Antarctica, with an annual average temperature anywhere between minus ten to minus sixty, is one of the most inhospitable places on the Earth. However, this was not the case forty million years ago; a mild climate had prevailed there. Towards the end of the Late Eocene, approximately 33.7 million ye...

Watching Viswanathan Anand taking time to make his move when he plays against Magnus Carlsen reminds us about the famous theory of speed-accuracy trade-off. This idea has been challenged and debated in the field of olfaction research – forming two schools of thought, one supporting a causal link bet...

IISER Pune faculty member Dr R Vaidhyanathan's work has been granted a US patent for the preparation of a covalent organic framework (COF) that can serve as an electrocatalyst to split water. Hydrogen and oxygen, the constitutent molecules of water, thus released, have vital industrial applicatio...

Self assembly of proteins into superstructures is of interest considering its implications in variety of applications such as gene delivery, vaccine design and diagnostics. Genetic engineering involving computational methods and rational design strategies have been employed to design protein superst...

[caption id="attachment_1643" align="alignright" width="2001"] Graphic by Rafeeque Mavoor[/caption] On any given day you get to work, park your vehicle, meet a colleague, surprise an old friend or taste vada pav for the first time. Only some of these experiences will become memories that will las...

Dr. Thomas Pucadyil runs the Reconstitution Biology lab in IISER Pune. His research is based on a novel approach to address questions in membrane biology that he pioneered during his postdoctoral work. His techniques have found great success, as evidenced by the many accolades he has received, the m...

Typically, the number of individuals in a population is a good estimate of whether or not bacteria can evolve under certain conditions. Larger populations carry more biological variation and adapt faster to new environments. This primarily happens as at least some of the population may cope with the...

Dr. Shouvik Datta (Physics) and Dr. Pinaki Talukdar (Chemistry) have been selected for the Distinguished Investigator Award (DIA) given by Department of Science and Technology (DST)’s Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB). This one-time career award recognises Principal Investigators of S...

In a collaborative effort from research groups at IISER Pune (R. Vaidhyanathan, Partha Hazra) and IIT Bombay (Dinesh Kabra), a covalent organic framework (COF) material has been synthesized, which can be used for the coating of white-Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) as an alternative for commerciall...

Dr Thomas Pucadyil, Associate Professor in Biology at IISER Pune, has been selected for CSIR's Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in the area of Biological Sciences for the year 2018. Named after founder Director of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) India, the prize recognizes outsta...

BS MS student Kartik Nirbhavne chats here with Prof. Satish Ogale whose collaborative work on novel solar devices has recently been awarded the International Newton Prize. The Newton Prize recognizes innovators from around the world who contribute to reducing poverty and aim for developments that wi...

PhD student Swapna Joshi has just completed a short project as a Sahapedia-UNESCO Fellow on pyaavs (drinking water fountains) of Mumbai. Swapna's study traces the history of pyaavs from their inception in colonial Bombay to the recent efforts to restore and conserve the pyaavs. [gallery ids="1511...

Dr. Rejish Nath and his team at IISER Pune involving his students Yashwant Chougale and Sagarika Basak have recently reported their work on quantum dynamics in the journal Physical Review Letters. Here, the team describes their main findings from this work.The movements of classical objects are easy...

One of the main improvements required in the field of Lithium ion batteries is to make them safer, more compact and more stable. However, the current generation batteries are made with flammable organic medium which could result in explosion and fire, and damage the battery compartment. Additionally...

Dr G V Pavan Kumar’s group at IISER Pune, in collaboration with researchers at Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, USA, have experimentally shown for the first time, that Raman and fluorescence components of scattered light behave differently when confined to a plasmonic nan...

Researchers at IISER Pune have developed a covalent organic framework, a new porous material that can boost storage capacity of a Li-ion battery to nearly twice that of commercially available ones. Lithium-ion batteries are used in devices such as cell phones and laptops. They last long and are r...

Researchers at IISER Pune have developed a novel way to analyze heart dynamics that could potentially be used in the diagnosis of abnormalities of the heart. The analysis is based on the mathematical concept of fractals, which are repeating patterns that are similar at any scale. Fractals are...

Understanding cancer:  Role of DNA-dependent protein kinase in transformation of normal cells to cancer cells [caption id="attachment_1367" align="alignleft" width="230"] Cover page of the issue shows an example of intracellular trafficking, one of the phenomena found to be different between norm...

Improving TB Diagnostics through Synthetic Biology A team of seven undergraduates who competed in the “olympics” of synthetic biology, the international Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) contest, have won a silver medal at the GiantJamboree that took place from 9-13 November 2017 in Boston, ...

From home appliances to automobiles, cell phones to satellites, modern life is unthinkable without a source of energy. With non-renewable sources of energy, such as oil, gas, and coal, fast getting depleted, race is on to develop clean sustainable sources of energy and the technologies to harness th...