Report 2008-09, 2008 - 2009

The note from the director, K. VijayRaghavan, talks about the need to establish a different set of rules for NCBS as opposed to that of well established Indian Science institutions. Shachi Gosavi, Raghu Padinjat, Vatsala Thirumalai, Sandeep Krishna, Madhusudhan Venkadesan and Aswin Sai Seshasayee joined the institution. Sanjeev Jain from NIMHANS, Bangalore began collaborating with Mitradas Panicker in studying mental disorders. Several other collaborations with places like the Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, Trinity College, Dublin, Cambridge, Stanford were carrying on as well. NCBS had been supporting Anna Spudich and Indu Menon in a program to translate ancient Ayurvedic texts. They were joined by P.P.Divakaran. The MSc Wildlife program obtained funding from the dissertation projects from The Department of Science and Technology. Other organisations like the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Art Ortenberg Foundation and Indo-US Science and Technology Forum also funded the program. NCBS had six research areas due to the addition of 'Theory and Modelling of Biological Systems' and 'Ecology and Evolution'. Apurva Sarin replaced Gaiti Hasan as the Academic head. Sympotein, a symposium series, was launched as a student initiative. A new sports facility was built. NCBS and InStem launched a company called C-CAMP, initially funded by the DBT. The centre had 28 independent research groups. A Biotwin transmission electron microscope was added to the Cytometry facility. The director penned down a few words in memory of Veronica Rodrigues who passed away in 2010.