To paraphrase something I tell my students, especially when they are starting a research project –
There are certainly many people in the world who think better than us. But the competition reduces when it comes to the people who take their thoughts and ‘do’ something with them. Novelty of ideas is in the novelty of connections of ideas. There is always more scope for new connections of old ideas.
Generally, the game is won not in out-thinking, but in out-doing. This does not mean that doing excludes thinking. In fact, many times, doing fosters thinking.
There are several models for using YouTube. One of them is to use it as a substitute for television and media outlets. This is where the number of views, subscriptions, and reach becomes important.
Another model is to harness YouTube as an archival source that is open to the public. This is one of the crucial elements of a platform that is easily accessible and, importantly, searchable. Such a platform becomes a repository for many informal academic discussions and interactions.
The archive model is an important category, especially if there is no need to generate revenue from the content deposited on the platform. A crucial aspect is that it can be accessed across the world and, in that sense, represents truly open-access content without paywalls, publication charges or subscriptions. Therefore, I am glad to see that many Indian academic programs, including NPTEL, ICTS, Science Activity Center/Media Center at IISER-Pune and many others are utilizing platforms such as YouTube to post their lectures and talks. Also, many individual academics in India are gradually using YouTube to discuss their work, in the context of research, teaching and entrepreneurship.
This development is slowly turning out to be an invaluable resource that can reach a large audience. Although YouTube is one of the most well-known platforms, many other platforms in the context of social media can also be tapped to spread knowledge. Given their reach and simplicity of use, both for creators and users, these tools become important in a vast country such as India.
As audio-visual public platforms join hands with artificial intelligence tools, they can positively (hopefully) affect how people, especially students, consume educational content. Going forward, I anticipate language translation through direct dubbing to be a game-changer. It could attract many new viewers who have been hesitant to watch technical content simply because it was in a foreign language. Of course, on these platforms, the noise is equally high compared to the signal, and therefore, curating good, targeted resources will be vital. Also, these platforms cannot be treated as a substitute for formal education, but as an extension or complementary source for research and education.
Today, I complete 15 years as a faculty member at IISER-Pune. I have attempted to put together a list of some lessons (based on my previous writings) that I have learnt so far. A disclaimer to note is that this list is by no means a comprehensive one, but a text of self-reflection from my viewpoint on Indian academia. Of course, I write this in my personal capacity. So here it is..
People First, Infrastructure Next As an experimental physicist, people and infrastructure in the workplace are of paramount importance. When I am forced to prioritize between them, I have chosen people over infrastructure. I am extremely fortunate to have worked with, and continue to work with, excellent students, faculty colleagues, and administrative staff members. A good workplace is mainly defined by the people who occupy it. I do not neglect the role of infrastructure in academia, especially in a country like India, but people have a greater impact on academic life.
Create Internal Standards In academia, there will always be evaluations and judgments on research, teaching, and beyond. Every academic ecosystem has its own standards, but they are generalized and not tailored to individuals. It was important for me to define what good work meant for myself. As long as internal standards are high and consistently met, external evaluation becomes secondary. This mindset frees the mind and allows for growth, without unnecessary comparisons.
Compare with Yourself, Not Others The biggest stress in academic life often arises from comparison with peers. I’ve found peace and motivation in comparing my past with my present. Set internal benchmarks. Be skeptical of external metrics. Strive for a positive difference over time.
Constancy and Moderation Intellectual work thrives not on intensity alone, but on constancy. Most research outcomes evolve over months and years. Constant effort with moderation keeps motivation high and the work enjoyable. Binge-working is tempting, but rarely effective for sustained intellectual output.
Long-Term Work We often overestimate what we can do in a day or a week, and underestimate what we can do in a year. Sustained thought and work over time can build intellectual and technical monuments. Constancy is underrated.
Self-Mentoring Much of the academic advice available is tailored for Western systems. Some of it is transferable to Indian contexts, but much of it is not. In such situations, I find it useful to mentor myself by learning from the lives and work of people who have done extraordinary science in India. I have been deeply inspired by many people, including M. Visvesvaraya, Ashoke Sen, R. Srinivasan, and Gagandeep Kang.
