iisccris/resources/pdf/courtreport.pdf · iisc 2019 report to the court indian institute of...

IISc2019

R E P O R T T O T H E C O U R T

I N D I A N I N S T I T U T E O F S C I E N C E

CONTENTS1. Report of The Director to The Court of the institute

2. Remarks by the newly appointed President Shri N. Chandrasekaran

3. Report from The Deans

4. Research Snapshots

5. Awards and Distinctions conferred on members of the Faculty

6. Distinctions conferred on departments/centres

7. Publications

8. Patents

9. Some notable Institute activities

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This has increased annually by about 15% since 2004-05 when we raised Rs. 44.29 crores to almost Rs. 270 crores in 2016-17. However, the funds raised through consultancy and from the industry have been quite flat over several years. This year, with the induction of industry professionals into the SID management, we will begin to remedy the situation.

It may be noted that about 55% of our funding last year came in the form of direct funding from the government. The remaining came from our fund raising efforts – either through sponsored grants from governmental agencies, consultancy, tuition (which is a very small amount), private philanthropy, or CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiatives. We are experiencing pressure from the government to increase this component of our funding and become more self-reliant.

PublicationsThe two most important outputs we produce are the students we graduate and the knowledge we generate. In science, the currency of the latter is publications – both in terms of the quality and quantity. In the previous year, our faculty published 2,462 research papers in leading peer- reviewed journals (1,771) and conference proceedings (691). In the last five years, more than 12,000 research papers have been published by our faculty, making us the No. 1 in the country in research performance.

The many accolades our faculty members receive is another indicator of the quality of our research. For the past few years, our faculty have been well-decorated with the SS Bhatnagar awards, Young Scientist and Engineer awards, Swarnajayanti Fellowships, JC Bose Fellowships etc. We have also received three Infosys Prizes so far. During the last year alone, our faculty members have received over 70 prestigious awards.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT: GLIMPSES

Research HighlightsEach of the over 2000 papers that our faculty has published this past year is unique and contributes to the body of scientific knowledge. I will be unable to go over all of them. So I have taken a sample of two or three from each division which I will talk about very briefly.

Biological Sciences1) Antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis (TB) is a growing problem. The study investigates the causes of antibiotic resistance in TB-causing bacteria and how it can be inhibited. REF: S Mishra, P Shukla, A Bhaskar, Anand K, P Baloni, KR Jha, A Mohan, RS Rajmani, V Nagaraja, N Chandra, and A Singh. “Efficacy of β-lactam\β-lactamase Inhibitor Combination is Linked to WhiB4 Mediated Changes in Redox Physiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.” eLife. 2017.

2) Another study has shown how grazing – a widespread human activity – alters soil microbe composition and thereby the amount of carbon stored in the soil. This has important implications for the well-being of our planet. REF: S Bagchi, S Roy, A Maitra, and RS Sran. “Herbivores suppress soil microbes to influence carbon sequestration in the grazing ecosystem of the Trans-Himalaya.” Agric. Ecosys. Environ. 2017.

3) Protein-protein interactions are crucial to all aspects of cell functioning. The study makes use of a novel statistical technique to predict the interaction sites on the surface of a class of protein kinases from knowledge of known functional sites. REF: R Kalaivani, R Reema and N Srinivasan. “Recognition of sites of functional specialization in all known eukaryotic protein kinase families.” PLoS Comp. Biol. 2018.

Chemical Sciences1) The study explores the potential of affordable metallic and oxide compounds as electrocatalysts to replace the more expensive platinum and rhodium catalysts. REF: R Gond, K Sada, B Senthilkumar, and P Barpanda. “Bifunctional electrocatalytic behavior of sodium cobalt phosphates in alkaline solution.” Chem Electro Chem. 2018.

2) Triboluminescence is the phenomenon of the emission of light when crystal bonds are broken. The study demonstrates a new technique to synthesize crystalline materials that have this property. REF: KK Neena, P Sudhakar, K Dipak, and P Thilagar “Diarylboryl-phenothiazine based multifunctional molecular siblings.” Chem Commun. 2017.

Electrical Sciences1) One of our electronics engineering researchers has used a graphene sheet built into a field effect

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IISc ANNUAL REPORT 2017-18

transistor to improve its efficacy. This transistor has beaten its counterpart from IBM in terms of its performance. REF: A Meersha, HB Variar, K Bharadwaj, A Mishra, S Raghavan, N Bhat and M Shrivastava, “Record Low Metal – (CVD) Graphene Contact Resistance Using Atomic Orbital Overlap Engineering.” IEEE International Electron Device Meeting. 2016.

2) India’s first 10MW (10KV, 1KA) solid-state crowbar for microwave tube protection has been developed at IISc and is currently being used at Institute for Plasma Research, Ahmedabad. REF: TG Subhash Joshi, V John. “Performance Comparison of ETT- and LTT-Based Pulse Power Crowbar Switch. IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science. 2017.

3) Complex systems like automobiles these days come packed with many electronic components which interact with each other. The study has come up with faster ways to compute these interactions, thus helping us better understand the electromagnetic environment. The techniques developed by these researchers is the core technology behind astart-up, Simyog, started by Prof. Gope and his students. REF: G Chatterjee, A Das, SV Reddy and D Gope. “Mesh Interpolated Krylov Recycling Method to expedite 3D Full- Wave MoM Solution for Design Variants”, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques. 2017.

Interdisciplinary Research1) The first Indian brain templates for morphometric assessments are being developed in IISc. These are being used in the diagnosis of brain disorders (in collaboration with NIMHANS, Bangalore). REF: N Rao, H Jeelani, R Achalia, G Achalia, A Jacob, RD Bharath, S Varambally, G Venkatasubramanian, and PK Yalavarthy. “Population differences in Brain morphology: Need for population specific Brain template Psychiatry research.” Neuroimaging. 2017.

2) Another study helps us understand the dynamics of droplet impact on surfaces with nanoscale structures. This can be used for development of strongly hydrophyllic or hydrophobic surfaces. REF: A Kumar, A Tripathy, Y Nam, C Lee and P Sen. “Effect of geometrical parameters on rebound of impacting droplets on leaky superhydrophobic meshes.” Soft Matter. 2018.

Mechanical Sciences1) Yet another study shows that 18% of the glacier mass in Chandra Basin, Himachal Pradesh, has been

lost during 1982-2012, with 70% loss occurring at low altitudes, indicating the possibility of water scarcity in villages in the valley. REF: S Tawde, AV Kulkarni, G Bala (2017). “An estimate of glacier mass balance for the Chandra basin, western Himalaya. for the period 1984-2012”. Annals of Glaciology. 2017.

2) A novel imaging technique has been developed to capture the flow of the fuel and the flame structure inside an actual gas turbine environment. This will be useful for designing low emission and efficient combustors. REF: RB Vishwanath, PM Tilak and S Chaudhuri. “An Experimental Study of Interacting Swirl Flows in a Model Gas Turbine Combustor,” Experiments in Fluids. 2018.

3) The study models the deformation process of a metal when being machined by a tool. This will help us to better understand defect formation and design better tools. REF: NK Sundaram, A Mahato, Y Guo, K Viswanathan, S Chandrasekhar. “Folding in metal polycrystals: Microstructural origins and mechanics,” Acta Mat. 2017.

Physical and Mathematical Sciences1) The study demonstrates for the first time that crystallization of two-dimensional colloidal sheets (membranes) of chiral rod shaped particles results in wrinkling and buckling instabilities. REF: L Saikia, T Sarkar, M Thomas, VA Raghunathan, A Sain and P Sharma. “Curvature Instability of Chiral Colloidal Membranes on Crystallization.” Nature Communications. 2017.

2) The study shows that topological insulators, materials which conduct only on the surface, can be realized in glassy (amorphous) materials. REF: A Agarwala, VB Shenoy. “Topological Insulators in Amorphous Systems” Phys. Rev. Lett. 2017.

Clustering of Research ThemesLast year, we started to take a closer look at our research and identified a few clusters in research themes across our departments. Some examples of such themes and specific areas of research within those themes include:

Cancer• A novel molecule to target and kill cancer cells (Biochemistry)

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Tata Trusts for an imaging facility for the brain; and Mr. Kris and Mrs. Sudha Gopalakrishnan have given Rs 225 crores over ten years, plus the building, for setting up a centre for brain research.

Research Pacts with Technology GiantsIn the last couple of years, we have had several new MoUs with Bosch India. Bosch India today is not only supporting the Robert Bosch Centre, they are also supporting specific projects, including the Simyog startup. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has signed an MoU with us to set up an innovation lab embedded in IISc. The GE Technology Centre in Bangalore has also signed an MoU with us.

Challakere: Teaching the TeachersAs part of this outreach programme that we are doing in our Challakere campus, high school teachers, and now also college teachers, are being trained to become better teachers. Since it was established, Prof. MS Hegde has led a group of people who have trained almost 11,000 school and college teachers. The college teachers’ programme is supported by the Ministry of Human Resource Development under the Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching.

FUNDRAISING, ALUMNI CONNECT, AND INTERNATIONAL OUTREACH

PublicityWe publicize our work by publishing a quarterly magazine called Connect, and an annual magazine called Kernel. Kernel is a smaller, more readable version of the Annual Report, which is usually heavy and dense. This is sent to people around the country and also to many foreign universities. IIScPress publishes books by authors from IISc and other universities. Right now, our co-publisher is Cambridge University Press. We have a new series of booklets brought out by the Archives and Publications Cell, which is a series based on the history of IISc.

Office of Alumni and Development AffairsAbout three years back, we began a new office of development. The word “development” is the American term for financial development, not civil construction. The Office of Development and Alumni Affairs (ODAA) now raises money for us. Over the last three years, they have been able to raise Rs 186 crores from various sources – from donors and through CSR. Some of the money is coming as endowments, chairs,

and some as grants for buildings (for example, a girls’ hostel is coming up on campus). Fundraising is a very important activity now because the government is requiring us more and more to begin to raise our own resources, particularly for capital expenditure.

Office of International RelationsWe have an Office of International Relations (OIR), which invites people from around the world, and arranges visits of foreign delegations. We go outside India a couple of times each year – these trips are also organised by OIR. We have several MoUs with foreign industry and with academia and we have several fellowships set up by foreign agencies in our Institute. About 78 international students came last year to either study here or to visit IISc.

2017: THE YEAR OF REVIEWSThe year 2017 was a year of reviews. Let me tell you what I mean by that.

In January, the University Grants Commission (UGC) told us that we need to get a 12B certificate in order to continue receiving funding from them. So we went through a UGC certification review. We have been certified, and the money again started coming.

In May last year, UGC reviewed us again. It was a full-fledged institutional review to continue our deemed university status.

Last year, we also took a decision, with the support and encouragement of the Council, to begin a system of academic reviews. We have planned that, over a five-year period, we will review all the departments in some sequence. The first volunteer for this review was the Electrical Sciences Division. All faculty members and departments in this Division were reviewed. The Department of Aerospace Engineering, in its 75th year, also chose to have an in-depth review. So last year, the work of 110 faculty members in the Institute was reviewed – that’s about one- fourth of our faculty. We hope to be able to have the entire review cycle done in the next four more years, and then we’ll repeat that cycle.

We also had to undergo NAAC accreditation. Many of the government programmes are linked to our NAAC score, which is tied to some benefits. We have already filed our NAAC self-study report. We are waiting for NAAC to send an on-site review committee.

I want to give you a glimpse of what the review committees said in the two academic reviews which took place, in the EECS Division and the Aerospace Department, and in what way these departments are going to address the issues that Pg 10


were raised.

REVIEW OF ELECTRICAL SCIENCES DIVISION: RECOMMENDATIONS AND ACTIONSElectrical Sciences normally is just one unit in most universities. In IISc, however, this faculty has been split into four departments. The committee advised us to bring about greater cohesion between these four departments. We have now renamed our division as the Division of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Science (EECS), which is the more common name across the world. This we hope will bring people under one umbrella. We are also forming thematic clusters across our division.

The committee also urged us to achieve active connect with the ecosystem. They said that the faculty members are working too much on problems which interest only them. They wanted researchers to reflect on whether the problems that they have chosen are also important for the world and how much impact they make. The committee felt that the Division must continue to contribute in the way that they have been doing, but to also think about participating in national programmes. We have begun to do in fields like artificial intelligence, cyber security, 5G programme of the Department of Telecommunications, and the neuromorphic computing programme funded by Kris Gopalakrishnan.

Another recommendation from the committee was to proactively recruit new faculty members rather than simply waiting for them to apply. So the Division is now going to start doing that: go to events overseas, advertise and also explore funding which will attract top talent. We would like to do something like that for promising students too.

Reorganising the MTech programme was another recommendation. We have set up a committee to see if we can coalesce the many MTech programmes we have.

The committee also recommended that we proactively engage with industry. So we are going to start an industry affiliates programme, where industry can come, contribute some money each year and participate in the research.

REVIEW OF AEROSPACE ENGINEERING: RECOMMENDATIONS AND ACTIONSThe recommendations for the Department of

Aerospace Engineering were fairly similar. The committee also said the faculty strength in some groups was depleting. It also asked to consider building a relationship with ISRO on the lines of the relationship between Caltech and JPL. A committee has been set up to look into this. The Department has also started bringing in distinguished speakers from industry to increase connect between the Department and industry.

The review committee was very appreciative of the long history of wind tunnels in our Institute. They felt that some of the wind tunnels we have will have to be discarded, and the functioning of others should be improved.

The committee also recommended modernisation of the MTech curriculum and the need to attract better PhD students. We are looking closely at both these recommendations.

I’m going to spend a few minutes on one common theme in both the reviews – impact. Both the committees felt that somehow our research was not having enough impact. So let us look at what it means to aim for impact.

AIMING FOR IMPACT: DISCOVERY RESEARCH AND INNOVATIONIn the aftermath of WW II, a very important report was given by Vannevar Bush to the American Congress about how to fund research. The report was called “Science: The Endless Frontier”. And in that report, Bush clearly separated basic research from applied research. Basic research, he argued, was more important to fund because its outcome feeds into applied research. So essentially there was this dichotomy created between basic and applied research. Now imagine a researcher who wants to do good basic research, and also wants to haveimpact. If he works at the basic research end of the spectrum, he is having no impact. And vice versa. If he works somewhere in between, the reviewers would tell him that he is diluting your basic research. So what does this person do?

In the late 1990s, Prof. Donald Stokes a social scientist from Yale University simply bent the straight line that extends from basic to applied research. This provided a new perspective on how to view the relationship between basic and applied research. You could now have a person doing good applied research and also good basic research. Essentially all it involves is bending the basic research–applied research axis.

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Dear Dr. Kasturirangan, Director Anurag Kumar, members of the Court, and members of the faculty:

First of all, let me express my gratitude to the Council and the Court for giving me this great honour. It is a rare privilege to work with eminent people on the Council and be amidst the distinguished people of IISc.

I want to thank Prof. Anurag Kumar for his outstanding presentation in which he packed so many slides and managed to communicate everything that goes on in the Institute: research, key decisions, projects and many of the important papers published. His presentation also showed how IISc compares with other world class institutions, and the factors that keep IISc from going the next level.

When we talk about Indian institutes, IISc is at the top of everyone’s mind. We are in awe of where the Institute is today. But when we think of global institutions, we think of Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Oxford or Stanford.

So everyone is quite surprised as to why our institutes, particularly IISc and the IITs, can’t be an MIT or a Stanford. Why is it that they do not partner with businesses and industry? Why is funding a problem? These are issues that come up every time we talk about Indian institutes. I don’t want to say more because these are issues that you are all familiar with.

But it is heartening that students, especially our undergraduate students, land up in the best institutions for their postgraduate education and PhDs. And I am so glad to see some of them coming back.

