasters.” The grant duration is from June 2022 to December 2023.

“My project studies the reaction of autocratic recipients toward offers of foreign aid relief in the aftermath of natural disasters. While natural disasters occur randomly, the reactions of states in their aftermath are distinctively political. I articulate a theory governing such political reactions. I argue authoritarian recipients choose their reaction toward foreign relief strategically. They may facilitate, obstruct or divert foreign relief. Their choice depends on the political relevance of the disaster victims and the need of the regime for performance legitimacy. To test the theory, I am building an original dataset containing data on natural disasters, foreign aid, and regime characteristics. A primary outcome of this project, therefore, is to collect, code and enter data on policy responses of states into a machine-readable format. This in turn facilitates subsequent statistical analysis,” said Prof. Bann-Seng Tan, who has received a Ph.D. from the City University New York, Graduate Centre. 

He was previously assistant professor of international relations at Bogazici University. He has also taught at the College of William & Mary, Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY), and Hunter College, CUNY.

“The grant represents the confidence of APSA Centennial Center in the social science research done by faculty at 51���,” he added. 

Prof. Bann-Seng Tan has previously authored “Aid and Democracy Promotion: Liberalization at the Margins.”

The Centennial Center’s mission is to advance the political science discipline through a broad range of programs supporting research, teaching, and public engagement. 

51��� pushes frontiers of knowledge to achieve research excellence across multiple disciplines. The amalgamation of basic sciences with humanities and social sciences has created a vibrant environment which facilitates several unique interdisciplinary research opportunities for researchers at the university.

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Chaperones Conducting the Orchestra in Cellular Assemblies

Ceaseless interactions with the basement membrane (a type of specialized extracellular matrix – ECM) allow cells in our body to migrate effectively across tissues. The migration of cells is tightly mediated via a force-driven brake mechanism displayed by large cellular assemblies called focal adhesions (FA). These multi-protein complexes comprise of more than 100 proteins, and mechanical linkages within these complexes enable proper transmission and transduction of mechanical force through the cells. Any distress within this nexus of linkages can oftentimes contribute to a multitude of diseases.

As a result, it is important to investigate various factors that could modulate the force-response of these large assemblies of proteins. Furthermore, given the relative contribution of each protein (that forms focal adhesions) towards cellular migration, evaluating the force-response of each of these proteins also proves to be an important step towards better comprehending the larger orchestra at play. The study, published in , led by Prof Shubhasis Haldar at 51��� have pioneered in providing insights into a plausible single-molecule framework to determine the force sensitivity of FA proteins.  

Force sensitivity, in simple terms, is defined as the capability of the protein to withstand a certain amount of force while performing its biological functions. Since proteins predominantly exist in two states – folded and unfolded – a folded protein molecule can unfold depending on the magnitude of force that it experiences. Intrinsically, protein molecules tend to remain in their folded states, but a higher mechanical load can lead to the unfolding of these proteins. This mechanical response of proteins establishes a mechanical switch that mediates its interactions with other proteins, and thereby influences cellular behaviour.

Given their involvement in almost every cellular process, the functional and structural maintenance of proteins is of utmost priority to the cell. Quite like its literary counterpart, molecular chaperones inside our cells are proteins that assist other cellular proteins in maintaining their structure-function relationship. These chaperones also feature in the FA assemblies, and emerging evidence is suggestive of their involvement in modulating focal adhesion dynamics as well. In addition to studies that have reported the role of chaperones in facilitating the folding and disaggregation of unfolded and aggregated proteins, results from Prof Shubhasis Haldar’s group at 51��� indicate molecular chaperones playing a mechanical role as well.

A single FA protein molecule tends to be force-sensitive within the piconewton (pN; 10^-12 N) range, and molecular chaperones are able to modulate the force sensitivity of these FA proteins. Talin is a central FA protein that exhibits this force-dependent folding behaviour and consequent interactions. Within the 13 sub-domains (R1-R13) that make up its flexible rod domain, R3 is mechanically least stable, unfolding at a very low force of 5pN. The R13 domain, on the other hand, displays greater mechanical stability, unfolding at ~15 pN. Functionally, at forces <5pN, talin interacts with Rap1 Interacting Adaptor Molecule (RIAM), whereas at forces >5 pN, talin unfolds and interacts with vinculin. This mechanical switching is mirrored in cellular behaviour, accelerating cellular migration. Interestingly, Chakraborty, et al. have observed that molecular chaperones can modulate the mechanical stability of talin protein.

