Refreshed

Finally the refresher course is over. There was a fracas. One of the persons who came to give a talk decided to tell us that he was an expert in Helicases. These are proteins that unwind DNA during replication, transcription etc.  I have no problems in someone declaring that they are experts as long as they are willing to substantiate that claim. To be fair, I think he thought he would be safe in making that declaration because the refresher courses are generally for college teachers and as they do not do research he decided he could get away with the proclamation. Unfortunately, I was there in the audience and once he pompously announced that we should keep quiet during the lecture as it was a difficult topic he was explaining, I decided to have some fun. I asked a very legitimate question and he was furious. Then my colleague with whom I collaborate for doing biophysical studies decided to ask a question which he could not answer. He boiled with rage when I prompted him by taking names of the scientists who done the work and therefore, if he is an expert, he should immediately recall. That cooked my goose.  The next opportunity he got he went for me with all guns blazing. The end result was that I happily walked out of the class and he ranted that we were all stupid. Which got another of my colleague riled up and there was a lovely fracas. Hopefully, we will not ever get him to give another talk.

Take home lesson:  Never take your audience for granted.

"Common Wealth" Games

I do not know why there is so much fuss about all the corruption. After all it is Common Wealth, so every one is helping themselves to it.

Bachi Karkaria as usual nails it down in her column.

The CPWD with its 160 years of experience has created world class facility. Where in the world will you have stadium with leaking roofs?  Where else can you find seepages in brand new constructions?

Of course the roads caved in. It is part of the monsoon charm. The month of Sawan...

Two days back we had a 11 hour power cut. The Government is ensuring that we become acclimatized to the long power cuts because that is the only way they can provide power during the games.

Meantime, I am spending time getting refreshed yet again. The University refuses to believe that having projects and papers are sufficient proof that I am constantly updating myself. Most of the lectures are terrible so we sit in back giggling and making comments. It helps in passing the time.

Decision making-whom to accept as PhD student

This year there was a deluge of applications to join my lab.  There were applications even before our interview processes took place and of course after the candidates were selected, all of them made a beeline to my lab. Chromatin remodeling is the latest buzzword. While I can preen myself on it, it also made life difficult for me. How do I select a candidate?

The first thing is that I do not look at resumes. It does not tell me anything. Given the Indian University context, it tells me how good a student is at memorizing stuff. Beyond it I do not get any information about the student. Is she/he creative? What do they like to do? What is it that they find fascinating?

I took recourse in the way interviews are done abroad. Where the faculty and the student essentially chat. All my interactions were one-to-one. As I told the student about the work we were doing I was looking for responses. Is the student curious? Do they find a phenomenon interesting? How do they react to unusual data?

I interacted with 20 students in all. I found 2 who were very interesting and keen. It was a pleasure to interact with them. 2 were responsive but not curious. The rest were not curious.

All the students were asked to interact with my lab. The feedback I got back from my students was then matched with what I had observed in my interviews.

Unanimously we have narrowed down on one student. I do have back-up names but I know whom I want to have in my lab.

I have not yet announced my decision. Funnily none of the 4 students are toppers in any sense. They are good but they are not the kinds who have won awards. They have not even topped our merit list.  But as I said in the beginning, resumes in India are meaningless till we stop evaluating students based on what they have memorized.

New Web Page

Finally, I pulled myself together and created a new web page. Or at least I put the material together and Ritu Nidhi from CIS created the web page.  There are some glitches that need to be taken care off. But for the present there is a web page that provides information about my laboratory. It can be accessed here:
http://www.jnu.ac.in/Faculty/rohini/