India has lot of problems and our problems are very unique and complex. To solve these problems, we need solutions that are developed in our country. And for this, contributions from Indian researchers, start-ups and innovations are going to be extremely critical. So

IISc has a very important role to play during the next decade or two to take our country forward.

On my part, I want to just say once again that it is a great honour to have been chosen as the President of the Court. I will help in whatever way I can and work with Director and others. I congratulate all of you and wish you a great year ahead. Thank you!

2. REMARKS BY THE NEWLY APPOINTED PRESIDENT SHRI. N. CHANDRASEKARAN

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2. REMARKS BY THE NEWLY APPOINTED PRESIDENT

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RESEARCH SNAPSHOTS

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This year, for our report to the IISc Court, we make a slight departure from the usual practice of producing a voluminous Court Report that essentially reproduces a lot of the information that is already available in the Annual Report produced by the Institute, barring a few exceptions. As an efficiency measure, starting this year we have decided to provide the members of the Court with a copy of the Annual Report for the previous financial year, accompanied by a slimmed down version of the Court Report which presents all the additional developments in the Institute during the previous calendar year.

This Court Report retains not only the parts that were exclusive to the earlier Court Reports but also a more extensive coverage of important research highlights for the year 2018. We hope that this will help the members of the court to get to the essentials of the Institute activity in a more accessible way.

An important highlight that was not known at the time of producing the Annual Report was the notification of IISc as an Institute of Eminence by the Ministry of Human Resources Development. This status will bring additional autonomy to the Indian Institute of Science, and additional funding support as well. The support

provided by MHRD will have to be matched by additional funds raised by the Institute. Under the Institution of Eminence program, IISc plans to expand its faculty and student strengths, upgrade its campus and laboratory infrastructure, provide seed funding for new research initiatives, and strengthen international connections, via an international post-doctoral program, a distinguished visiting professors program, and a program for international student exchange.

Thus, as the Indian Institute of Science completes 110 years since its founding, this top ranked institute of higher education in the country carries with it the expectation of the nation to rise to higher levels globally.

Anurag KumarDirector, IISc

FOREWORD TO THE 2019 REPORT TO THE IISc

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Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this presentation, my fourth as the Director of theInstitute. As always, I will begin by providing you with a status report of the Institute, and then I will talk to you about why 2017 could be called “the year of reviews,” and finally how we plan to create greater impact.

STATUS REPORT

IISc IN NUMBERS

Human ResourcesThe strength of our academic staff has grown from 327 in 2004-05 to 425 (the total strength of the academic and scientific staff is over 500) working in 42 academic departments and research centres. The departments and centres are divided into six divisions: Biological Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Electrical Sciences, Mechanical Sciences, Physical & Mathematical Sciences, and Interdisciplinary Research. During this period, the number of scientific and technical staff has come down. In the next Council Meeting, we will be finalising the cadre recruitment rules for hiring some additional technical staff. The spurt in faculty hiring actually began in 2008-09. Since then, we have been consistently inducting about 20 new faculty members each year, while about 10 retire each year. So on average, our faculty strength has been increasing by around 10 per year in the past few years.

As the strength of our academic staff has been increasing, our support staff has been shrinking. Today, we have 437 support staff. We would ideally like the ratio of support staff to faculty to be 1:1. As I have said earlier, the ratification of our Cadre and Recruitment Rules in the June Council, we will begin to hire more support staff in the coming weeks and months.

Students and Degrees AwardedToday, we have 4,128 students. Again, as with faculty, we started to admit more students from 2008-09 onwards – about 200 more per year compared to previous years. Almost two-thirds of the student population – 2,681 to be precise – comprises PhD and Integrated PhD students (of these, 1,204 are in the sciences and 1,477 in engineering), 935 are enrolled in the various Masters programmes, and 512 students are part of the four-year Bachelor of Science (Research) programme.

This past year, for the first time, over 300 PhD students graduated from the Institute (in all 754 degrees were awarded). The ratio of the number of PhD students graduating per year to the number of faculty is currently 0.75:1. We are heading towards the target we set for ourselves when I took over: to graduate one student per faculty member per year. We expect to achieve this target either this year or the next.

ExpenditureThe Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) funds us in two ways: Plan Grant and Non-Plan Grant. This too saw a spurt from 2008-09 onwards. During this past year, the Plan Grant, which went towards scholarships, library expenses, startup grants, equipment and new buildings, was Rs. 137 crores and the Non-Plan Grant, which went towards salaries, infrastructure and recurring expenses, amounted to Rs. 294 crores.Our faculty also work hard to raise money themselves. A substantial part of money that we receive for Sponsored Projects again comes from government agencies such as Department of Science and Technology (DST), Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), and so on.

1. REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR TO THE COURT OF THE INSTITUTE

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• Radio frequency-sensing for non-invasive breast cancer screening (Electrical Communication Engineering)• Identifying therapeutic targets for a deadly brain tumour (Microbiology and Cell Biology)• Microfluidics & digital cytology-based cancer screening (Instrumentation and Applied Physics)• 3D organo-typic model for breast cancer (Molecular Reproduction, Development and Genetics)

Sensors• Pressure and gas sensors for strategic applications, environmental sensors (Centre for Nano Science and Engineering)• Sensor for changes in intracranial pressure (Mechanical Engineering)• Low cost paper biosensor for enzyme detection (Organic Chemistry)• Conducting polymer based nitrate ion sensors (Materials Engineering)• Optical FBG sensor for blood glucose and protein (Physics and Instrumentation and Applied Physics)

Biomedical Engineering• Technology and tools for diabetic patients and the elderly (BioSystems Science and Engineering)• Smart catheters for blocking abnormal signals in veins (Electronic Systems Engineering)• Biomaterials for orthopedic and dental applications (Materials Research Centre)• Real-time monitoring of new-born babies using IoT (Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber- Physical Systems)• Nano-swimmers driven by magnetic field for drug delivery (Centre for Nano Science and Engineering)

In the future, we hope that our researchers, who work on a particular theme, even if they are from different disciplines, will complement each other to create greater impact. We are also looking at collaborative research initiatives where our faculty members work together.

Large Projects of National ImportanceAt IISc we have always had several instances of large projects in which faculty from different departments work together on focussed problems of national importance. Current examples include:

Towards Hypersonic VehiclesIn collaboration with BrahMos Aerospace, faculty from Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Aerospace Engineering work on a series of projects (at a total cost of Rs. 19.26 crores) to aid in design, development and flight testing of hypersonic air-breathing cruise missiles.

Water ManagementA group at the Inderdisiplinary Centre for Water Research (ICWaR) is working on a project worth £ 2

million under the Newton-Bhabha Fund for small-scale interventions (check dams, bunds etc.) for water management at basin scale.

Climate ChangeThe Divecha Centre for Climate Change is working on several initiatives to help mitigate the consequences of global climate change: the development of an interactive climate change calculator, the setting up of the South Asian regional hub of Future Earth, the estimation of expansion of glacial lakes in the Himalayas and more. The Centre is also consulted by the Government, formally and informally, on a host of environmental and climate issues.

Combustion ResearchThe National Centre for Combustion R&D has been set up in IISc and IIT Madras by DST/SERB with a total funding of Rs. 36.70 crores. The Centre is also working closely with industry.

Ocean mixing and MonsoonThis is an international mission with a budget of Rs. 38 crores to understand sea surface salinity and other physical phenomena which affect the Indian monsoons.

INNOVATION, PATENTING, AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

InnovationIISc started the Society for Innovation and Development (SID) in 1991 with the aim of creating opportunities for researchers to interact with industry. It has since enabled the initiation of over 550 R&D projects with more than 200 Indian and international companies. It is also been incubating start-ups. As a result of the interaction between industry and IISc, 8-10 corporate research centres have been set up within the Institute. A research park called the Innovation Hub, for which MHRD has given the Institute a grant of Rs. 75 crores, is in an advanced stage of planning.

PatentingPatenting activity in IISc took off only about 15 years ago, even though the Intellectual Property and Technology Licensing office was set up in the mid-1990s. We are now filing 30-40 patents each year. In all, 511 patents have been filed so far. Some recent examples of patents from IISc include:• An electric gradient augmented portable water filtration device• A patient transfer apparatus for shifting them

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without contact• An optical nano-sensor for early detection of olive fruit fly infestationIISc has also been successful in converting its knowledge into technology, and in many instances, its technology to products. Some examples include:• Pressure transducers deployed in HAL helicopters and being evaluated for LCA• Semiconductor metal oxide NO2 sensor to monitor liquid propellant leakage for ISRO• Compact solid-state neutron sensor for IGCAR• Hybrid Ultra-Capacitor (HUC) batteries (made by Mesha LLC)• CVD Reactor for Make-in-India Electronics• Heat-pulse based soil moisture sensor• Hand-held imaging flow cytometry tool• Multi-analyte diabetes detection device

EntrepreneurshipWe began encouraging startups around 2004-05. Before that we didn’t really have an entrepreneurship system in place. Over the last 12 or so years, we have spawned about 25 or 30 startups. Interestingly, 16 of those startups have come up in the last two or three years. Let me give you some examples:• Simyog is a startup based on high speed computational electromagnetics, that permits fast visualisation of electromagnetic radiation inside electronics systems.• Mimyk makes a device for training doctors in conducting upper gastric tract endoscopies. The technology was developed as a collaboration between a professor from Mechanical Engineering and one from Computer Science and Automation.• PathShodh is a device for measuring eight different biomarkers which are important for diabetes management – five using a blood sample and three using a urine sample. It uses strips which work based on nanotechnology.• Sickle Innovations makes a cotton picker, an agricultural device, allowing farmers to double the cotton picking rate, without picking up twigs or other trash.• Bellatrix is a startup which makes small thrusters for ISRO satellites. The founders are not from IISc, but the start-up is being incubated in IISc.• OpenWater is a water filtration device that uses electrostatic separation of impurities.• Equine Biotech is for diagnostic tools for veterinary applications.• Mynvax is a startup to develop influenza vaccines that uses a fundamentally different concept of creating antibodies against the more stable “stem” of the virus, rather than the more variable “head,” thus paving the way for more vaccines protection against many more strains of the virus.

CONNECTIONS, OUTREACH AND PARTNERSHIPS

LecturesEvery year we get many distinguished speakers to come and spend time with us. This year was no different. Some of those who visited IISc include: Eric Maskin, an economist from Harvard University and Nobel Laureate; Bertrand Halperin, a physicist, also from Harvard University; Brian Schmidt, a physicist and the vice chancellor of Australian National University, and a Nobel Laureate; and Richard Henderson, a molecular biophysicist from the MRC Laboratory and a Nobel Laureate.

Catching them YoungIISc organises an Open Day every year. Young people from Bangalore and other places and visit our laboratories to see science in action. Over 20,000 people came last year, and I understand that about 34,000 came this year. This initiative is growing by leaps and bounds. The Divecha Centre for Climate Change has an annual climate change quiz in which undergraduate students from around the city participate, thereby raising awareness about climate change. IISc also organises the annual Vigyan Jyoti Shivir, a national science camp for students.

Indian Nanoelectronics Users’ ProgramThe Centre for Nano Science and Engineering hosts the Indian Nanoelectronics Users’ Program every year. Faculty members visit engineering colleges around the country, and train the students and faculty of these institutions, encouraging them to come to IISc and use our facilities. The programme has resulted in the filing of 15 patents, publication of 180 research papers and 150 PhD theses. These patents and publications have been authored by participants, not by IISc faculty.

Public-Private PartnershipsIn the last ten years or so, we have been getting more financial support from private sources. We have a commitment of Rs. 115 crores from the Robert Bosch Foundation for the Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber-Physical Systems, which works on the Internet of Things and smart socio-technical systems. The Divecha Centre for Climate Change has supported by annual grants totalling to $3 million, from the Arjun and Diana Divecha family, and the Grantham Foundation. We also received Rs 75 crores over five years from the

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More recently, in the last couple of years, people have begun to look more closely at Stokes’ model, which improved on the assumption of a basic-applied dichotomy, but is still static. V Narayanamurti, who was earlier Chair of the Materials Research Laboratory in the University of California Santa Barbara, and who later became the founding Dean of Engineering in Harvard, came up with a model called the Discovery-Innovation Cycle. Discovery research asks fundamental questions, the answers to which lead to innovation. Need-driven innovation in turn gives rise to fundamental questions for discovery research to answer. And this cycle continues. This dynamic model is what he calls “cycles of invention and discovery”.

This Discovery-Innovation Cycle is something which can be seen as acting at many scales. An individual faculty member can carry out this cycle in his/her own work, or the cycle can be implemented by collaboration between faculty members.

ACADEMIA-INDUSTRY: NOT JUST ONE-WAY TRAFFICI draw your attention to a US National Academy of Engineering report on the evolution of various information technologies, and the role that academic and industry played in this evolution.

Today, if you open the “assistant” on your Android smart-phone and you say “Okay, Google”, or “Set and alarm for 5pm,” it will recognise you immediately, without any training, regardless of whether you are a Telugu speaker or a Hindi speaker. But in the 1970s, the problem was just of computers recognising single disconnected spoken words: for example, “yes” and “no” answers on an IVRS system. Speech recognition has come a long way since then. It took almost 30 years for it to become a $1 billion industry, when Dragon and IBM took it up in a big way. And Google has it on all their phones now.The US NAE report charts this evolution by showing the flow of the development process between universities and the industry. One sees back and forth interactions between CMU and MIT on one side and Bell Labs, IBM and Dragon on the other. One can perceive a discovery/innovation cycle happening at the academia-industry level. Unfortunately, such interaction is weak in our country. You can see this for practically every technology. My examples are all based on ICT (Informationand Communications Technology), but I’m sure it is similar for other technologies like structures and materials, databases, and data mining.

IISc’s ROLEWhat does IISc’s beautiful and iconic main building stand for? Is it just an ivory tower? According to

the dictionary, an ivory tower is a state of privileged seclusion, or separation from the facts and practicalities of the real world. Is that what we represent? On the one hand, I think we do, because a lot of basic research is done by separating oneself from the real world, by thinking about a problem without the compulsions of what our discoveries might be useful for.

On the other hand, an institution like ours must be an intellectual beacon, and an engine of economic transformation. Indeed, our mandate reads: “to provide for advanced instruction and to conduct original investigations in all branches of knowledge as are likely to promote the industrial and material welfare of India.” So we certainly cannot only be in the first state, of being an ivory tower. Because our responsibility then is not being met. This is something we need to keep in mind as we move forward and try to create greater impact.

EVALUATION CRITERIAPeople shape their working styles to conform to the evaluation criteria. Evaluation in Indian academia is heavily geared towards just counts – publication counts, citation counts, PhD student counts, number of invited lectures. You just keep on counting and finally somehow all that is put together to give a result. We also try to assess the personal contributions made by an individual. You look at a paper’s list of authors and begin to make assumptions about the contribution of the individual under evaluation, based upon the order if his/her name in the list of authors, whether one of the authors is a senior guide or mentor of the individual, whether there is a foreign collaborator, etc.. We keep worrying about all these details and we don’t really focus on the real contribution of the work. We are too heavily reliant upon these assessments of individual contribution and count-based measures of performance.

Such criteria also pervade all our selection processes and also academy fellowships, awards and recognitions. If you want to be an INSA Fellow, perhaps you have to conform to these ways of working. Hence faculty simply work towards piling up counts, often not trying something new and risky as it might interrupt the flow – because the flow is so important. If you interrupt the flow, your career could be in trouble. Researchers avoid setting up collaborations – because if you set up collaborations, people begin to ask who did what. Is it your work or is it the other person’s work?We need to assess impact rather than volume. This is not an easy thing to do, as we realise in our own discussions here in IISc administration. We need to look at best practices around the world. We need to understand how universities all over the world are able to extract the best from their faculty and do not necessarily stick only to these kinds of

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criteria.