It was observed that holdase (unfoldase) chaperones – ones that help stabilize the protein in an unfolded state – facilitated unfolding of Talin at a lower force. In contrast, foldase chaperones increased the mechanical stability of talin, therefore unfolding at a higher force. Consequently, this chaperone-modulated mechanical stability can then influence FA complex dynamics and cellular behaviour.

In pathological conditions like metastatic cancer, where talin-centred FA dynamics play a central role, this force dependent interaction highlights a plausible mechanical effect of chaperones via triggering a domain-locked or domain-unlocked talin response in cell behaviour.

The Structural Mechanobiology Lab at 51��� has set up a key scientific instrument known as the Covalent Magnetic Tweezer (CMT) – a first of its kind in India – to understand this force-dependent interaction of talin with chaperones. This technique enables one to hold a single protein for extended durations of time. To put to scale, this technique operates on a single protein that is of the order of a billionth of the width of a single strand of hair.

Prepared by Soham Chakraborty, Ayush Mistry and Yukti Arora

Reference article: , Communications Biology, Volume 5, Issue 1, April 4 2022

Authors of the research article:

Shubhasis Haldar* – Structural Mechanobiology Lab, Department of Biological Sciences, 51���, Sonepat, Haryana, India

Soham Chakraborty – Department of Biological Sciences, 51���, Sonipat, India

Deep Chaudhuri – Department of Biological Sciences, 51���, Sonipat, India

Souradeep Banerjee – Department of Biological Sciences, 51���, Sonipat, India

Madhu Bhatt – Department of Biological Sciences, 51���, Sonipat, India

* Corresponding Author

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51���’s Ph.D. Student Shreya Kundu awarded the prestigious Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship

Shreya Kundu is a third year Ph.D. student in the Department of History, working under the supervision of Prof. Aparna Vaidik. She has been awarded by the Charles Wallace India Trust; CWIT Research Grant is given to selective Ph.D. students enrolled in Indian Universities for short-term research visits in the UK.

Shreya joined 51��� in 2019 as a part of the second batch of History Ph.D. cohort. She completed her M.A. and M.Phil from Jadavpur University, Kolkata in 2017 and 2019, respectively.

At 51���, her thesis explores the everyday lives and experiences of the labouring children in the jute mills of Colonial Bengal from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. It examines the economic, affective, and spatial dimensions of the life of the proletarian children and the ways in which their lives were interlocked with global capital, colonial policy-making, and the spaces of the factory, working-class home and school. This research interweaves histories of labour, emotions and spaces with that of the history of childhood and, in doing that, it challenges the adult masculine discourses of labour and gender history that have invisibilised the history of the labouring children in India.

With the help of this grant, Shreya will be able to access various journals, Factory Commission Reports, Humanitarian Aid Collection, Legislative Reports, Committee Minutes and Missionaries' Charity works which are not available in the Indian archives. These resource materials are spread across the archival collections at London and Birmingham in England and Manchester, Glasgow and Dundee in Scotland. Additionally, she will also be presenting a paper in the Children and Childhoods Conference at the University of Suffolk, UK.

This project begins from the historical juncture of colonial history. It addresses a wider knowledge gap in the scholarship on poor children in colonial India. Children as a segment of colonised population in colonial and national discourses have remained a focal point among the childhood historians in India. This research, however, portrays the ‘native’ children as interlocutors in the imperial, national and regional level discourses on Three C’s: Childhood, Capitalism and Colonialism which have remained an untouched area in the Indian scholarship on imperial childhood(s).
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Prepared by Dr Yukti Arora

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‘Our research shows mitochondria can actively control growth and division of cells’

My research career did not stem from an early passion for science or even a specific research interest. I am an artist and I did not have a scientific mind at all. I wanted to be in performing arts, but I could not continue training as an artist because of my sensitive vocal cords.

Looking at my argumentative behaviour my father pushed me to take up science and it was during my doctoral training that I fell in love with the thrill of science, and realized there is a lot more to understand about the cellular powerhouses mitochondria. 

