#WIISER Spotlight | Dr. Anuradha Bhat: The exciting life of a field biologist

Aditya Dwarkesh and Arunita Banerjee

Dr. Anuradha Bhat is an Associate Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences, IISER Kolkata. Her research encompasses zoology, stream ecology and behavioural biology. In this interview, she talks about her early days as a field biologist and how she has witnessed the changes in the academic environment of our country, throughout her journey so far.

#WIISER Spotlight | Dr. Keerthi Harikrishnan: Building a career around her life

Natasha Buwa and Arunita Banerjee

Dr. Keerthi Harikrishnan is a WoSA independent scientist at the Department. of Biology, IISER Pune. In this electronic interview she talks about her career development journey in both India and abroad.

Looking at Nothing: Investigating The Lights from a Black Hole

Ranadeep Ghosh Dastidar

Being one of the most advanced theories of its time, (and its past) general theory of relativity (GTR) was viewed as a fundamental necessity to account for the discrepancies in Newtonian gravity. Trying to account for the changing precession of Mercury, Einstein’s theory ended up unleashing hidden (quite literally) monsters in the extreme gravity. Black holes being probably the most famous example of that. This year, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences decided to award the Nobel Prize to two milestones, for the proof of the theory of the very existence of the black hole and ingenious methods to observe them.

The cloud-nine of CRISPR

Debjyoti Ghosh

The article gives a brief overview of one of the most path-breaking discoveries interdisciplinary sciences in the 21st century - the CRISPR-Cas9 system.

The Nobel Prize in Hepatitis C

Maithili Datta

This year the Nobel Prize came with a lot of joy to the scientific community. On one hand we got CRISPR as a revolutionary discovery, on the other hand, the hope to eliminate the Hepatitis C virus got accelerated. The HCV which killed millions of people worldwide can now be suppressed and that brings a way to get rid of this deadly illness.

Hues across the horizon

Chinmaya KV

An entertaining read about simple observations to deep ruminations on the colors in the sky. The article goes down the memory lane from the simple delights of watching a rainbow to the contributions of Prof. C.V Raman, the first Indian scientist who won the Nobel Prize in 1930 for explaining the scattering of light by molecules.