THE TROUBLE WITH MEDIA RANKINGSWe have been subject to a lot of media scrutiny recently when it comes to the issue of rankings. A term we have to keep worrying about every few months as the rankings come out is internationalisation. Somehow the passport you carry seems to matter more to these ranking agencies. A university with mostly home-grown faculty and a few mediocre foreign faculty members would perform better on this metric of internationalisation. Top Indian institutions recruit high-quality faculty most of whom have international training. In fact, 95 percent of our faculty is trained in the best institutions around the world. So we are international in the real way, rather than in having diverse passports.

Some of the best students from a very large, ethnically diverse, national pool study at our universities. We are drawing people from the best pools of every state and every culture in the country, unlike some countries where the home populations are not interested in STEM studies. They have to attract Chinese and Indians to study there. Why should we emulate them when we have a whole pool of top-notch researchers in the country to work with us? We may induct a few international researchers to bring about cultural diversity, which is certainly highly desirable for the intellectual richness of a top institute like ours.

Let us then focus on strengthening something else: on hard academics, on research, on impact, on innovation metrics, and not bother about passports. We should read “internationalisation” not as passports but international visibility, and international collaboration, which often we do not have enough of in this Institute. And that’s partly because we do not have enough money to send people abroad. We don’t have enough money to host people in the best possible way.

INDIA NEEDS WORLD-CLASS CAMPUSESTo be able to do what I have said, we need world-class campuses. Many US campuses are in dangerous areas. “Don’t walk around after dark”, “Be careful not to make a wrong turn outside the campus” – you often see these kinds of warnings on US campus websites. Many US campuses are in uninteresting locations with nothing really to do outside the campus – they are out in the middle of nowhere. Yet these campuses continue to attract the best students and the best faculty from around the world. The campus itself is a beautiful, well-built, well- maintained, hygienic, self-contained, safe and secure, intellectually stimulating, culturally alive, fun-to-be community. If we create campuses like this, there is no reason that people will not come here. The investments that the country is

making on the research infrastructure will attract the best researchers from around the world, only if the campuses are also beautiful, welcoming, and well-run.

Many institutes in our country have large campuses that can easily be world-class; they can be magnets for international researchers. But only if there are funds and freedom to develop them as such. Unfortunately, we don’t have that freedom even when we have the money to build things in the best possible way. The experience of those visiting the campus must be world- class: no power failures, high-quality buildings, top-class research infrastructure.

SUMMARYThe academic review committees have praised the quality of our faculty and students. In recent times, we have taken several new initiatives towards modernising and professionalising our administration. The setting up of ODAA, a legal office, DIGITS etc, are some of the many things we have done recently to make our administration more modern. We also brought in many mechanisms for enabling faculty to do better work – we have brought in tenure, and we give them attractive startup grants, and some of them get Young Investigator Fellowships.

This is paying off. A wide variety of new knowledge generation is happening in the Institute. Innovation and entrepreneurship is on the upswing – 16 new startups have taken shape in the last two years, which is an indication that things are looking up. People are working hard, and we have actually been able to convert some of our knowledge into practice. Our faculty members are contributing to many large national and international programmes – I mentioned those earlier, such as the water research programme, the climate research programme. Private support of research is increasing. We are aiming to increase our industry collaboration. We have recently recruited three industry professionals to help us better engage with industry.

We must understand how to increase impact, and improve our international reputation. Even though our reputation is strong among those who know us, our reputation is not that strong if you look at the general perception. That is the only way we can be counted among the best in the world.

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1. REPORT FROM THE DEANS OF FACULTIESConsequent to the previous meeting of the Court held on 16.03.2018, the following reports have been furnished by the Deans of Faculties of Science and Engineering:ADMISSIONS During the year 2018-19, 995 (462 for PhD, 65 for Integrated PhD, 60 for M.Tech (Res), 298 for Master’s programs and 110 for Undergraduate Program) joined the Institute. • 72 regular + 2 foreign nationals + 1 ERP students admitted during mid-year admission • 126 students belong to SC/ST (42 for PhD, 8 for Integrated PhD, 58 for Master’s programs And 18 for Undergraduate programmes) • 20 students under External Registration Program • 235 female and 760 male students

Students On Roll The total number of students on roll is 4118 (2385 in PhD, 343 in Integrated PhD, 889 in Master’s programmes and 501 in Undergraduate program).• 560 students belong SC/ST (267 for PhD, 43 for Int. PhD, 138 for Master’s programmes and 112 for Undergraduate Program)• 133 students under External Registration Program (ERP)• 1120 female and 2998 male students

Conferments A total of 959 degrees [414 PhD, 60 M.Sc. (Engg.), 33 Integrated PhD, 243 MTech, 25 MDes, 16 MMgt, 103 Bachelor Science (Research) / 65- Master of Science] were awarded during the calendar year 2018.

Admissions And On Roll External Registration ProgrammeDuring the year 2018-19, 21 candidates joined under the External Registration Programme (ERP) and there are now 134 such candidates at the Institute.The same is placed for consideration of the Court

2. REPORT FROM THE DEAN, UG PROGRAMME

Report On The Bachelor Of Science (Research) And Master Of Science Programs The undergraduate program in science comprising about 500 bright young minds from across country began in 2011. To date, it has seen four batches of students graduate with a four-year Bachelor of Science (Research) degree and three batches of students graduate with a Master of Science degree. In the first four batches, roughly 50% of the students in each batch opted to continue for a fifth year to pursue a Master of Science program.

Career Paths Of Outgoing StudentsBatch 2014 (4th batch): 44 students opted to continue for the Master’s program. A total of 46 graduating Bachelor’s students secured admission to Ph.D. and other programs. Some of the universities / institutions in which the students secured admission include Harvard University, University of Connecticut, Maryland University, University of Chicago, University of California (Berkeley), JAIST, Utrecht University, University of Pennsylvania university of michigan, Cambridge University, IIT Bombay, Imperial College of London, Université Grenoble Alpes, Australia National University, and others. A couple of students took up job placements.

Batch 2013 (3rd batch): More than 52 Master’s students graduated secured admission to Ph.D. and other programs. Universities/institutes in which these students secured admission: University of Texas-Dallas, University of Texas-Austin, EPFL, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Toronto, University of Colorado, University of California-San Diego, Pittsburgh University, Wurzburg University, Max-Planck Institute – Halle University, RWTH Aachen, ICTS, IIA-Bangalore, IIM-Ahmedabad, IIM- Shillong IIT-Madras and others. One student took up a position as scientist in BARC.

3. REPORT FROM THE DEANS


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RECOGNITIONA young team of undergraduate students from the institute won a gold medal for the second time at the International genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) contest held at Boston, USA from 25th – 28th October 2018. Over 316 teams from all over the world participated in the competition.

Data On Past And Current Batches Of Students2014: 44 students (Master’s); 2015: 107 students; 2016: 94 students; 2017: 98 students: 2018: 108 students.

Breakup of 2017 batch of students discipline-wise: Biology (22), Chemistry (7), Materials (19), Mathematics (12), and Physics (39).

1 - BACK


COURT


Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this presentation, my fourth as the Director of theInstitute. As always, I will begin by providing you with a status report of the Institute, and then I will talk to you about why 2017 could be called “the year of reviews,” and finally how we plan to create greater impact.

STATUS REPORT

IISc IN NUMBERS

Human ResourcesThe strength of our academic staff has grown from 327 in 2004-05 to 425 (the total strength of the academic and scientific staff is over 500) working in 42 academic departments and research centres. The departments and centres are divided into six divisions: Biological Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Electrical Sciences, Mechanical Sciences, Physical & Mathematical Sciences, and Interdisciplinary Research. During this period, the number of scientific and technical staff has come down. In the next Council Meeting, we will be finalising the cadre recruitment rules for hiring some additional technical staff. The spurt in faculty hiring actually began in 2008-09. Since then, we have been consistently inducting about 20 new faculty members each year, while about 10 retire each year. So on average, our faculty strength has been increasing by around 10 per year in the past few years.

As the strength of our academic staff has been increasing, our support staff has been shrinking. Today, we have 437 support staff. We would ideally like the ratio of support staff to faculty to be 1:1. As I have said earlier, the ratification of our Cadre and Recruitment Rules in the June Council, we will begin to hire more support staff in the coming weeks and months.

Students and Degrees AwardedToday, we have 4,128 students. Again, as with faculty, we started to admit more students from 2008-09 onwards – about 200 more per year compared to previous years. Almost two-thirds of the student population – 2,681 to be precise – comprises PhD and Integrated PhD students (of these, 1,204 are in the sciences and 1,477 in engineering), 935 are enrolled in the various Masters programmes, and 512 students are part of the four-year Bachelor of Science (Research) programme.

This past year, for the first time, over 300 PhD students graduated from the Institute (in all 754 degrees were awarded). The ratio of the number of PhD students graduating per year to the number of faculty is currently 0.75:1. We are heading towards the target we set for ourselves when I took over: to graduate one student per faculty member per year. We expect to achieve this target either this year or the next.

ExpenditureThe Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) funds us in two ways: Plan Grant and Non-Plan Grant. This too saw a spurt from 2008-09 onwards. During this past year, the Plan Grant, which went towards scholarships, library expenses, startup grants, equipment and new buildings, was Rs. 137 crores and the Non-Plan Grant, which went towards salaries, infrastructure and recurring expenses, amounted to Rs. 294 crores.Our faculty also work hard to raise money themselves. A substantial part of money that we receive for Sponsored Projects again comes from government agencies such as Department of Science and Technology (DST), Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), and so on.

1. REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR TO THE COURT OF THE INSTITUTE

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• Radio frequency-sensing for non-invasive breast cancer screening (Electrical Communication Engineering)• Identifying therapeutic targets for a deadly brain tumour (Microbiology and Cell Biology)• Microfluidics & digital cytology-based cancer screening (Instrumentation and Applied Physics)• 3D organo-typic model for breast cancer (Molecular Reproduction, Development and Genetics)

Sensors• Pressure and gas sensors for strategic applications, environmental sensors (Centre for Nano Science and Engineering)• Sensor for changes in intracranial pressure (Mechanical Engineering)• Low cost paper biosensor for enzyme detection (Organic Chemistry)• Conducting polymer based nitrate ion sensors (Materials Engineering)• Optical FBG sensor for blood glucose and protein (Physics and Instrumentation and Applied Physics)

Biomedical Engineering• Technology and tools for diabetic patients and the elderly (BioSystems Science and Engineering)• Smart catheters for blocking abnormal signals in veins (Electronic Systems Engineering)• Biomaterials for orthopedic and dental applications (Materials Research Centre)• Real-time monitoring of new-born babies using IoT (Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber- Physical Systems)• Nano-swimmers driven by magnetic field for drug delivery (Centre for Nano Science and Engineering)

In the future, we hope that our researchers, who work on a particular theme, even if they are from different disciplines, will complement each other to create greater impact. We are also looking at collaborative research initiatives where our faculty members work together.

Large Projects of National ImportanceAt IISc we have always had several instances of large projects in which faculty from different departments work together on focussed problems of national importance. Current examples include:

Towards Hypersonic VehiclesIn collaboration with BrahMos Aerospace, faculty from Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Aerospace Engineering work on a series of projects (at a total cost of Rs. 19.26 crores) to aid in design, development and flight testing of hypersonic air-breathing cruise missiles.

Water ManagementA group at the Inderdisiplinary Centre for Water Research (ICWaR) is working on a project worth £ 2

million under the Newton-Bhabha Fund for small-scale interventions (check dams, bunds etc.) for water management at basin scale.

Climate ChangeThe Divecha Centre for Climate Change is working on several initiatives to help mitigate the consequences of global climate change: the development of an interactive climate change calculator, the setting up of the South Asian regional hub of Future Earth, the estimation of expansion of glacial lakes in the Himalayas and more. The Centre is also consulted by the Government, formally and informally, on a host of environmental and climate issues.

Combustion ResearchThe National Centre for Combustion R&D has been set up in IISc and IIT Madras by DST/SERB with a total funding of Rs. 36.70 crores. The Centre is also working closely with industry.

Ocean mixing and MonsoonThis is an international mission with a budget of Rs. 38 crores to understand sea surface salinity and other physical phenomena which affect the Indian monsoons.

INNOVATION, PATENTING, AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

InnovationIISc started the Society for Innovation and Development (SID) in 1991 with the aim of creating opportunities for researchers to interact with industry. It has since enabled the initiation of over 550 R&D projects with more than 200 Indian and international companies. It is also been incubating start-ups. As a result of the interaction between industry and IISc, 8-10 corporate research centres have been set up within the Institute. A research park called the Innovation Hub, for which MHRD has given the Institute a grant of Rs. 75 crores, is in an advanced stage of planning.

PatentingPatenting activity in IISc took off only about 15 years ago, even though the Intellectual Property and Technology Licensing office was set up in the mid-1990s. We are now filing 30-40 patents each year. In all, 511 patents have been filed so far. Some recent examples of patents from IISc include:• An electric gradient augmented portable water filtration device• A patient transfer apparatus for shifting them

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without contact• An optical nano-sensor for early detection of olive fruit fly infestationIISc has also been successful in converting its knowledge into technology, and in many instances, its technology to products. Some examples include:• Pressure transducers deployed in HAL helicopters and being evaluated for LCA• Semiconductor metal oxide NO2 sensor to monitor liquid propellant leakage for ISRO• Compact solid-state neutron sensor for IGCAR• Hybrid Ultra-Capacitor (HUC) batteries (made by Mesha LLC)• CVD Reactor for Make-in-India Electronics• Heat-pulse based soil moisture sensor• Hand-held imaging flow cytometry tool• Multi-analyte diabetes detection device

EntrepreneurshipWe began encouraging startups around 2004-05. Before that we didn’t really have an entrepreneurship system in place. Over the last 12 or so years, we have spawned about 25 or 30 startups. Interestingly, 16 of those startups have come up in the last two or three years. Let me give you some examples:• Simyog is a startup based on high speed computational electromagnetics, that permits fast visualisation of electromagnetic radiation inside electronics systems.• Mimyk makes a device for training doctors in conducting upper gastric tract endoscopies. The technology was developed as a collaboration between a professor from Mechanical Engineering and one from Computer Science and Automation.• PathShodh is a device for measuring eight different biomarkers which are important for diabetes management – five using a blood sample and three using a urine sample. It uses strips which work based on nanotechnology.• Sickle Innovations makes a cotton picker, an agricultural device, allowing farmers to double the cotton picking rate, without picking up twigs or other trash.• Bellatrix is a startup which makes small thrusters for ISRO satellites. The founders are not from IISc, but the start-up is being incubated in IISc.• OpenWater is a water filtration device that uses electrostatic separation of impurities.• Equine Biotech is for diagnostic tools for veterinary applications.• Mynvax is a startup to develop influenza vaccines that uses a fundamentally different concept of creating antibodies against the more stable “stem” of the virus, rather than the more variable “head,” thus paving the way for more vaccines protection against many more strains of the virus.

CONNECTIONS, OUTREACH AND PARTNERSHIPS

LecturesEvery year we get many distinguished speakers to come and spend time with us. This year was no different. Some of those who visited IISc include: Eric Maskin, an economist from Harvard University and Nobel Laureate; Bertrand Halperin, a physicist, also from Harvard University; Brian Schmidt, a physicist and the vice chancellor of Australian National University, and a Nobel Laureate; and Richard Henderson, a molecular biophysicist from the MRC Laboratory and a Nobel Laureate.

Catching them YoungIISc organises an Open Day every year. Young people from Bangalore and other places and visit our laboratories to see science in action. Over 20,000 people came last year, and I understand that about 34,000 came this year. This initiative is growing by leaps and bounds. The Divecha Centre for Climate Change has an annual climate change quiz in which undergraduate students from around the city participate, thereby raising awareness about climate change. IISc also organises the annual Vigyan Jyoti Shivir, a national science camp for students.