In my postdoctoral research, I initiated mitochondrial cell biology research in the lab of Dr. , at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Then I pursued research in mitochondrial bioenergetics regulation with , at the , before launching my at at Birmingham.

I have always been fascinated with how we humans operate on a daily basis and that’s why I chose to do an Honours in Human Physiology from Presidency College, Kolkata. Currently, I am studying the Structure-Function relationship of mitochondria, given the structure of these multifaceted organelles can vary within one cell or between types of cells.��

My current research is a continuation of my postdoctoral studies at the Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz lab at the NIH who specialize in microscopy. In her lab, I wanted to learn microscopy while studying mitochondria. Jennifer’s lab had never studied mitochondria before. At that time the field was interested in one particular structure of mitochondria which is one extreme in the spectrum of mitochondrial structures. I questioned if one extreme exists, why not look for the existence of the other extreme in the spectrum of mitochondrial structures. This structure was very much like the connected branches of the bare trees that I got to see everywhere in my first fall season in the Washington DC area. My research identified that end of the spectrum, which we named as ‘hyperfused’ mitochondria. My lab continues to study the functional significance of hyperfused mitochondrial structure and its different variations.

Structure-Function Relationship of Mitochondira

Mitochondria in our cells (eukaryotes) are thought to have originated from engulfing bacteria (prokaryotes) through a process called endosymbiosis during the course of evolution. In the current world, we find that all eukaryotic cells have mitochondria in some form or the other. Our research shows mitochondria can control the growth and division of cells. Thus, we anticipate that our research will unfold key aspects of how mitochondria might have become indispensable for the eukaryotic cells during their evolution. 

Our research findings will also have a significant impact in understanding the contribution of mitochondria in regenerative biology as well as in cancer biology. We are poised to extend our research towards identifying mitochondria based targeted cancer therapy. My research is at the crossroads of diverse fields in biology, so navigating between the fields in a way to make our research equally accessible and understandable is the biggest challenge. 

However, we anticipate the journey to be fruitful and constructive here at 51��� considering that all the departments are strategically placed amidst other allied departments to carry out multidisciplinary research.  

This article is extracted from an interview conducted by Dr Yukti Arora; edited by Saket Suman

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Philosophy as a vehicle for self-understanding

Throughout my academic journey, I have benefitted from some incredible role models. My father is a university professor in mathematics and I have had the privilege of seeing academic research as an option from very early on. That said, it was not necessarily what I had envisioned for myself. I had an interest in art and I loved the idea of working at the intersection of multiple cultures. 

This led me to declare a major in East Asian Studies. But I was also always particularly interested in the relationship between our psychology and our actions. How come it’s easy to motivate myself to do this but seemingly impossible to motivate myself to do that, even though I think that is just as important as this? At the prompting of some wonderful mentors and peers, I decided to take more philosophy and, particularly, a course in philosophy of action. 

It was love at first sight. Philosophy of action addressed exactly the kinds of questions that had been nagging at me. So, ultimately philosophy presented not only a fascinating area of research but also a vehicle for self-understanding. Moreover, philosophy allowed me to bring together all the passions I wanted to pursue. As part of my research, I spent two years of graduate school living in Japan and my work has benefited tremendously from a multicultural perspective. I also draw monthly philosophy comics which allows me to indulge my love for art.

My research is divided into two projects: one in moral psychology and one in Buddhist philosophy. 

In moral psychology, I have been focusing on the nature of moods. There has been a flourishing literature in philosophy on the nature of the emotions but moods have been regularly pushed aside as less interesting. 

For an emotion like anger, there is something we are angry at and there is also an associated judgement that comes with the emotion—something like “so-and-so wronged me.” But what of a frustrated mood? There is no particular thing that I am frustrated at. I’m frustrated at whatever comes my way. This nebulous nature of moods makes them difficult to theorize about. In my work, I argue that moods are just as philosophically interesting as emotions and, indeed, talking about moods can help us answer many different questions about aesthetics, morality, society, and metaphysics.

In Buddhist philosophy, I have been primarily interested in ethics and the issue of when it is permissible to break certain monastic precepts. In particular, I have been looking at the work of the 14th century Japanese monk Ninkū. Stereotypes see Japanese Buddhist philosophy as largely non-analytic. It is focused on meditation and direct insight. But Ninkū’s work provides another perspective. Ninkū supported academic debates and has left a wealth of lecture transcripts on various ethical topics. I am really excited to keep exploring Ninkū's work.