Write Regularly—Writing Is Thinking Writing is a tool to think. Not just formal academic writing, but any articulation of thought, journals, blogs, drafts, clarifies and sharpens the mind. Many of my ideas have taken shape only after I started writing about them. Writing is part of the research process, not just a means of communicating its outcomes.
Publication is an outcome, not a goal Publication is just one outcome of doing research. The act of doing the work itself is very important. It’s where the real intellectual engagement happens. Focus on the process, not just the destination.
Importance of History and Philosophy of Physics Ever since my undergraduate days, I have been interested in the history and philosophy of science, especially physics. Although I never took a formal course, over time I have developed a deep appreciation for how historical and philosophical perspectives shape scientific understanding. They have helped me answer the fundamental question, “Why do I do what I do?” Reflecting on the evolution of ideas in physics—how they emerged, changed, and endured—has profoundly influenced both my teaching and research.
Value of Curiosity-Driven Side Projects Some of the most fulfilling work I’ve done has emerged from side projects, not directly tied to funding deadlines or publication pressure, but driven by sheer curiosity. These projects, often small and exploratory, have helped me learn new tools, ask new questions, and sometimes even open up new directions in research. Curiosity, when protected from utilitarian pressures, can be deeply transformative.
Professor as a Post-doc A strategy I found useful is to treat myself as a post-doc in my own lab. In India, retaining long-term post-docs is difficult. Hence, many hands-on skills and subtle knowledge are hard to transfer. During the lockdown, I was the only person in the lab for six months, doing experiments, rebuilding setups, and regaining technical depth. That experience was invaluable.
Teaching as a Social Responsibility Scientific social responsibility is a buzzword, but for me, it finds its most meaningful expression in teaching. The impact of good teaching is often immeasurable and long-term. Watching students grow is among the most rewarding experiences in academia. Local, visible change matters.
Teaching Informally Matters Teaching need not always be formal. Informal teaching, through conversations, mentoring, and public outreach, can be more effective and memorable. It is free of rigid expectations and evaluations. If possible, teach. And teach with joy. As Feynman showed us, it is a great way to learn.
Foster Open Criticism In my group, anyone is free to critique my ideas, with reason. This open culture has been liberating and has helped me learn. It builds mutual respect and a more democratic intellectual space.
Share Your Knowledge If possible, teach. Sharing knowledge is a fundamental part of academic life and enriches both the teacher and the learner. The joy of passing on what you know is priceless.
Social Media: Effective If Used Properly Social media, if used responsibly, is a powerful tool, especially in India. It can bridge linguistic and geographical divides, connect scientists across the world, and communicate science to diverse audiences. For Indian scientists, it is a vital instrument of outreach and dialogue. My motivation to start the podcast was in this dialogue and self-reflection.
Emphasis on Mental and Physical Health In my group, our foundational principle is clear: good health first, good work next. Mental and physical well-being are not optional; they are necessary conditions for a sustainable, meaningful academic life. There is no glory in research achieved at the cost of one’s health.
Science, Sports, and Arts: A Trinity I enjoy outdoor sports like running, swimming, and cricket. Equally, I love music, poetry, and art from all cultures. This trinity of pursuits—science, sports, and the arts—makes us better human beings and enriches our intellectual and emotional lives. They complement and nourish each other.
Build Compassion into Science None of this matters if the journey doesn’t make you a better human being. Be kind to students, collaborators, peers, and especially yourself. Scientific research, when done well, elevates both the individual and the collective. It has motivated me to humanize science.
Academia Can Feed the Stomach, Brain, and Heart Academia, in its best form, can feed your stomach, brain and heart. Nurturing and enabling all three is the overarching goal of academics. And perhaps the goal of humanity.
My academic journey so far has given me plenty of reasons to love physics, India and humanity. Hopefully, it has made me a better human being.
New ideas are often created by the merging of two old ideas. How often is this true, and how often do we tend to forget this?