Indian Nanoelectronics Users’ ProgramThe Centre for Nano Science and Engineering hosts the Indian Nanoelectronics Users’ Program every year. Faculty members visit engineering colleges around the country, and train the students and faculty of these institutions, encouraging them to come to IISc and use our facilities. The programme has resulted in the filing of 15 patents, publication of 180 research papers and 150 PhD theses. These patents and publications have been authored by participants, not by IISc faculty.

Public-Private PartnershipsIn the last ten years or so, we have been getting more financial support from private sources. We have a commitment of Rs. 115 crores from the Robert Bosch Foundation for the Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber-Physical Systems, which works on the Internet of Things and smart socio-technical systems. The Divecha Centre for Climate Change has supported by annual grants totalling to $3 million, from the Arjun and Diana Divecha family, and the Grantham Foundation. We also received Rs 75 crores over five years from the

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More recently, in the last couple of years, people have begun to look more closely at Stokes’ model, which improved on the assumption of a basic-applied dichotomy, but is still static. V Narayanamurti, who was earlier Chair of the Materials Research Laboratory in the University of California Santa Barbara, and who later became the founding Dean of Engineering in Harvard, came up with a model called the Discovery-Innovation Cycle. Discovery research asks fundamental questions, the answers to which lead to innovation. Need-driven innovation in turn gives rise to fundamental questions for discovery research to answer. And this cycle continues. This dynamic model is what he calls “cycles of invention and discovery”.

This Discovery-Innovation Cycle is something which can be seen as acting at many scales. An individual faculty member can carry out this cycle in his/her own work, or the cycle can be implemented by collaboration between faculty members.

ACADEMIA-INDUSTRY: NOT JUST ONE-WAY TRAFFICI draw your attention to a US National Academy of Engineering report on the evolution of various information technologies, and the role that academic and industry played in this evolution.

Today, if you open the “assistant” on your Android smart-phone and you say “Okay, Google”, or “Set and alarm for 5pm,” it will recognise you immediately, without any training, regardless of whether you are a Telugu speaker or a Hindi speaker. But in the 1970s, the problem was just of computers recognising single disconnected spoken words: for example, “yes” and “no” answers on an IVRS system. Speech recognition has come a long way since then. It took almost 30 years for it to become a $1 billion industry, when Dragon and IBM took it up in a big way. And Google has it on all their phones now.The US NAE report charts this evolution by showing the flow of the development process between universities and the industry. One sees back and forth interactions between CMU and MIT on one side and Bell Labs, IBM and Dragon on the other. One can perceive a discovery/innovation cycle happening at the academia-industry level. Unfortunately, such interaction is weak in our country. You can see this for practically every technology. My examples are all based on ICT (Informationand Communications Technology), but I’m sure it is similar for other technologies like structures and materials, databases, and data mining.

IISc’s ROLEWhat does IISc’s beautiful and iconic main building stand for? Is it just an ivory tower? According to

the dictionary, an ivory tower is a state of privileged seclusion, or separation from the facts and practicalities of the real world. Is that what we represent? On the one hand, I think we do, because a lot of basic research is done by separating oneself from the real world, by thinking about a problem without the compulsions of what our discoveries might be useful for.

On the other hand, an institution like ours must be an intellectual beacon, and an engine of economic transformation. Indeed, our mandate reads: “to provide for advanced instruction and to conduct original investigations in all branches of knowledge as are likely to promote the industrial and material welfare of India.” So we certainly cannot only be in the first state, of being an ivory tower. Because our responsibility then is not being met. This is something we need to keep in mind as we move forward and try to create greater impact.

EVALUATION CRITERIAPeople shape their working styles to conform to the evaluation criteria. Evaluation in Indian academia is heavily geared towards just counts – publication counts, citation counts, PhD student counts, number of invited lectures. You just keep on counting and finally somehow all that is put together to give a result. We also try to assess the personal contributions made by an individual. You look at a paper’s list of authors and begin to make assumptions about the contribution of the individual under evaluation, based upon the order if his/her name in the list of authors, whether one of the authors is a senior guide or mentor of the individual, whether there is a foreign collaborator, etc.. We keep worrying about all these details and we don’t really focus on the real contribution of the work. We are too heavily reliant upon these assessments of individual contribution and count-based measures of performance.

Such criteria also pervade all our selection processes and also academy fellowships, awards and recognitions. If you want to be an INSA Fellow, perhaps you have to conform to these ways of working. Hence faculty simply work towards piling up counts, often not trying something new and risky as it might interrupt the flow – because the flow is so important. If you interrupt the flow, your career could be in trouble. Researchers avoid setting up collaborations – because if you set up collaborations, people begin to ask who did what. Is it your work or is it the other person’s work?We need to assess impact rather than volume. This is not an easy thing to do, as we realise in our own discussions here in IISc administration. We need to look at best practices around the world. We need to understand how universities all over the world are able to extract the best from their faculty and do not necessarily stick only to these kinds of

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criteria.

THE TROUBLE WITH MEDIA RANKINGSWe have been subject to a lot of media scrutiny recently when it comes to the issue of rankings. A term we have to keep worrying about every few months as the rankings come out is internationalisation. Somehow the passport you carry seems to matter more to these ranking agencies. A university with mostly home-grown faculty and a few mediocre foreign faculty members would perform better on this metric of internationalisation. Top Indian institutions recruit high-quality faculty most of whom have international training. In fact, 95 percent of our faculty is trained in the best institutions around the world. So we are international in the real way, rather than in having diverse passports.

Some of the best students from a very large, ethnically diverse, national pool study at our universities. We are drawing people from the best pools of every state and every culture in the country, unlike some countries where the home populations are not interested in STEM studies. They have to attract Chinese and Indians to study there. Why should we emulate them when we have a whole pool of top-notch researchers in the country to work with us? We may induct a few international researchers to bring about cultural diversity, which is certainly highly desirable for the intellectual richness of a top institute like ours.

Let us then focus on strengthening something else: on hard academics, on research, on impact, on innovation metrics, and not bother about passports. We should read “internationalisation” not as passports but international visibility, and international collaboration, which often we do not have enough of in this Institute. And that’s partly because we do not have enough money to send people abroad. We don’t have enough money to host people in the best possible way.

INDIA NEEDS WORLD-CLASS CAMPUSESTo be able to do what I have said, we need world-class campuses. Many US campuses are in dangerous areas. “Don’t walk around after dark”, “Be careful not to make a wrong turn outside the campus” – you often see these kinds of warnings on US campus websites. Many US campuses are in uninteresting locations with nothing really to do outside the campus – they are out in the middle of nowhere. Yet these campuses continue to attract the best students and the best faculty from around the world. The campus itself is a beautiful, well-built, well- maintained, hygienic, self-contained, safe and secure, intellectually stimulating, culturally alive, fun-to-be community. If we create campuses like this, there is no reason that people will not come here. The investments that the country is

making on the research infrastructure will attract the best researchers from around the world, only if the campuses are also beautiful, welcoming, and well-run.

Many institutes in our country have large campuses that can easily be world-class; they can be magnets for international researchers. But only if there are funds and freedom to develop them as such. Unfortunately, we don’t have that freedom even when we have the money to build things in the best possible way. The experience of those visiting the campus must be world- class: no power failures, high-quality buildings, top-class research infrastructure.

SUMMARYThe academic review committees have praised the quality of our faculty and students. In recent times, we have taken several new initiatives towards modernising and professionalising our administration. The setting up of ODAA, a legal office, DIGITS etc, are some of the many things we have done recently to make our administration more modern. We also brought in many mechanisms for enabling faculty to do better work – we have brought in tenure, and we give them attractive startup grants, and some of them get Young Investigator Fellowships.

This is paying off. A wide variety of new knowledge generation is happening in the Institute. Innovation and entrepreneurship is on the upswing – 16 new startups have taken shape in the last two years, which is an indication that things are looking up. People are working hard, and we have actually been able to convert some of our knowledge into practice. Our faculty members are contributing to many large national and international programmes – I mentioned those earlier, such as the water research programme, the climate research programme. Private support of research is increasing. We are aiming to increase our industry collaboration. We have recently recruited three industry professionals to help us better engage with industry.

We must understand how to increase impact, and improve our international reputation. Even though our reputation is strong among those who know us, our reputation is not that strong if you look at the general perception. That is the only way we can be counted among the best in the world.

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CONTENTS1. Report of The Director to The Court of the institute

2. Remarks by the newly appointed President Shri N. Chandrasekaran

3. Report from The Deans

4. Research Snapshots

5. Awards and Distinctions conferred on members of the Faculty

6. Distinctions conferred on departments/centres

7. Publications

8. Patents

9. Some notable Institute activities

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Dear Dr. Kasturirangan, Director Anurag Kumar, members of the Court, and members of the faculty:

First of all, let me express my gratitude to the Council and the Court for giving me this great honour. It is a rare privilege to work with eminent people on the Council and be amidst the distinguished people of IISc.

I want to thank Prof. Anurag Kumar for his outstanding presentation in which he packed so many slides and managed to communicate everything that goes on in the Institute: research, key decisions, projects and many of the important papers published. His presentation also showed how IISc compares with other world class institutions, and the factors that keep IISc from going the next level.

When we talk about Indian institutes, IISc is at the top of everyone’s mind. We are in awe of where the Institute is today. But when we think of global institutions, we think of Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Oxford or Stanford.

So everyone is quite surprised as to why our institutes, particularly IISc and the IITs, can’t be an MIT or a Stanford. Why is it that they do not partner with businesses and industry? Why is funding a problem? These are issues that come up every time we talk about Indian institutes. I don’t want to say more because these are issues that you are all familiar with.

But it is heartening that students, especially our undergraduate students, land up in the best institutions for their postgraduate education and PhDs. And I am so glad to see some of them coming back.

India has lot of problems and our problems are very unique and complex. To solve these problems, we need solutions that are developed in our country. And for this, contributions from Indian researchers, start-ups and innovations are going to be extremely critical. So

IISc has a very important role to play during the next decade or two to take our country forward.

On my part, I want to just say once again that it is a great honour to have been chosen as the President of the Court. I will help in whatever way I can and work with Director and others. I congratulate all of you and wish you a great year ahead. Thank you!

2. REMARKS BY THE NEWLY APPOINTED PRESIDENT SHRI. N. CHANDRASEKARAN

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2. REMARKS BY THE NEWLY APPOINTED PRESIDENT

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RESEARCH SNAPSHOTS

4.

1 - FRONT

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2. REMARKS BY THE NEWLY APPOINTED PRESIDENT DR. N. CHANDRASEKHARAN

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1. REPORT FROM THE DEANS OF FACULTIESConsequent to the previous meeting of the Court held on 16.03.2018, the following reports have been furnished by the Deans of Faculties of Science and Engineering:ADMISSIONS During the year 2018-19, 995 (462 for PhD, 65 for Integrated PhD, 60 for M.Tech (Res), 298 for Master’s programs and 110 for Undergraduate Program) joined the Institute. • 72 regular + 2 foreign nationals + 1 ERP students admitted during mid-year admission • 126 students belong to SC/ST (42 for PhD, 8 for Integrated PhD, 58 for Master’s programs And 18 for Undergraduate programmes) • 20 students under External Registration Program • 235 female and 760 male students

Students On Roll The total number of students on roll is 4118 (2385 in PhD, 343 in Integrated PhD, 889 in Master’s programmes and 501 in Undergraduate program).• 560 students belong SC/ST (267 for PhD, 43 for Int. PhD, 138 for Master’s programmes and 112 for Undergraduate Program)• 133 students under External Registration Program (ERP)• 1120 female and 2998 male students

Conferments A total of 959 degrees [414 PhD, 60 M.Sc. (Engg.), 33 Integrated PhD, 243 MTech, 25 MDes, 16 MMgt, 103 Bachelor Science (Research) / 65- Master of Science] were awarded during the calendar year 2018.

Admissions And On Roll External Registration ProgrammeDuring the year 2018-19, 21 candidates joined under the External Registration Programme (ERP) and there are now 134 such candidates at the Institute.The same is placed for consideration of the Court

2. REPORT FROM THE DEAN, UG PROGRAMME

Report On The Bachelor Of Science (Research) And Master Of Science Programs The undergraduate program in science comprising about 500 bright young minds from across country began in 2011. To date, it has seen four batches of students graduate with a four-year Bachelor of Science (Research) degree and three batches of students graduate with a Master of Science degree. In the first four batches, roughly 50% of the students in each batch opted to continue for a fifth year to pursue a Master of Science program.

Career Paths Of Outgoing StudentsBatch 2014 (4th batch): 44 students opted to continue for the Master’s program. A total of 46 graduating Bachelor’s students secured admission to Ph.D. and other programs. Some of the universities / institutions in which the students secured admission include Harvard University, University of Connecticut, Maryland University, University of Chicago, University of California (Berkeley), JAIST, Utrecht University, University of Pennsylvania university of michigan, Cambridge University, IIT Bombay, Imperial College of London, Université Grenoble Alpes, Australia National University, and others. A couple of students took up job placements.

Batch 2013 (3rd batch): More than 52 Master’s students graduated secured admission to Ph.D. and other programs. Universities/institutes in which these students secured admission: University of Texas-Dallas, University of Texas-Austin, EPFL, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Toronto, University of Colorado, University of California-San Diego, Pittsburgh University, Wurzburg University, Max-Planck Institute – Halle University, RWTH Aachen, ICTS, IIA-Bangalore, IIM-Ahmedabad, IIM- Shillong IIT-Madras and others. One student took up a position as scientist in BARC.



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RECOGNITIONA young team of undergraduate students from the institute won a gold medal for the second time at the International genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) contest held at Boston, USA from 25th – 28th October 2018. Over 316 teams from all over the world participated in the competition.

Data On Past And Current Batches Of Students2014: 44 students (Master’s); 2015: 107 students; 2016: 94 students; 2017: 98 students: 2018: 108 students.

Breakup of 2017 batch of students discipline-wise: Biology (22), Chemistry (7), Materials (19), Mathematics (12), and Physics (39).

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RESEARCH SNAPSHOTS

4.


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DIVISION OF

Biological SciencesR E S E A R C H S N A P S H O T S 2 0 1 8

The “stem cell theory” of cancer predicts that cancers originate in the normal, adult stem cells. To test this, Dr. Rangarajan’s group introduced various oncogenes into stem/progenitor cells of normal breast tissue cultured as floating ‘mammospheres’. A specific “oncogene combination” converted these cells into tumorigenic cells. Interestingly, a significant sub-population of these

transformed cells harbored CSCs that initiated new tumors in test animals. Furthermore, gene expression analyses revealed striking similarities between the mammosphere-derived tumors generated within laboratory mice and naturally-arising breast adenocarcinomas encountered in the clinic. This lent early evidence to the provocative notion that solid tumors may originate in adult stem cells. Further, this laboratory-generated breast “cancer stem cell line” also offers a unique system for deciphering the mechanisms of self-renewal in CSCs, and drug-screening.

ANNAPOORNI RANGARAJAN (MRDG)

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Inflammation, characterized by pain, heat and swelling, is the body’s response to harmful conditions such as infection and cellular damage. Through inflammation, the body ensures the removal of pathogens, dead cells and regeneration of damaged tissue. However, when the inflammation persists for years permanent tissue damage and even cancer can occur. It has also been found that older individuals have higher

levels of inflammation that can persist to chronic levels.Towards understanding aging and inflammation, Dr. Deepak Saini’s lab focuses on a class of receptors known as G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and their roles in the cascade of events which occur when cells grow old aka ‘aged’. In a recent study, his group found the mechanism which enhances inflammation when cells undergo DNA damage. Interestingly, they have found that the same mechanism is responsible for increased inflammation during ageing.

