Tag: India

ShuX in IISER Pune

Yesterday evening (10th Jan 2026), Shubhanshu Shukla, the recent Indian astronaut, was at IISER Pune as part of the ‘India Science Festival’. There was a huge crowd gathered to see and listen to him. Within IISER, it is rare to see such a massive gathering for a science event, and it was heartening to witness this on a Saturday evening. Thanks to schools and colleges in Pune, science and science-related activities get traction from the people of Pune (especially younger people). They enthusiastically participate in many events related to science.

 Such a gathering is very important for at least three reasons:

  1. It connects a scientifically oriented person to the public and thereby connects them to science.
  2. It showcases that there is some science-related activity happening within the Indian scene.
  3. It sends out a message to people that icons can be created out of people who do science funded by the public.

I would want to emphasize four other points:

  1. Scientific icons are as good as the science they represent. A major part of the credit should go to the organizations that supported and trained him, and this includes ISRO, NASA and the Indian Air Force.
  2. To put an astronaut in space, it takes a lot of effort at various levels of society. Public support is vital for such an effort. Public icons such as Shubhanshu Shukla are a good representation of what investment in science can do to the morale of the public, especially for young people.
  3. The created momentum should not be lost, given that recognizable people, such as astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, have made an imprint on young people. This should be followed up with measures to recruit them for science and technology.
  4. Space science and technology, astronomy and astrophysics have always been among the most fascinating domains to attract people into science. Many Indian scientists and a past astronaut, Rakesh Sharma, have played an important role in this pursuit. One should not forget them.

Let me conclude with a word of appreciation for Pune city. It is not a capital city, but its enthusiasm for intellectual pursuits is high, and it attracts a lot of enterprising people (recently, there was a public policy conference that had some amazing people). If it can get a lift in its public infrastructure, it can create its own path in the landscape of science and technology.

Raman in a marriage reception

C.V. Raman was obsessed with science, and he was actively thinking about research problems even on odd occasions when he was supposed to be socializing. Nagendra Nath, in 1971, recounts1:

In November 1969, he and Lady Lokasundari Raman were graciously pleased to attend the marriage reception of my daughter. Professor drew me aside outside the reception hall and told me for nearly half-an-hour that his latest problem was to give a proper theory of earthquakes. The present theories were based on models which were highly deficient as they did not properly take into account the shape of the earth and the wave nature of the disturbance.

Nearly half an hour !!
Imagine the condition of Nagendra Nath :-)

  1. Nath, N. S. Nagendra. ‘My Professor’. Current Science 40, no. 9 (1971): 234–35. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24074207.
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Hedi Born’s picture

This is Hedi Born (wife of Max Born) sending a picture with a note to Lokasundari Ammal (CV Raman’s wife) in 1937.

Max Born and his family spent some time at IISc, Bangalore, in 1935-36.

Amazing to see how communication channels have changed, but the human urge to communicate remains the same..

picture source: (Venkataraman, G.; Journey into Light: Life and Science of C.V. Raman. Indian Academy of Sciences, 1989. p. 364)

Conversation with Chaitanya Athale

Chaitanya is a professor of biology at IISER Pune and works on quantifying biology at the cellular scale. His lab focuses on cytoskeleton and cell shape research and explores synthetic biological roots to address a variety of questions at the cellular scale.

In this freewheeling conversation, we talked about quantitative biology in his lab, reading, the German language, his recent comic-themed book, and a bit on philosophy of biology as we explored his intellectual journey. Also, don’t miss the 3D model he shows to explain his research.

References with links:

‘Chaitanya Athale – IISER Pune’. Accessed 3 January 2026. https://www.iiserpune.ac.in/research/department/biology/people/faculty/regular-faculty/chaitanya-athale/6.

‘Dr. Chaitanya Athale – Lab – Cytoskeleton and Cell Shape Research – Synthetic Biology’. Accessed 3 January 2026. https://sites.iiserpune.ac.in/~cathale/.

‘‪Chaitanya Athale – ‪Google Scholar’. Accessed 3 January 2026. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Volq2gEAAAAJ&hl=en.

Chaitanya Athale | LinkedIn’. Accessed 3 January 2026. https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaitanyaa/?originalSubdomain=in.

Arias, Alfonso Martinez. The Master Builder: How the New Science of the Cell Is Rewriting the Story of Life. Basic Books, 2023.

 ‘Athale Lab: CyCelS 💉💉💉💉🚲🤿⛵ (@AthaleLab) / X’. 9 January 2025. https://x.com/athalelab.

How to Build Atomic LEGOs?

In ~8min, I try to explain how and why to build atomic Legos and their potential applications.

The video is for non-experts.

Reference for further reading:

Geim, A. K., and I. V. Grigorieva. ‘Van Der Waals Heterostructures’. Nature 499, no. 7459 (2013): 419–25. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12385.

Teaching & Meaning

What adds meaning to my academic work?

Perhaps, an anonymous feedback on your teaching is one of them….

“very well taught course at a well defined pace. The interesting way various different aspects and fields in Optics was introduced was fascinating, made us so very keen on knowing more! The mind maps at the beginning of every topic, the indexes professor made was a great way to keep the bigger picture in mind and helped us glide through it. The assignment was also a great way to make us go through materials without feeling it it be imposing, rather finding it more interesting! Thank you so much Sir for this amazing course, the enthusiastic way in which you taught, all the great conversations you engaged in with us, and opened our eyes to explore so much more in this field! thank you!!“

I had a diverse class (BS-Physics majors, MS Quantum Tech, iPhD) with 110+ students, and I am glad a lot of students enjoyed the course this time.
I am a bit overwhelmed by the positive feedback I received on my teaching methods. For sure, I learnt about the subject as much as they did.

And as I always say: there is more to learn…for all of us..

Human interaction zindabad :-)

Physics Ideas for Entrepreneurs

Starting a new (ad)venture

A YouTube channel dedicated to discussing physics ideas for entrepreneurs

I bring ideas from an ocean of physics and present them to anyone interested in using them for business and entrepreneurship. These are not physics lectures, but discussions on ideas with a perspective of economic utility.

As with all my ventures, it is open source.

Join me in this journey, and please share and subscribe

The first video is out:

Raman essay and Open-Access

I see that the essay I wrote on CV Raman and made open access (thanks to Resonance, which published it) has been used by several educators on YouTube, including some in Indian languages. Also, the Google AI overview shows the published essay as the main reference for a search related to Raman’s science communication (see slideshow below).

I am glad to see that making one’s writing open to all has positive effects. Open-access, not just for readers, but also for authors, is beneficial. Especially in India, paywalls for science are a detriment.

My worry is that open-access publishing has been mainly driven by commercial publishers that extract huge funds from the publishing authors. This defeats the purpose of open science, especially when the research of an author is publicly funded. Added to that, Indian researchers and writers cannot afford to pay huge sums for publishing articles and books.

The publication landscape (including journals and books) across the world needs an introspection. Open-access model is effective only when the readers and authors have access to that model. Otherwise, the model becomes a paywall for authors.