Today I visited the Institute of Science Tokyo, formerly known as Tokyo Tech. This is a new avatar of a very interesting institution funded by the government of Japan. By merging the Tokyo Institute of Technology with the Tokyo Medical and Dental University, a very interesting concept has emerged: the Institute of Science Tokyo. These two institutions have been important pillars of the research and educational landscape of Tokyo, and I had the privilege of visiting this new place, which is a result of a new merger.
Thanks to the invitation and fantastic hospitality of Prof. Daiki Nishiguchi, a faculty member in the Physics Department of the Institute of Science Tokyo, I had a memorable experience. I met Daiki a couple of years ago at the University of Tokyo, where he previously held a faculty position. Recently, he has moved to the Institute of Science Tokyo to establish his independent research group as an Associate Professor.
I gave a physics seminar on some of our work on structured light and confinement of soft matter, especially thermally active colloidal matter in optothermal potentials. Since Daiki and his group (see image below) have expertise in topological soft matter, my seminar emphasized structured topological beams, including ring optical beams and optical vortices. I gave an overview of our experimental results and highlighted the prospect of utilizing the topology of light to interact with topological soft matter.
There is much to explore at this interface, and again, it brings me back to the point that new ideas often emerge from the merging of evolving old ideas, such as topological light and topological soft matter.
This is my third visit to Japan, and I always find their calm, focused, and deeply committed research environment inspiring. There is much to learn from their approach to science and technology, and my visit to the Institute of Science Tokyo reinforced this thought.
I thank Daiki and his research group for the wonderful time I had at their laboratory and offer my best wishes to him in his new explorations.
Whereas Sunday was bright, sunny, and clear for outdoor activities, Monday started cloudy with a forecast of rain. I started from my living place to Kyoto University around 10 in the morning. I took the city bus, which shuttles people from the city centre to the university. Within half an hour, I was in a serene, green, and beautiful campus, typical of a Japanese university. Kyoto University has a rich blend of modern and ancient architecture, and I was not surprised to see a large maroon-coloured ark at the entrance of the university.
With Prof. Tetsuro, who hosted me at the Graduate School of Informatics at Kyoto University.
I met Tesuji Tetsuro upon arrival (our previous in-person meeting was in the 2023 Optics & Photonics Congress on optical manipulation at Yokohama). He had just arrived from his run (he is a regular marathon runner), and we had a brief chat. He had arranged an office for me to occupy for the day. We had a short discussion and thereafter went for lunch. Prof. Kazuo Aoki (Tetsuro’s erstwhile advisor at Kyoto University) accompanied us, and I was delighted to meet him. We had a delicious lunch at a small Italian restaurant.
Around 3 pm, we met at the seminar hall where I gave my talk titled Hot Brownian Dynamics Driven by Structured Light. One of the key points I emphasized in my talk was the relevance of structured light in driving Brownian dynamics of colloids. I spoke about various parts of the stochastic differential equation (see equation 1 below) that represent the dynamics of a colloidal system interacting with an external force.
A key element of my discussion was the generalized driving force on the right-hand side of the equation, where the conventional restoring force in an optical trap can be generalized to an external driving force due to structured light. This versatile force is a result of a large set of linear and angular momentum states of structured light. These states can drive soft matter, further resulting in unconventional assembly and dynamics. Furthermore, the generalized driving force can include not only the optical force but also the thermal and hydrodynamic effects initiated by optical illumination. The combination of these forces culminates in a resultant force, offering an unconventional driving mechanism to drive the structure, assembly, and dynamics of colloids and other kinds of soft matter systems, including droplets and fluids. I showed some of our experimental results related to the above-mentioned concepts with emphasis on rotational and orbital degrees of freedom. I also presented our recent results on synchronization in an optothermal trap.
campus mapnear the entrance of Kyoto University at a Japanese izakayaWith Tetsuro and some PhD students
We had a long discussion on how to measure fluid dynamic properties around such colloids, especially when there is an external perturbation force, such as a laser beam, which can itself influence the colloidal dynamics. Tetsuro also mentioned his protocols and certain simulation strategies utilized to study thermo-osmotic flows in such situations. I learned about interesting methods they have been developing to numerically simulate the interactions using differential temperatures. The strategy is interesting and deserves further attention by the community. He also showed his experimental setup and gave a tour of his laboratory facilities.