Reference: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41514-018-0028-0 (pdf version)

DEEPAK SAINI (MRDG)

Levels of immunity to a given strain of H1N1 influenza

virus can vary in different people, influencing its spread. Accounting for such variations is a major challenge for the epidemiology of infectious diseases. Real world data is used to estimate susceptibility of individuals in a population, and is a first attempt at understanding how heterogeneity in susceptibility determines disease spread in populations. The results show that larger genetic diversity, leading to the presence of susceptibility sub-populations, protects against the spread of influenza; and populations with a small number of highly susceptible individuals should exhibit smaller outbreaks.

Reference: Sambaturu, Narmada, et al. “Role of genetic heterogeneity in determining the epidemiological severity of H1N1 influenza.” PLoS computational biology 14.3 (2018): e1006069.

N CHANDRA (BC)


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About 1 billion years ago, in a single-celled ancestor of all animals, a gene fusion of two tRNA synthetases formed the bifunctional enzyme, glutamyl-prolyl tRNA synthetase (EPRS). This enzyme ligates amino acids glutamic acid and proline with their cognate tRNAs which is vital for protein synthesis (or translation) in all living organisms. We propose here that a confluence of metabolic, biochemical, and environmental factors contributed to the specific fusion of glutamyl- (ERS) and prolyl- (PRS) tRNA

synthetases. To test this idea we developed a mathematical model that centers on the precursor-product relationship of amino acids glutamic acid and proline, as well as metabolic constraints on free glutamic acid availability near the time of the fusion event. Our findings indicate that proline content increased in the proteome during the emergence of animals, thereby increasing demand for free proline.

Reference: Eswarappa SM, Potdar AA, Sahoo S, Sankar S. and Fox PL. (2018) Metabolic origin of the fused aminoacyl tRNA synthetase, glutamyl-prolyl tRNA synthetase. J. Biol. Chem. (in press, Editor’s Pick)

SANDEEP M ESWARAPPA (BC)

How do the brain signals change when one sees a

green jackfruit versus a red tomato? We studied such questions by recording signals from the primary visual cortex of monkeys while they were shown various natural images. To our surprise, we found that there were strong oscillations in the recorded signals at frequencies in the range 30-80 Hz whenever reddish images were shown. These findings provide new insights about the generation of gamma oscillations and processing of colour in the brain.

Reference: Vinay Shirhatti and Supratim Ray (2018). Long-wavelength (reddish) hues induce unusually large gamma oscillations in the primate primary visual cortex. PNAS, April 9, 2018. 201717334; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1717334115

SUPRATIM RAY (CNS)

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Certain bacteria produce a class of toxins that poke nanometer-sized holes into animal and human cells. This often results in cells

dying. There are a number of steps that occur before a protein forms a pore on a cell membrane. These include binding of the toxin as individual molecules to the membrane, finding other toxin molecules by moving around on the membrane, after which they can start forming ring-like structures by interacting with each other, and finally puncturing a hole in the membrane. An interdisciplinary team from the Centre of Biosystems Science and Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Molecular Reproduction, Development and Genetics at IISc came together to address this outstanding problem for a pore-forming toxin called Cytolysin A (ClyA) released by the bacteria E. Coli.

References: P. Sathyanarayana, R. Desikan, G. Ayappa and S. S. Visweswariah, “The Solvent-Exposed C-Terminus of the Cytolysin A Pore-Forming Toxin Directs Pore Formation and Channel Function in Membranes”, Biochemistry DOI: 10.1021/acs.biochem.6b00593S Banerjee, S Maurya and R Roy, “Single-molecule fluorescence imaging: generating insights into molecular interactions in virology” J Biosciences, DOI: 10.1007/s12038-018-9769-yP Sathyanarayana, S Maurya, ABehera, M Ravichandran, SS Visweswariah, KG Ayappa, and R Roy, “Cholesterol promotes Cytolysin A activity by stabilizing the intermediates during pore formation” PNAS (USA), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1721228115

SANDHYA VISWESWARIAH (MRDG), RAHUL ROY (CE), K GANAPATHY AYAPPA (CE)

Flocks of starlings, herds of wildebeest, schools of fish, swarms of locusts, colonies of ants, bees and wasps – these examples of sociality are among

the most intriguing phenomena in the natural world. It is not surprising, therefore, that the question of why organisms live in groups has attracted a lot of research attention, and today, we have fairly nuanced and in-depth answers to this question. However, our current understanding of sociality comes almost entirely from an intraspecific context, i.e. based on groups of individuals of the same species. We know comparatively little about heterospecific sociality, i.e. social groups or associations among individuals of multiple species.

Hari Sridhar and Vishwesha Guttal from the Centre for Ecological Sciences, survey and synthesise documented examples of heterospecific sociality in the wild, and propose a conceptual framework to understand how organisms decide whether to group with individuals of their own species (conspecifics) or of a different species (heterospecifics).

Reference: Hari Sridhar and Vishwesha Guttal, 2018, Friendship across species borders: factors that facilitate and constrain heterospecific sociality, Phil. Trans. Royal Society of London B, 373: 20170014.

VISHWESHA GUTTAL (CES)


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Wind energy is undoubtedly a safer alternative to fossil fuels, but their ecological consequences are becoming apparent. Over the last few years,

we (Maria Thaker from the Centre for Ecological Sciences, and her project students, Amod Zambre and Harshal Bhosale) have been studying the impact of wind-farms on a plateau in the Western Ghats. Like many others, we find that wind farms reduce the abundance of birds, but this has very interesting consequences for the lizards that are their prey. Free of predation pressure, densities of fan-throated lizards were significantly higher in the presence of wind turbines; but their hormonal stress levels, anti-predator behavior, body condition, and even colours were also affected. We conclude that wind-farms have cascading indirect effects on lizards, driven by a combination of predator release and density-dependent competition. These effects are akin to a trophic cascade with wind farms at the top of the food chain.

Reference: Thaker M, Zambre A and Bhosale H. 2018. Wind farms have cascading impacts on ecosystems across trophic levels. Nature Ecology and Evolution. DOI: 10.1038/s41559-018-0707-z

MARIA THAKER (CES)


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DIVISION OF

Chemical SciencesR E S E A R C H S N A P S H O T S 2 0 1 8

The application of machine learning (ML) to develop structural and functional materials is relatively new, however, has great potential to accelerate the discovery of materials for a desired application. A foremost requirement in designing predictive models is the availability of high quality scientific

data in the form of shared materials databases. Continuous update and establishment of new databases are crucial for targeted applications. In this regard, Materials Theory and Simulations Group at Materials Research Centre has developed an open-access online repository of functional materials. The database is called aNANt and hosts the structures and electronic properties of more than 10000 functionalized MXene. It is expected to grow to host 25000 functionalized MXene within few months. Using information from this database, we have recently developed a ML model to predict the accurate band gap of functionalized MXene.

Reference: Rajan, A. C.; Mishra, A.; Satsangi, S.; Vaish, R.; Mizuseki, H.; Lee, K. R.; Singh, A. K. Chem. Mater.2018 In press.

Artificial photosynthesis is a very promising idea, since it can directly help capture atmospheric carbon dioxide and convert to a fuel or an industrial feedstock. While extensive efforts have been made towards electrically assisted CO2 reduction, exclusively photocatalytic reduction remains in a relatively nascent state. In this

work we have designed and prepared CuAlS2/ZnS quantum dots that can reduce aqueous bicarbonate ions to formate under visible light. We are able to get high turnover numbers (>7×〖10〖^4 molecules of sodium formate produced per quantum dot) and also solar to chemical energy conversion efficiencies as high as 20%. This efficiency is roughly 100 times greater than what is typically achieved in natural photosynthesis.

Reference: Bhattacharyya, B.; Simlandy, A. K.; Chakraborty, A.; Rajasekar, G. P.; Aetukuri, N. B.; Mukherjee, S.; Pandey, A. Efficient Photosynthesis of Organics from Aqueous Bicarbonate Ions by Quantum Dots Using Visible Light. ACS Energy Lett. 2018, 3, 1508-1514

ABHISHEK SINGH (MRC)

ANSHU PANDEY (SSCU)

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Any ferroelectric material is potentially an efficient solar energy converter. Unfortunately, all known ferroelectric materials

have large band gaps with little overlap with the solar spectrum and therefore, poor ability to absorb and convert sunlight to electricity. We recently discovered an efficient way to reduce the band gap of a classical ferroelectric material, BaTiO3, without compromising its ferroelectric polarization significantly with the help of a charge-neutral dipole doping of Mn3+-Nb5+ pair replacing two Ti4+ ions.

Reference: Shyamashis Das, Somnath Ghara, Priya Mahadevan, A. Sundaresan, J. Gopalakrishnan, and D. D. Sarma; Designing a Lower Band Gap Bulk Ferroelectric Material with a Sizable Polarization at Room Temperature ACS Energy Lett. 2018, 3, pp 1176–1182; (DOI: 10.1021/acsenergylett.8b00492)

D D SARMA (SSCU)

For decades, scientists have used fluorescent probes to detect molecules, monitor cellular activity and deliver drugs inside cells. Probes based on a compound called naphthalimide are especially popular because they can easily be made

in large quantities and their fluorescence can be tweaked by changing their constituent atoms. But they are usually absorbed by cells only in small quantities, which hampers their effectiveness. In addition, little is known about how they cross the cell membrane to reach inside.

In a new study, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have figured out a way to boost the cellular uptake of such fluorescent probes. They found that simply replacing two hydrogen atoms with iodine in their structure dramatically increases the amount transported into mammalian cells — up to 98%.

Reference: The Remarkable Effect of Halogen Substitution on the Membrane Transport of Fluorescent Molecules in Living Cells, published in AngewandteChemie International Edition, May 2018.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/anie.201804128

G. MUGESH (IPC)

Gallium, with its rich low-temperature phase diagram, is a liquid metal at room temperature and displays impressive potential for use as a 2D

material. Theoretical and experimental investigation by groups of A. K. Singh at IISc and P. M. Ajayan at Rice University, USA introduce a new approach for realization of thin 2D sheets of gallium, called as “gallenene”.

Reference: Kochat*, A. Samanta*, Y. Zhang, S. Bhowmick, P. Manimunda, S. A. S. Asif, A. Stender, R. Vajtai, A. K. Singh, C. S. Tiwary, P. M. Ajayan, Atomically thin gallium layers from solid-melt exfoliation Science Advances , 4, e1701373 (2018).

ABHISHEK SINGH (MRC)

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‘Building better batteries’ remains an ongoing process to cater diverse energy demands starting from small-scale consumer electronics to large-scale automobiles and grid-storage. While Li-ion batteries have

carried this burden over the last three decades, the ever-growing and highly diverse applications (based on size, energy-density and stationary vs. mobile usages) have led to an era of ‘beyond lithium-ion batteries’. In this post-lithium-battery genre, sodium-ion batteries (NIBs) have emerged as a pragmatic option particularly for large-scale applications. Our current work focuses on the world of mixed polyanionic cathode materials to realize the next generation sodium-ion batteries with high energy density.

Reference:: P. Barpanda et al, Adv. Energy Mater, 8(27), 1703055, 2018.

PRABEER BARPANDA (MRC)


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• The functional significance of SUMOylation and SUMO-E3 ligase subunit of the Smc5/6 complex was uncovered by creation of putative non-SUMOylatable variants.

• In the area of chromosomal translocation an in vitro cell-free assay system was established to investigate a sub pathway of non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) known as micro homology mediated end joining (MMEJ) which is critical in mitochondrial DNA repair. Several small molecule inhibitors were synthesized that can be used as potential cancer therapeutic agents. Endosulfan, a pesticide used widely in India, induced maximal damage on testes and resulted in male infertility.

• Control of mRNA fate decisions affects many cellular processes. The issue was addressed by focusing on interactions among RNA-binding proteins with RGG-motifs that facilitate the functional transitions of mRNA.

• Five genes were identified whose mRNAs undergo translational read through in endothelial cells. The goal is to understand endothelial cell function and angiogenesis regulation at the level of translation under various pathophysiological conditions.

BIOLOGY OF CHAPERONES

• Diagnostic methods were developed for screening various protozoan infections including Surra, Theileriosis and Babesiosis. These are currently used

for field diagnosis in rural parts of Karnataka by the animal husbandry department.

• Novel isoselenazoles that have the potential to be used as therapeutic agents for disorders mediated by reactive oxygen species were synthesized.

• A cage like tetra-facial molecular barrel (Pd8) was designed and synthesized. In clinical research, this is one of the important breakthroughs in terms of drug delivery.

IMMUNOBIOLOGY

• Glycodelin A (GdA) plays an immunomodulatory role by regulating the cytolytic activity of CD8+ T cells in nude mice.

• A region of the HCV E2 protein was identified as the neutralizing epitope using monoclonal antibodies and patient sera.

• A novel response of Interferon-gamma includes inducing aggregation of adherent peritoneal cells during Salmonella typhimurium infection in mice.

• HLA-F is induced by the neurotropic virus, Japanese encephalitis virus. This was blocked by inhibitors of NFκ B activation and lentivirus-mediated stable knockdown of NFκ B.

• Curcumin prevents experimental cerebral malaria in a mouse model.

FACT FILE

Established 1921

Phone +91-80-2293 2473

Fax +91-80-2360 0814

Email [email protected]

URL http://biochem.iisc.ernet.in

Degree Programs Offered PhD and Int. PhD

IN NUMBERS

78 Academic Staff

84 PhD students

15 PhD students

10 PhD Conferments

3 Int PhD Conferments

111 Publications

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DIVISION OF

Electrical SciencesR E S E A R C H S N A P S H O T S 2 0 1 8

The problem of Byzantine Agreement (BA) is of interest to both distributed computing and cryptography community. Following well-known results from the distributed computing literature, BA in the asynchronous network setting encounters inevitable non-termination issues. The impasse is

overcome via randomization that allows construction of BA protocols in two flavors of termination guarantee – with overwhelming probability and with probability one. The latter type termed as almost-surely terminating BAs are the focus of this work. An eluding problem in the domain of almost-surely terminating BAs is achieving a constant expected running time. Our work makes progress in this direction.

Reference: https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/394

In the semiconductor industry, there is demand for a modeling framework that enables systematic performance evaluation of new materials at device and circuit levels. We propose an ‘atom-to-circuit’ modeling framework for all-2D MISFET (Metal-Insulator-Semiconductor Field-

Effect Transistor). It bridges between first-principle based material modeling tools and industry standard circuit simulators and facilitates seamless design flow from 2D materials to integrated circuits.

Reference: Biswapriyo Das and Santanu Mahapatra, “An Atom-to-Circuit modeling approach to all-2D Metal-Insulator Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors”, npj 2D Materials and Applications, Nature publication group, 2018, DOI:10.1038/s41699-018-0073-3

ARPITA PATRA (CSA)

SANTANU MAHAPATRA (DESE)

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3.1.2BIOCHEMISTRY

Current Research

PROTEINS, NATURAL PRODUCTS ANDMETABOLIC ENGINEERING

• Non-structural protein (NSm) of Groundnut Bud Necrosis Virus (GBNV) participates in cell to cell movement and spread of the virus.

• The zinc finger transcription factor Mxr1p of the methylotrophic yeast, Pichia pastoris functions as a global regulator of multiple metabolic pathways.

• Mismatch repair helicase, UvrD is important for the process of homologous DNA recombination in the gonorrhoea-causing pathogen, Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Helicobacter pylori Topoisomerase (HpTopoI) participates in natural transformation.

• The anticancer compounds, vincristine and vinblastine were purified in large amounts from endophytic fungi isolated from various tissues of Catharanthus roseus and their cytotoxic activity was demonstrated in different human cancer cell lines.

• The effect of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genotype heterogeneity on possible cytotoxic

T-lymphocyte (CTL) response to influenza H1N1 genomes was studied using bioinformatics methods. The work presents a novel conceptual framework towards understanding how genetic heterogeneity influences disease susceptibility in individuals and in populations.