In the US, where I was educated, Buddhist philosophy has historically been the purview of history and religion departments. Meanwhile, analytic philosophy departments have remained bastions of western philosophy. As someone pursuing research both in more typical analytic philosophy and in Buddhist philosophy, I was worried that looking for a job would force me to make some difficult decisions. 

On one hand, I could lean into my interest in Buddhism and attempt to find work in a department outside of philosophy. On the other hand, I could focus on my more mainstream research and risk being in a department that didn’t support half of my research interests. 

At 51���, I have been incredibly lucky to be part of a department that supports not just part but all of my research. I hope that being at an institution that allows for this kind of interdisciplinary work will allow me to bring my two fields of interest closer together.

This article is extracted from an interview conducted by Dr Yukti Arora; edited by Saket Suman

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‘Magnetic systems can be used as a basis of many present and future technologies’

I remember as a child I used to hold a magnet in front of a television screen and wonder why the colours change and the picture get disrupted; this was the curiosity that prompted me to study Physics.

I completed my Ph.D. from S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Science, India in 2016. Subsequently I moved to ETZ Zurich to pursue my post-doctoral research, during which I received ETH Zurich Post-Doctoral research fellowship award-2016, Funded by ETH Zurich and Marie Curie Action people COFUND Program. Then I moved to Uppsala University for my second postdoc. I received the prestigious Marie Sklodowska- Curie Fellowship in 2021. I have also received the SONATA grant as a principal investigator from the Polish science department. Machines have always fascinated me.

My current research is in the field of magnonics and spintronics. In particular, my goal is to address the understanding and controlling magnetization (spin)-dynamics at ultrafast timescale in case of ferromagnetic nanostructures. This research area is very active, competitive, and dynamic with key research outputs having applications in spintronics.

We have heard about electronics, where the charge of an electron is used to make devices. In the case of spintronics, we work with the spin of an electron to make devices. The material that is used is called ferromagnetic material e.g., Iron, Nickel, Cobalt. When a ferromagnetic material is disturbed, the disturbance propagates in the form of a spin wave. One can visualise it creating ripples when we throw a stone in still water.

The spin waves have the potential to transfer information. The quantization of spin waves is called magnon like the quantization of light waves is called photon. The research field is popularly known as magnonics. The ordered arrangement of atoms, ions or molecules forms a crystal structure. In the case of magnonic crystal, magnetic materials are arranged periodically in one, two or three dimensions and they form a magnonic crystal.

In general, the magnetization dynamics from femto to nanosecond time scale is studied. At nanosecond time scale, the precession of magnetization is observed in the form of spin waves. The wavelengths of spin waves are orders of magnitude shorter than those of light waves operating at the same frequency range, which makes magnonic crystals suitable candidates for nanoscale on chip microwave signal processing.

I have studied the tunability of the spin waves by varying various physical and geometrical parameters such as shape, size, lattice arrangement and materials.

Magnetic materials play an important role in modern technology. They are key components of motors, generators, and transformers. Magnetic “bubble films” could be used for storing and manipulating information. Amorphous magnetic alloys attracted considerable attention for their use in the magnetic recording and data storage technology.

The immediate future of magnetic materials involves greater use of nanofabrication to engineer new properties and devices. Many of these new magnetic materials technologies will converge in the emerging field of spintronics, (magnonics) where spin (magnon)-dependent transport phenomena hold the potential to supplant semiconductors in some microelectronic applications. Magnetic systems have potential to be used as a basis of many present and future technologies including patterned magnetic media, magnetic random-access memory, magnetic logic devices and magnetic resonance imaging, racetrack memory etc.

Magnonic crystals are also a suitable candidate for nanoscale on chip microwave signal processing and nanomagnonic devices, including magnonic waveguides, filters, splitters, phase shifters, spin-wave emitters, and logic elements.

The research findings from my lab will have indirect applications in technology. Magnonics is relatively a new field of research and the bigger goal of this field is to substitute current electronic devices with the magnonic devices.

51���'s Liberal Arts and Sciences education enables critical thinking and complex problem solving, as research and teaching are totally integrated.

This article is extracted from an interview conducted by Dr Yukti Arora; edited by Saket Suman

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