Overall, it was a long, thoughtful day with wonderful discussions on topics of common scientific interest. We ended with a delicious dinner at a Japanese izakaya, and I thank Tetsuro for his invitation and hospitality. Kyoto University has a wonderful atmosphere for research, and I hope to visit again.
Duff’s famous physics textbook from 1900 (5th edition) owned by Yukawa
Yukawa’s name on the book
Hideki Yukawa’s picture on the Nobel website
Apart from sipping the wonderful Japanese coffee and exploring the streets of Kyoto on foot, I have been looking into the archives of Kyoto University. I am mainly searching for records and books related to their physics department, and obviously, one of the names that pops out very often is Hideki Yukawa.
Yukawa was one of the Nobel laureates from this university. He obtained his Nobel Prize in Physics in 1949 for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces. He is a big name in physics, and there is a physical potential named after him, which means one can understand the intellectual heft he carries as a physicist. Yukawa spent most of his scientific career at Kyoto, specifically at the Kyoto Imperial University (now, no more imperial :-) ), and is regarded as one of the inspirations for a battery of many excellent theoretical physicists to have emerged out of not only Kyoto but also Japan, and perhaps many parts of the world. While looking through the archival records, I came across one of the textbooks owned by Yukawa, which has his signature on it. It made my day !
The textbook titled “A Text-Book of Physics,” edited by A. Wilmer Duff, is a classic. Yukawa had the 5th edition (1921), and this book went on to have 3 more editions. I hope to write more about this particular textbook because the author, Wilmer Duff, had a connection to Madras University (as a Professor) in India and was also on the faculty of my post-doc alma mater – Purdue University !
The scientific world is a small place with unanticipated, wonderful connections :-)
Many of the Nobel winners in science deserve the prize they get, but there are many deserving who do not make the list for various reasons, including sociology, geography & financial support. Using the Nobel prize as a benchmark of progress may lead to errors in the judgment of a country.
A better way to judge is to ask: how are science and technology in a country making lives better for the people of the country & the world? A better life includes both intellectual & material aspects. We, in India & the global south, can make progress if scientific thinking becomes prevalent in the everyday discourse of society, from family conversations to political debates. And prizes, by design, are exclusive. It is easier to exclude a country that is not scientific as no one cares in such a situation.
Scientific progress in a society is generally bottom-up. We have a large population of young people who should be more scientific in their worldview. If we have a large, scientifically oriented population, science and technological achievements become proportional.
If science-based intellectual & material progress is achieved, prizes will follow. But a Nobel should not be our primary goal. Better lives & better minds should be.
Dear students of science, especially physics. As you study a scientific concept, ask:
How does it connect to a measurement?
This is the first step in expanding your thinking into the realm of experiments, other branches of science, engineering, economics & society.
I am not saying that you should become an expert in engineering or economics, but you should have a basic understanding of the outward connection of the concept. You will be surprised to know how ‘context’ can bring a new perspective to your studies.
Even if you want to become a theoretical physicist/scientist, this way of thinking will help you to expand your intuition. Your theories/models may find relevance beyond your immediate peers. Importantly, this exposure will bring feedback – vital when you are exploring the unknowns.
Many scientists, including some great theoretical physicists, have taken this approach. For example, Feynman, Einstein, Bethe, and Penrose come to my mind. The 2024 Nobel winners in Physics, especially John Hopfield, is an excellent contemporary example of this way of thinking.
An unanticipated consequence of this way of thinking is that you may end up contributing significantly to a field of research that you were not associated with initially. Guess what: most of the creativity is about the connection of ideas. A useful connection has a deep impact on the outward world: other branches of science, engineering, economics & society.
Stoicheff, Boris. Gerhard Herzberg: An Illustrious Life in Science. Ottawa : Montréal ; Ithaca N.Y.: Canadian Forest Service,Canada, 2002.
Stoicheff, Boris P. “Gerhard Herzberg PC CC. 25 December 1904 – 3 March 1999.” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 49 (December 2003): 179–95. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.2003.0011.
VISMAYA - History & Philosophy of Physics 