DNA REPAIR, GENOMIC STABILITY AND RNA TRANSACTIONS

• RecBCD enzyme complex is an example of a sequence-regulated, DNA-processing machine. Mycobacterium tuberculosis RecD was shown to inhibit DNA strand exchange promoted by RecA and structural studies on M. tuberculosis RecA uncovered molecular plasticity and interspecies variability. New telomerase inhibitors were also synthesized that could stabilize human telomeric G-quadruplex DNA.

• RAD51 paralogs regulate DNA damage responses and maintain genome integrity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Core Research

Proteins, natural products and metabolic

engineering; DNA repair, Genomic stability

and RNA transactions; Biology of chaperones;

Immunobiology.

Improved non-planar transistor device designs like Fin Field Effect transistors (FinFETs) are the most promising candidates

for ultra large scale integration. In this work, the researchers studied the mechanisms behind electrostatic discharge (ESD), Latch-Up and Hot Carrier reliability in FinFET devices, which led to invention of special ESD protection techniques and high voltage concepts enhancing the reliability limits of FinFET technology. They proposed a hybrid contact and junction engineered scheme, enabling ESD robust protection devices as well as reliable core functional devices in FinFET technology.

Reference: http://msdlab.dese.iisc.ac.in/

Two dimensional materials are being explored extensively for

possible applications in next-generation lithium-ion battery anode due to their large surface-to-mass ratio. We investigate lithium ion binding on rhenium disulphide (ReS2) by first-principles based calculations. The unique atomistic modeling technique proposed in this work is generalized enough for the realistic estimation of reversible lithium ion storage capacity of any new material.

Reference: Arnab Kabiraj and Santanu Mahapatra,“High-throughput first-principles-calculations based estimation of lithium ion storage in monolayer rhenium disulfide”, Communications Chemistry, Nature publishing group, 2018. DOI:10.1038/s42004-018-0082-3

MAYANK SHRIVASTAVA (DESE)

SANTANU MAHAPATRA (DESE)


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DIVISION OF

Interdisciplinary ResearchR E S E A R C H S N A P S H O T S 2 0 1 8

Magnetic nanomotors contain ferromagnetic materials, such that small magnetic fields can be used to maneuver and localize them in fluidic or gel-like environments. The research by IISc scientists demonstrates how the application of a microwave-synthesized ferrite layer on these nanomotors renders

them suitable as magnetic hyperthermia agents, as demonstrated by their cytotoxic effects on cancer cells. A crucial advantage is their scalability which would allow large scale production, taking us a step closer to the vision of a swarm of fantastic nano-voyagers deployed in human patients.

Reference: P.L. Venugopalan, S. Jain. S.A. Shivashankar and A.Ghosh, Single coating of zinc ferrite renders magnetic nanomotors therapeutic and stable against agglomeration, Nanoscale, 10, 2327-2332, (2018).

In recent years, multiple innovations in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning has led to the ubiquitous presence of brain-inspired neural networks in many real life applications. From robotic automation, to enhancing your ‘selfies’, there are a plethora of tasks performed by neural networks.

Crucially, deep neural networks are also employed in making critical decisions in applications such as medical diagnostics. Due to the omnipresence of neural networks, an important question to ask is, ‘How reliable are they?’. In this research, we present an approach to craft a small, imperceptible noise, which, when added to the network’s input, can completely decimate it’s discriminative ability, and in essence ‘fool’ the network.

Reference: Mopuri Reddy, Aditya Ganeshan and R. Venkatesh Babu, “Generalizable Data-free Objective for Crafting Universal Adversarial Perturbations”, accepted in IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), 2018.

A GHOSH (CeNSE)

R VENKATESH BABU (CDS)

Common parlour games have been used to design game engines that mimic human-like game moves. This research introduces

the first computational model aimed at Pictionary, a popular word-guessing game, which is characterized by a relaxed cooperative game-play where players use speech/lexical and visual modalities, asynchronous turn-taking, and a high-level notion of what constitutes a ‘win’. The Video Analytics Lab in CDS designed a deep network-based approach to model human guessing enabling characterization of realistic, possibly suboptimal, human actions which arise in Pictionary, and has the potential ability to encode non-trivial human behaviour and mimic human responses. Reference: Ravi Kiran Sarvadevabhatla, Shiv Surya, Trisha Mittal, R. Venkatesh Babu, “Pictionary-style word-guessing on hand-drawn object sketches: dataset, analysis and deep network models” accepted in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), 2018.

R VENKATESH BABU (CDS)

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Efficient processing of large-scale graph applications on heterogeneous CPU-GPU systems requires effectively harnessing of the combined power of both the CPU and GPU devices. Finding minimum spanning tree (MST) is an important graph application and is used in different domains.

In this research, a multi-node multi-device algorithm is proposed for MST, MND-MST). algorithm exhibits almost linear scalability for large size graphs and shows that the use of GPUs result in up to 23% improvement in performance over multi-node CPU-only performance.

Reference: Rintu Panja, Sathish Vadhiyar: MND-MST: A Multi-Node Multi-Device Parallel Boruvka’s MST Algorithm. ICPP 2018: 20:1-20:10.

SATHISH VADHIYAR (CDS)


DIVISION OF

This drone surveillance system has been mainly developed to identify violent activities by individuals in large public areas. The system does so by first spotting each human in the image frame. Next,

the body posture of each human is estimated which is then used to make a determination if two people are involved in violent activity.

The interesting properties of the class of ceramic materials called “ferroelectric -perovskites” have been used in wide ranging applications such as SONAR, ultrasound imaging, focusing of mirrors in space telescopes, heath monitoring of structures, automobile industry, etc. These materials produce voltage on being stressed and can change shape on application of electric-field. The latter phenomenon is known as electrostrain. The larger the electrostrain, the better the material can perform. Most piezoelectric ceramics exhibits electrostrain in the range ~ 0.2 -0.3 %.

For the first time, we demonstrate that ceramic, which is very easy to make, less time and energy consuming than that required for making of a single crystal, can show

electrostrain greater than 1 %. We achieved an electrostrain of 1.3 % by compositional design of the material system BiFeO3-PbTiO3-LaFeO3.

Reference: Narayan et. al., Nature Materials, 17, (2018) 427-431

S N OMKAR (AE)

RAJEEV RANJAN (ME)

Mechanical SciencesR E S E A R C H S N A P S H O T S 2 0 1 8

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SATHISH VADHIYAR (CDS)

The magnetic fields of many planets are approximately axial dipoles. To understand why the dipole is preferred, the evolution in time of a seed magnetic field is studied using a rotating dynamo model. It is shown that the growing magnetic field by itself excites

helical convection over a range of length scales within the dynamo region [figure (a)]. The time scale for the growth in convection intensity roughly coincides with the time scale for the formation of the dipole [figure (b)]. It is also shown that the dipole forms from a chaotic state well before the eventual saturation of the magnetic field, implying that a planetary dynamo would have chosen its dominant polarity during its growth phase, i.e. during the early life of the planet.

Reference: • B. Sreenivasan& S. Kar, Scale dependence of kinetic helicity and selection of the axial dipole in rapidly rotating dynamos, Phys. Rev. Fluids, 3, 093801, 2018.

B SREENIVASAN (CEaS)

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Nano-scale patterns such as those found on the exterior surface of the eyes of certain nocturnal insects have implications

in optoelectronic device design. This team of researchers has theoretically proved and experimentally demonstrated a novel moldable biomimetic nanoscale optoelectronic platform for simultaneous enhancement in optical absorption and charge transport in organic solar cells. Overall this work demonstrates a combination of tweaked biomimetic design and the use of unconventional robust structural materials as nanostructured optoelectronic substrates.

Reference: Krishnaswamy Jagdish, Kavita Garg, Ramamurthy Praveen, Roy Mahapatra D, Hegde Gopalkrishna, “Moldable biomimetic nanoscale optoelectronic platforms for simultaneous enhancement in optical absorption and charge transport”, Nanoscale (RSC) (2018) http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C7NR09015C

PRAVEEN RAMAMURTHY (ME) AND D R MAHAPATRA (AE)


Nearly 40% of the total CO2 emitted from burning of fossil fuel is absorbed by seawater and the deep-ocean contains nine times more dissolved CO2 than the atmosphere. Microscopic carbonate-secreting organisms living in seawater, like coccoliths and foraminifera (shown in the figure), incorporates trace

quantities of dissolved elements from seawater into their calcium carbonate shells. This research discovered that the isotopic composition of lithium, ratio of 7Li to 6Li, trapped within the calcium carbonate lattice is strongly correlated with pH of the organism’s growth environment. This result can be used as a new proxy for seawater pH to accurately determine the timing, rate, and extent of natural and anthropogenic alteration of the CO2 budget of the ocean-atmosphere system.

Reference: Bohlin, M.S., Misra, S., Lloyd, N., Elderfield, H. and Bickle, M.J., 2018. High〖precision determination of lithium and magnesium isotopes utilising single column separation and multi〖collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, 32(2), pp.93-104.

Large fluxes of dissolved cations and anions, generated by the weathering of rocks, are transported by rivers to the oceans. In addition to rivers, groundwater also carries these ions to the oceans. However,

the contribution of the submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) to the dissolved ion concentrations of the oceans is debated as it is not easily traceable in seawater due to mixing.

In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports of the Nature Publishing Group, Dr.Ramananda Chakrabarti, Surajit Mondal, and Dr. Shiba Shankar Acharya from the Centre for Earth Sciences along with J. SreeLekha and Prof. Debasis Sengupta from the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, IISc, have provided a direct evidence of the SGD-driven flux of Strontium (Sr) to the Bay of Bengal (BoB).

Reference: Chakrabarti, R., Mondal, S., Acharya, S. S., Lekha, J. S., & Sengupta, D. (2018). Submarine groundwater discharge derived strontium from the Bengal Basin traced in Bay of Bengal water samples. Scientific reports, 8(1), 4383.

RAMANANDA CHAKRABARTI (CEaS)

SAMBUDDHA MISRA (CEaS)

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Metallic implants are used to replace dysfunctional bone joints (hip and knee) in patients suffering from osteoarthritis. The alloys used at present (316L, Ti-6Al-4V, Co-Cr-Mo), are stiffer compared to human bone and contain elements such as Al, V, Ni that

have potential cytotoxic effects. Furthermore, they lack the necessary ability to bond with the surrounding bone (termed as osseointegration) or in other words are not bioactive. This has led to the development of new alloys that are less stiff, non-toxic and bioactive compared to existing alloys. In our work, we have developed a new high strength low modulus (less stiff) nontoxic 〖 Ti-Nb-Sn alloy for joint applications. Subsequently, we have employed a facile yet innovative approach to improve the ability of the alloy to bond with the bone. In this approach, the surface of the alloy is severely deformed by impact of hardened steel balls moving randomly in space at high speed. This process that is used to deform the alloy surface is known as surface mechanical attrition treatment (SMAT). Reference: S. Bahl, S.R.K. Meka, S. Suwas, K. Chatterjee, Surface Severe Plastic Deformation of an OrthopedicTi–Nb–Sn Alloy Induces Unusual Precipitate Remodeling and Supports Stem Cell Osteogenesis through AktSignaling, ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering 4(9) (2018) 3132-3142.

KAUSHIK CHATTERJEE (ME)

Mesoscale systems (MCS) are cloud clusters that extend to tens to hundreds of kilometres. Embedded within the mesoscale, there are groups of cumulonimbus clouds, or storms, with typical sizes of the order of 10 kms. This study establishes

the interconnection between MCS’s and storms over India during the 2013 monsoon season. The authors used Doppler Weather Radar (DWR) data of summer monsoon low pressure systems.

Reference: Sindhu K.D. and Bhat G.S. (2018): Characteristics of monsoonal precipitating cloud systems over the Indian subcontinent derived from weather radar data. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc; 1–19.

GS BHAT (CAOS)

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A major requirement in optical flow visualization for quantitative aerodynamic studies of hypersonic flows is a high speed camera, capable of capturing a few million frames per second of the flow fields.

The IISc team of researchers have designed a low cost wavefront measuring camera that can detect both the amplitude and phase of the captured light wave simultaneously.

Figure: (a) Captured l image of the flow field using the developed wavefront camera. Cropped ROI image is processed for vertical density gradients. (c) recovered wavefront d) Recovered 3D-density distribution

Reference: Biswajit Medhi, Gopalkrishna Hegde, K.P.J Reddy, Debasish Roy, and R. Vasu, “A novel wavefront measuring camera for quantitative measurement of density in high-speed gas flows”. Rev. Sci. Inst. 89, 085122 (2018).

G HEGDE (BSSE), KPJ REDDY (AE), D ROY (CIE), R VASU (IAP)

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DIVISION OF

Physical and Mathematical SciencesR E S E A R C H S N A P S H O T S 2 0 1 8

Novel tree like carbon nanostructures are grown by using ECR plasma CVD process with Hydrogen and acetylene in 1:3 ratio on a nickel coated silicon substrate. It consists of a central multiwall carbon nanotube with branches of crystalline carbon. The dimensions of the central spine and branches could be controlled by process parameter control. These structures are superhydrophobic, with a water contact angle of 1650. This material, which can be grown in any type of substrate in one step with super-hydrophobic as well as non-sticking properties with ideal Cassie mode of wetting, is a new direction in the field of super-hydrophobic nanostructures with two level roughness.

Reference: M. Ghosh, G. Mohan Rao , Carbon 133 (2018) 239-248

Open circuit failure resistant interconnect is a key technology that would enable reliable flexible electronic circuits. Using a dispersion of conductive particles in an insulating fluid, researchers

discuss the physics and engineering behind self-healing interconnects where repair is automatically triggered upon the occurrence of an open fault. Heals having metallic conductivity and nearly plastic stretchability are demonstrated. This work promises high speed, self-healing and stretchable interconnects thereby improving system reliability.

Reference: Amit Kumar, Virendra Parab, Arindan Handu, Li Ding, Pushkaraj Joshi, Chen Jiang, and Sanjiv Sambandan, Self-healing Interconnects with Nearly Plastic Stretching of Repairs, Phys. Rev. Applied 11, 014057 (2019)

G MOHAN RAO (IAP)

SANJIV SAMBANDAN (IAP)

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Microsupercapacitors (MSC) store energy with higher power density than batteries. Reducing MSC size effectively without losing efficiency is a major challenge. A simple spray deposition technique is

developed, whereby MSCs can be printed on any substrate. These MSCs can be recharged with higher frequency than usual batteries and have longer life, with possible applications in flexible electronic displays. Reference: Flexible Array of Microsupercapacitor for Additive Energy Storage Performance Over a Large Area, http://iap.iisc.ac.in/~abha/

ABHA MISRA (IAP)

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Ultraflatbands in twisted bilayers of two-dimensional materials have potential to host strong correlations, including the Mott-insulating phase at half-filling of the band. Using first principles density functional theory calculations,

we show the emergence of ultraflatbands at the valence band edge in twisted bilayer MoS2, a prototypical transition metal dichalcogenide. The moiré pattern also undergoes a structural transformation, leading to the formation of shear-strain solitons at stacking domain boundaries.

Reference: Mit H. Naik and Manish Jain, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 266401 (2018)

MANISH JAIN (PHY)


We have reported the first direct determination of the size of these nanoscale regions in model raft-forming biomembranes using super-

resolution stimulated emission depletion nanoscopy coupled with fluorescence correlation spectroscopy. The methodology establishes a new nano-biotechnological protocol which could be useful in preventing their cytotoxic effects.

Reference: Nirod Kumar Sarangi and Jaydeep K Basu, Pathways for creation and annihilation of nanoscale biomembrane domains reveal alpha and beta-toxin nanopore formation processes, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 20, 29116, 2018.

State-of-the-art DNA nanotechnology was used to mimic the function of naturally occurring transmembrane biological nanopore. Using the analysis of several atomistic MD simulations in explicit solution, a novel mechanism was proposed to account for the stability of self-assembled DNA nanopore protruding into the lipid bilayer membrane (A). The atoms of

lipid headgroups rearrange themselves into a toroidal shape around the DNA nanopore (B). The DNA-based transmembrane ion-channel demonstrates Ohmic characteristics for different ionic conditions (C) when subjected to a constant electric filed simulation.

Reference: H. Joshi and P.K. Maiti, Nucleic Acid Research, 46 (5), 2234–2242, 2018.

JAYDEEP KUMAR BASU (PHY)

PRABAL K. MAITI (PHY)

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Some of the most interesting phenomena in condensed matter occur in high-temperature superconductors and heavy fermions, arising from a parent non-Fermi-liquid background. These often elude a clear theoretical description. Here, the authors develop a model that provides a route to describe non-Fermi liquids realized in condensed matter systems.

Reference: Arijit Haldar, Sumilan Banerjee, and Vijay B. Shenoy (2018), Higher-dimensional Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev non-Fermi liquids at Lifshitz transitions, Phys. Rev. B 97, 241106(R)

SUMILAN BANERJEE (PHY)

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AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONSCONFERRED ON MEMBERS OF THE FACULTY

5.

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NAME DEPT AWARDS / HONOURS

Prof. Nagasuma R Chandra BC Fellow, Indian Academy of Sciences

Dr. N. Ganesh BC Fellow, National Academy of Sciences, India.

Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for the year 2018, in Biological Sciences.

Dr. Sandeep M Eswarappa BC Herbert Tabor Young Investigator Award-2019

Prof. R. Sukumar CES Lead Author, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Second Lead Author meeting for ‘Climate Change and Land: an IPCC Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial eco system’.

Dr. T.V. Ramachandra CES Member, Karnataka State Wetlands Authority

Member, Independent Commission (Belandur Lake Rejuvenation Status), National Green Tribunal (NGT), Delhi Bench.

Member, Advisory Committee, Project-Biosorption by Fungi, The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, GOI.

Karnataka State Parisara Award 2017-18

AEE, USA: Asia Subcontinent Region Energy Engineer, 2018

Member, Expert Committee (curriculum design), Karnataka State Rural Development and Panchayath Raj University, Gadag.

Member, Technical Committee – Rejuvena-tion of Bellandur and Varthur Lakes.

Member, Technical Committee, Tumkur Smart City Limited.

Dr. Maria Thaker CES Priti Shanker Best Teacher Award for Assistant Professors

Prof. Avadesha Surolia MBU Awarded SERB Fellowship by SERB, Govt. of India

Prof. N. Srinivasan MBU Inducted into the Scientific Advisory Committee of IBAB, Bangalore

Dr. Ashok Sekhar MBU Ramanujan Fellow, SERB, GOI

Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance Intermediate Career Fellowship, 2018.

Prof. Manju Bansal MBU G N Ramachandran Lecture Award at FAOMB-IUMB, Seoul, Korea.

Member, Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of ICMR, 2018-21.

Prof. Dipankar Chatterji MBU Honorary D.Sc. Degree from Jadavpur University, 2018.

Prof. Sandhya Visweswariah MRDG Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) 2018

Prof. Arun Kumar MRDG Editorial Board Member, Scientific Reports (npg)

Dr. Srimonta Gayen MRDG Ramalingaswami re-entry fellowship from Department of Biotechnology.

Prof. E. Arunan IPC International Advisory Board Member for the new “International Conference on Non-Covalent Interaction”

Section Editor, Chemistry, ‘Current Science’ from 2018

Dr. Atanu Bhattacharya IPC Editorial Board Member, Electronic Structure (an Institute of Physics – Journal)

Dr. K. Geetharani IPC Young Associate (2018-21), Indian Academy of Sciences

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Prof. G. Mugesh IPC Silver Medal from Chemical Research Society of India, Bangalore.

Prof. Bikramjit Basu MRC Global Ambassador award, American Ceramic Society; Chartered Engineer (CEng.), Engineering Council, UK; Distinguished Alumnus, National Institute of Technology (NIT), Durgapur, India; Fellow, Institute of Materials, UK.

Prof. Abhishek Singh MRC Associate Editor Journal of Physics: Materials, IOP Publication;

Dr. Prabeer Barpanda MRC Early Career Travel Grant- 2018, The Electrochemical Society (ECS), USA; MOPGA Global Exchange Fellowship-2018, Campus France, France.

Dr. Subinoy Rana MRC Editorial Board member, Biosensor (MDPI publication)

Prof. Santanu Mukherjee OC Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal or Organic Chemistry (2018-2020)

Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, London (FRSC)

Prof. Akkattu T. Biju OC Chemical Research Society of India (CRSI) Bronze Medal.

Bhagyatara Award for the year 2017 (Panjab University).

Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Heterocyclic Chemistry

Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC)

Prof. Gautam R Desiraju SSCU Doctor of Sciences honoris causa by The Rayalaseema University, Kurnool

ISA Medal for Science 2018 - University of Bologna, Italy

Prof. D.D. Sarma SSCU Eminent Visiting Fellow of Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (April 2018-March 2023)

Foundation Day Lecture, INST Mohali, March 2018

Physics Colloquium, Panjab University, March 2018

Senior Editor, ACS Energy Letters, April 2018

Prof. Aninda J Bhattacharyya SSCU A.V. Rama Rao

Foundation Prize Lecture in Chemistry 2018 delivered at JNCASR, Bengaluru

Fellow, National Academy of Sciences, India.

Prof. Biman Bagchi SSCU Distinguished Visiting Professor, IIT-Bombay (2018-20)

S N Bose 125th year Distinguished Bose Lecture, S N Bose Centre (2018)

Prof. Jayant Haritsa CSA 2018 IEEE CS Fellows Evaluation Committee

Prof. Uday Kumar Reddy CSA Most Influential Paper Award at the International Conference on Programming Languages Design and Implementation (PLDI-2018).

Prof. R.C. Hansdah CSA Best Paper Award at the 32nd IEEE International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA-2018).

Prof. Neelesh B. Mehta ECE Appointed as a Member of the IEEE ComSoc Awards Committee for three years from 2018 to 2021

Appointed as Co-Chair of the Membership Development Committee of the Asia Pacific Board of IEEE ComSoc.

Prof. Anurag Kumar ECE G M Modi Award for Innovative Science and Technology, 2018.


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Prof. Bharadwaj Amrutur ECE Abdul Kalam Technology Innovation National Fellowship 2018.

Prof. Chandra R Murthy ECE Young Faculty Research Fellowship from Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Govt. of India.

Satish Dhawan State Award for Engineering Research.

Dr. Aditya Gopalan ECE Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship.

Dr. Parimal Parag & Dr. Himanshu Tyagi

ECE Co-authors of the best paper award - winning paper at the International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT-2018).

Prof. P. Vijay Kumar ECE ACCS-CDAC Foundation Award, 2018.

Dr. Mayank Shrivastava DESE Associate of Indian Academy of Science (IASc)

Prof. Navakanta Bhat CeNSE Infosys Prize 2018, Fellow IEEE, Nina Saxena Technology Excellence Award, NASI-Reliance Industries Platinum Jubilee Award, BIRAC Innovator Award

Prof. Rudra Pratap CeNSE IEEE Sensors Council Distinguished Lecturer Award (Dec 2018)

Prof. Supradeepa CeNSE Young Associate, Indian Academy of Sciences, Associate Editor of Optics Express

Prof. Ambarish Ghosh CeNSE Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) Prize 2018

Prof. Srinivasan Raghavan CeNSE Fellowship INAE

Dr. Shashi Jain MS G C Surana Interdisciplinary award, Surana Educational Institutions, Bangalore

Prof. M.H. Balasubrahmanya

MS Editorial Advisory Board of International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research

Member, Editorial Advisory Board of Aarthica Charche

Prof. K.B. Akhilesh MS Gusi Peace Prize for 2018, Philippines

Dr. M. Ramachandra Bhat AE Member, Editorial Board of the Journal of Aerospace Sciences & Technologies

Prof. Ranjan Ganguli AE Fellow, National Academy of Sciences, India.

Prof. S.K. Satheesh CAOS Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences by the Infosys Science Foundation,

Prof. Kusala Rajendran CEaS The First National Award for Women Scientist for Ocean Sciences and Technology and Atmospheric Sciences Technology by The Union Ministry of Earth Sciences

Prof. Ramanand Chakrabarti CEaS DST Swarnajayathi Fellowship 2018

Prof. P. Anbazhagan CiE Advisory Board, CMR Institute of Technology

Nominated in the International Technical Committee for Ground Property Characterization (2018-2021), International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering

Judge in Clean Tech Competition, Centre for Science Teaching and Learning, Rockville Centre New York, Global STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math)

Prof. T.G. Sitharam CiE Member of Governing Council of NHCE, New Horizon College of Engineering

Member, Executive Committee of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)

Nominated/ Invited member to Engineering Faculty of Bangalore University, Jnana Bharati

Governing Council of Dr. Babasheb Ambedkar Marathavada Vidyapeeth University,


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The Editor-in-chief, Springer Transactions in Civil and Environmental Engineering

Prof. Ashish Verma CiE Editor, Journal Transport Policy, Elsevier

Member, Shri Vaishnav Vidyapeeth Vishwavidyalaya, the Member of SVVV (Mechanical, Civil and Textile Engineering) of the University

The Member of “Karnataka State Task Force on Mobility”

The Member of SPA Bhopal and Karnataka Task Force.

Dr. Abdul Rawoof Pinjari CiE Member of the Competent Authority of the Institute of South Florida

Prof. Monto Mani CST Awarded the “Best Faculty of the Year” by the Computer Society of India (Mumbai Chapter)

Cambridge-Hamied Visiting Fellowship, Univ. of Cambridge

Prof. Pradip Dutta ME President, Indian Society for Heat and Mass Transfer (ISHMT)

Member, Scientific Council, International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer

Prof. Saptarshi Basu ME Fellow, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)

Associate Fellowship, West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology

Prof. G.K. Ananthasuresh ME Abdul Kalam Technology Innovation National Fellowship given by INAE and DST

R.V. Ravikrishna ME Pratt and Whitney Chair Professorship at IISc.

Prof. Rohini M. Godbole CHEP Chosen as an outstanding referee by ApS for the year 2018

Member of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel CHEPAD of the USA

J C Bose Fellowship from Sept 2018-November 2020

Van der Waals Professor at University of Amsterdam

Prof. Justin R. David CHEP Associate Editor, The European Physical Journal C (EPJ C). He is on the Editorial Board of ‘Current Science’

Prof. Aninda Sinha CHEP Editorial board member for New Journal of Physics

Prof. Gadadhar Misra MA Elected as one of the Vice-Presidents of the Indian National Science Academy

Prof. Govindan Rangarajan MA Honoured with the Distinguished Alumnus Award, Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani

Dr. Vamsi Pritham Pingali MA Selected for the Junior Associateship of ICTP

Prof. Thirupathi Gudi MA INRIA-Paris Invited Professor

Dr. Apoorva Khare MA Ramanujan Fellow

Dr. R. Venkatesh MA Young Associate of the Indian Academy of Sciences

Prof. Rahul Pandit PHY Chair of the C3 Commission (Statistical Physics) of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP)

Vice-President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP)

Prof. Sriram Ramaswamy PHY Mayent Rothschild – Institut Curie Award

DSc honoris cause (honorary degree), Coochbehar Panchanan Barma University, West Bengal

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DISTINCTIONS CONFERRED ON DEPARTMENTS/CENTRES

6.


Centre for Sustainable Technology Lexus Design Award India 2019 in the Open Category for our Product CleaneRAT: Smart and Portable, Sewer Maintenance and De-clogging Robot.Commendation letter from the selection committee of the 2018 IEEE William R. Cherry Awards Committee on impressive academic achievements, under the IEEE Electron Devices Society Executive Office, April 2018.

Physics Department of Physics is the chosen by MHRD as the National Resource Center for Physics for annual orientation program for higher education faculty under SWAYAM.

Mathematics The Department of Mathematics has been approved by UGC for continuation from Centre for Advanced Studies CAS) Phase I to Phase II (for a period of five years starting from April 1, 2018)

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PUBLICATIONS7.

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The publications data given below has been sourced from the

Scopus database for the Calendar year 2018. The difference in

the total numbers, division-wise and department-wise, is due

to several publications being co-authored by multiple faculty

members in different departments and is an indication of a

healthy inter-departmental collaborative environment in the

institute.

DIVISION-WISE DATA

DEPARTMENT-WISE DATA

Division Journal Articles Conference Proceedings Book Chapters Total

Biological Sciences 280 4 8 292

Chemical Sciences 449 4 1 454

Electrical Sciences 156 269 1 426

Interdisciplinary Research

173 89 1 263

Mechanical Sciences 528 104 9 641

Physical & Mathematical Sciences

467 49 6 522

Autonomous Society/centre

3 0 0 3

Total 2056 519 26 2601

Department Journal Articles

Conference Proceedings

Book Chapters

Total

Biochemistry (BC) 62 0 2 64

Central Animal Facility (CAF) 4 0 0 4

Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES) 67 2 1 70

Centre for Infectious Disease Research (CIDR) 9 0 0 9

Centre for Neuroscience (CNS) 18 1 0 19

Microbiology and Cell Biology (MCB) 68 0 1 69

Molecular Biophysics Unit (MBU) 81 0 1 82

Molecular Reproduction, Development and Genetics (MRDG) 35 0 3 38

Inorganic and Physical Chemistry (IPC) 140 0 1 141

Materials Research Centre (MRC) 129 8 0 137

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Research Centre (NRC) 24 0 0 24

Organic Chemistry (OC) 73 0 0 73

Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit (SSCU) 124 1 0 125

Computer Science and Automation (CSA) 30 52 0 82

Electrical Communication Engineering (ECE) 81 79 0 160

Electrical Engineering (EE) 43 110 0 153

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Electronic Systems Engineering (ESE) 27 30 0 57

Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation & Urban Planning (CiSTUP)

13 0 0 13

Centre for Biosystems Science and Engineering (BSSE) 50 2 2 54

Centre for Contemporary Studies (CCS) DST Centre for Policy Res

3 0 0 3

Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE) 127 54 0 181

Department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS) 17 22 1 40

Department of Management Studies (MS) 8 4 1 13

Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy Research (ICER) 22 6 0 28

Interdisciplinary Centre for Water Research (ICWaR) 18 0 0 18

Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber Physical Systems (RBCCPS) 11 3 0 14

Supercomputer Education and Research Centre (SERC) 3 13 0 16

Aerospace Engineering (AE) 98 48 5 151

Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (CAOS) 36 2 0 38

Centre for Earth Sciences (CEaS) 35 0 0 35

Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing (CPDM) 8 18 0 26

Centre for Sustainable Technologies (CST) 21 3 0 24

Chemical Engineering (CE) 56 0 1 57

Civil Engineering (CiE) 98 8 1 107

Divecha Centre for Climate Change (DCCC) 34 3 0 37

Materials Engineering (Mat. Eng.) 203 14 1 218

Mechanical Engineering (ME) 80 7 2 89

Astronomy and Astrophysics Programme (AAP) 8 0 0 8

Centre for Cryogenic Technology (CCT) 5 4 0 9

Centre for High Energy Physics (CHEP) 33 3 1 37

Instrumentation and Applied Physics (IAP) 57 19 2 78

Mathematics (MA) 66 3 1 70

Physics (PHY) 323 27 2 352

Society for Innovation and Development (SID) 4 0 0 4

Centre for Brain Research (CBR) 6 0 0 6

TOTAL 2458 546 29 3033

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PATENTS8.

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SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTE ACTIVITIES

9.

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Notable Visitors and Lectures

There were more than 80 visitors to the institute during 2018. Some notable visitors and their lectures are given below.

M.J. Thirumalachar & M.J. Narasimhan Memorial Lecture on “Gene Therapy: It Works” by Prof. Inder Verma, Irwin & Joan Jacobs Chair in Exemplary Life Science, American Cancer Society., Professor of Molecular Biology, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, USA on 9th January 2018.

M.J. Thirumalachar & M.J. Narasimhan Memorial Lecture on “The cryo revolution in structural biology” by Dr. Richard Henderson Nobel Laureate 2017 Chemistry, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK on 23rd January 2018.

Professor Richard Henderson Nobel Laureate 2017 Chemistry, in the faculty hall

Prof. A Srikirshna Memorial Lecture - 2018 on “Molecular Complexity and Diversity from Aromatics: Concept, Strategy and Reality” by Dr Vishwakarma Singh, Mumbai on 5th February 2018.

Golden Jubilee Lecture on “Financial Crises: Why they occur and what to do about them” by Prof. Eric Maskin, Adams University, Professor, Harvard University (Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, 2007) on 26th February 2018.

IISC Centenary Lecture on “Cycles of Invention and Discovery: Rethinking the Endless Frontier” by Prof. Venkatesh Narayanamurti Benjamin Peirce Research Professor of Technology and Public

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Policy, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA on 21st March 2018.

Sri Vithal N Chandavarkar Memorial Lecture on “Asian Geopolitics today” by Ambassador Nirupa Rao, New Delhi on 6th June 2018.

Sir C V Raman Memorial Lecture on “The disorder created by entropy is in the mind” by Prof. Daan Frenkel, Department of Chemistry, Cambridge University, UK on 4th September 2018.IISc-SID Business Leader Lecture on “Translation of Science into Products and Businesses in the Life Sciences Sector” by Dr. Ganesh Kishore Austin on 28th November 2018.

M Ct M Chidambaram Chettiyar Memorial Lecture on “The Making of a New India” by Dr. Bibek Debroy New Delhi on 24th November 2018.

“IISc - Infosys Science Foundation Lecture on “Computational Insights into the Role of Micro-RNAs in Cancer” by Prof. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay Kolkata on 3rd December 2018.

Professor Eric Maskin, Nobel Laureate Economic Sciences 2007, in the Faculty Hall

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TECHNOLOGIES TRANSFERRED / ENTREPRENEURSHIP ACTIVITIES

MBU: Method for the identification of seed sequences for enzyme engineering – Hitech Biosynthesis Pvt Ltd (Prof. B Gopal)

RBCCPS: An Indian patent has been filed by Dr. Ashish Joglekar (MTS) for an “Online I-V Tracer for per string monitoring and maintenance of PV panels”. The I-V Tracer has been deployed at Quadsun Solar, Gurgaon in their 100 kW solar plant for further field testing. Licensing negotiations with Quadsun Solar have started.

An Indian patent has been filed by Dr. Ashish Joglekar for a “Smart switch with fail safe fallback”. The smart switch is being taken up as a commercial product offered by our startup in the energy sector Urjalinks.

A team led by Prof Shalabh Bhatnagar, Prof Bharadwaj Amrutur, Prof Ashitava Ghoshal and Dr. Shishir N.Y. Kolathaya (INSPIRE Faculty) have developed a custom-built four-legged robot (quadruped) called “Stoch”. The main goal is to explore deep-reinforcement learning algorithms

to achieve a wide variety of walking behaviours. The team is now starting to develop the next version of the quadruped, Stoch 2.0, and patenting/licensing options will be explored.

RBCCPS is embarking on an ambitious program in Autonomous Systems and Robotics, with a special emphasis on Drones. About 30 faculties are participating. A drone research park is being setup. A team led by Prof Debasish Ghose is participating in the prestigious drones competition MBZIRC 2020 in collaboration with TCS.

CST: 1) Energy efficient devices such as ASTRA Ole (cook stoves, Bath water stoves) and Agro-processing devices disseminated to Villages near IISc-Challakere campus, Kadur. Kunigal, Sirsi villages (Karnataka), Waynad (Kerala) and Mal Bazar Siliguri (West Bengal)

2) A Do-It-Yourself (DIY) smart solar-based lighting for rural sanitation - Roshini has been developed to educate youth on smart sensors (motion and light sensors), photovoltaics, battery storage, basics of electronics and to eventually promote safe sanitation and hygiene in villages. The entire kit re-appropriates urban waste (plastics bottles, end-of-life PV and Li-ion batteries) into new products for smart lighting in rural and urban households.

Openwater.in, a startup by Prof. Sanjiv Sambandan, Associate Professor, IAP, won the ABInBev grant. Openwater.in will build a high throughput trial run for ABInBev at Pune.

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ME:

G.K. ANANTHASURESHMimyk, which has developed an endoscopy simulation platform, was a result of a PhD thesis in the M2D2 laboratory in collaboration with Prof. Vijay Natarajan of the Computer Science and Automation (CSA) department in IISc. A PhD student from this lab and another from CSA co-founded Mimyk along with two other IISc personnel.

SAPTARSHI BASU (1) Founder and Director of startup BNG Spray Solutions Pvt. Ltd. which has developed a high-temperature burner for furnace oils for steel and oil industries. (2) Co-axial-effervescent hybrid atomizer for scramjet engine. (3) Laser based system for studying adsorption kinetics of adsorbent and adsorbate pair.

R.N. GOVARDHAN & JAYWANT H ARAKERI Involved as part of the leadership team of a start-up Aptner Mechatronics Pvt. Ltd. to develop portable cooling devices for use in helmets. The first developed product is being sold in the retail market under the brand BluSnap (https://bluarmorhelmets.com/) and further products are being planned.

PRAMOD KUMARThe group is in active interaction with both the Government and public sector undertakings as well as private companies for technology transfer. A number of MoU’s have been signed with Gas Authority of India (GAIL), Triveni Turbines Ltd (TTL), Tata Consulting Engineers (TCE), Indian Navy, etc. Currently, the group is actively engaged with Triveni Turbines to develop the country’s first supercritical CO2 (s-CO2) turbine-compressor power block. GAIL and the Indian Navy are actively supporting the technology development and have expressed interest to adopt the technology once demonstrated. The Indian Navy expressed interest to develop and implement a suitable T-CO2 based cooling solution for the engine rooms using the technology and knowhow developed by IISc with productization plan from its industry collaborators.

R.V. RAVIKRISHNAAdvisory Board member of a very successful startup incubated in IISc, namely Bellatrix Aerospace. He is currently guiding them on developing technologies for small natural gas-fired rocket thrusters. The proposed technology is planned to be scaled up in association with this startup.

IAP: Openwater.in, a startup by Prof. Sanjiv Sambandan, Associate Professor, IAP, won the ABInBev grant. Openwater.in will build a high throughput trial run for ABInBev at Pune.

PHY: The following entrepreneurship activity has been started by Prof. V. Venkataraman, Department of Physics, during the calendar year 2018: Name of the company: Invitrosense Private Limited & Registration date: January 2018Type of Business: Manufacture of speciality reagents for medical diagnosticsIP Licensed from IISc: Formulation and Process for the manufacture of TMB chromogenic substrate used for ELISA and other immunological applications.

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NEW EQUIPMENTS AND FACILITIES

A large number of equipments have been bought and facilities set up in the institute in various department and centres. Below we report only those that cost more than INR 50 Lakhs.

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCESFlow Cytometer Facility (BC); Confocal Microscope Facility (BC); 3T Siemens Prisma MRI system (CNS); Cryo EM facility (MBU); 10 Teraflop DST – ECR HPC facility (MBU); Cryo EM facility (MCB); 10 Teraflop DST – ECR HPC facility (MCB)

CHEMICAL SCIENCESAsylum Cypher-ES Scanning Probe Microscope (SSCU); Waters Xevo Q-ToF Mass spectrometer (OC).

INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH TIRF/Spinning Disk Confocal microscope (BSSE); Advanced Optical Fiber Processing Unit (Large-diameter fiber splicing, cleaving and recoating) - (CeNSE); CMP Tribo Chemical Mehanical Polishing System (Logitech) - (CeNSE) ; Digital Droplet/Aerosol Microdispensing system (MicroFab) - (CeNSE); A NVIDIA DGX-1 machine for artificial intelligence and deep learning based research (SERC)

MECHANICAL SCIENCESBi-Axial Fatigue testing Machine: Used for testing large size (1m *1m) concrete specimens under static and non-proportional fatigue loading (CiE)

PHYSICAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCESDilution fridge unit with specified cooling power, optimized He3/He4 mixture, vector split magnet, bottom/top loading unit with optical fibre (PHY).


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Centre for Sustainable Technology Lexus Design Award India 2019 in the Open Category for our Product CleaneRAT: Smart and Portable, Sewer Maintenance and De-clogging Robot.Commendation letter from the selection committee of the 2018 IEEE William R. Cherry Awards Committee on impressive academic achievements, under the IEEE Electron Devices Society Executive Office, April 2018.

Physics Department of Physics is the chosen by MHRD as the National Resource Center for Physics for annual orientation program for higher education faculty under SWAYAM.

Mathematics The Department of Mathematics has been approved by UGC for continuation from Centre for Advanced Studies CAS) Phase I to Phase II (for a period of five years starting from April 1, 2018)

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Electronic Systems Engineering (ESE)2730057

Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation & Urban Planning (CiSTUP)

130013

Centre for Biosystems Science and Engineering (BSSE)502254

Centre for Contemporary Studies (CCS) DST Centre for Policy Res

3003

Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE)127540181

Department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS)1722140

Department of Management Studies (MS)84113

Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy Research (ICER)226028

Interdisciplinary Centre for Water Research (ICWaR)180018

Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber Physical Systems (RBCCPS)113014

Supercomputer Education and Research Centre (SERC)313016

Aerospace Engineering (AE)98485151

Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (CAOS)362038

Centre for Earth Sciences (CEaS)350035

Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing (CPDM)818026

Centre for Sustainable Technologies (CST)213024

Chemical Engineering (CE)560157

Civil Engineering (CiE)9881107

Divecha Centre for Climate Change (DCCC)343037

Materials Engineering (Mat. Eng.)203141218

Mechanical Engineering (ME)807289

Astronomy and Astrophysics Programme (AAP)8008

Centre for Cryogenic Technology (CCT)5409

Centre for High Energy Physics (CHEP)333137

Instrumentation and Applied Physics (IAP)5719278

Mathematics (MA)663170

Physics (PHY)323272352

Society for Innovation and Development (SID)4004

Centre for Brain Research (CBR)6006

TOTAL2458546293033

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PATENTS 8.

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SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTE ACTIVITIES

9.

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Notable Visitors and Lectures

There were more than 80 visitors to the institute during 2018. Some notable visitors and their lectures are given below.

M.J. Thirumalachar & M.J. Narasimhan Memorial Lecture on “Gene Therapy: It Works” by Prof. Inder Verma, Irwin & Joan Jacobs Chair in Exemplary Life Science, American Cancer Society., Professor of Molecular Biology, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, USA on 9th January 2018.

M.J. Thirumalachar & M.J. Narasimhan Memorial Lecture on “The cryo revolution in structural biology” by Dr. Richard Henderson Nobel Laureate 2017 Chemistry, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK on 23rd January 2018.

Professor Richard Henderson Nobel Laureate 2017 Chemistry, in the faculty hall

Prof. A Srikirshna Memorial Lecture - 2018 on “Molecular Complexity and Diversity from Aromatics: Concept, Strategy and Reality” by Dr Vishwakarma Singh, Mumbai on 5th February 2018.

Golden Jubilee Lecture on “Financial Crises: Why they occur and what to do about them” by Prof. Eric Maskin, Adams University, Professor, Harvard University (Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, 2007) on 26th February 2018.

IISC Centenary Lecture on “Cycles of Invention and Discovery: Rethinking the Endless Frontier” by Prof. Venkatesh Narayanamurti Benjamin Peirce Research Professor of Technology and Public

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ME:

G.K. ANANTHASURESHMimyk, which has developed an endoscopy simulation platform, was a result of a PhD thesis in the M2D2 laboratory in collaboration with Prof. Vijay Natarajan of the Computer Science and Automation (CSA) department in IISc. A PhD student from this lab and another from CSA co-founded Mimyk along with two other IISc personnel.

SAPTARSHI BASU (1) Founder and Director of startup BNG Spray Solutions Pvt. Ltd. which has developed a high-temperature burner for furnace oils for steel and oil industries. (2) Co-axial-effervescent hybrid atomizer for scramjet engine. (3) Laser based system for studying adsorption kinetics of adsorbent and adsorbate pair.

R.N. GOVARDHAN & JAYWANT H ARAKERI Involved as part of the leadership team of a start-up Aptner Mechatronics Pvt. Ltd. to develop portable cooling devices for use in helmets. The first developed product is being sold in the retail market under the brand BluSnap (https://bluarmorhelmets.com/) and further products are being planned.

PRAMOD KUMARThe group is in active interaction with both the Government and public sector undertakings as well as private companies for technology transfer. A number of MoU’s have been signed with Gas Authority of India (GAIL), Triveni Turbines Ltd (TTL), Tata Consulting Engineers (TCE), Indian Navy, etc. Currently, the group is actively engaged with Triveni Turbines to develop the country’s first supercritical CO2 (s-CO2) turbine-compressor power block. GAIL and the Indian Navy are actively supporting the technology development and have expressed interest to adopt the technology once demonstrated. The Indian Navy expressed interest to develop and implement a suitable T-CO2 based cooling solution for the engine rooms using the technology and knowhow developed by IISc with productization plan from its industry collaborators.

R.V. RAVIKRISHNAAdvisory Board member of a very successful startup incubated in IISc, namely Bellatrix Aerospace. He is currently guiding them on developing technologies for small natural gas-fired rocket thrusters. The proposed technology is planned to be scaled up in association with this startup.

IAP: Openwater.in, a startup by Prof. Sanjiv Sambandan, Associate Professor, IAP, won the ABInBev grant. Openwater.in will build a high throughput trial run for ABInBev at Pune.

PHY: The following entrepreneurship activity has been started by Prof. V. Venkataraman, Department of Physics, during the calendar year 2018: Name of the company: Invitrosense Private Limited & Registration date: January 2018Type of Business: Manufacture of speciality reagents for medical diagnosticsIP Licensed from IISc: Formulation and Process for the manufacture of TMB chromogenic substrate used for ELISA and other immunological applications.

Pg 63

NEW EQUIPMENTS AND FACILITIES

A large number of equipments have been bought and facilities set up in the institute in various department and centres. Below we report only those that cost more than INR 50 Lakhs.

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCESFlow Cytometer Facility (BC); Confocal Microscope Facility (BC); 3T Siemens Prisma MRI system (CNS); Cryo EM facility (MBU); 10 Teraflop DST – ECR HPC facility (MBU); Cryo EM facility (MCB); 10 Teraflop DST – ECR HPC facility (MCB)

CHEMICAL SCIENCESAsylum Cypher-ES Scanning Probe Microscope (SSCU); Waters Xevo Q-ToF Mass spectrometer (OC).

INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH TIRF/Spinning Disk Confocal microscope (BSSE); Advanced Optical Fiber Processing Unit (Large-diameter fiber splicing, cleaving and recoating) - (CeNSE); CMP Tribo Chemical Mehanical Polishing System (Logitech) - (CeNSE) ; Digital Droplet/Aerosol Microdispensing system (MicroFab) - (CeNSE); A NVIDIA DGX-1 machine for artificial intelligence and deep learning based research (SERC)

MECHANICAL SCIENCESBi-Axial Fatigue testing Machine: Used for testing large size (1m *1m) concrete specimens under static and non-proportional fatigue loading (CiE)

PHYSICAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCESDilution fridge unit with specified cooling power, optimized He3/He4 mixture, vector split magnet, bottom/top loading unit with optical fibre (PHY).

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IISc PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEETA AbinandananK N BalajiAnand T ByrappaDebasish Ghose (Convener)Suhasini GururajaY NarahariKarthik RamaswamyPS SastryIndumati SrinivasanMatthew Jacob ThazhuthaveetilV ThilagamKaushal Verma

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