Category Archives: Blog

Advice on asking me for recommendation letters

Since I have had to clarify this on numerous occasions to multiple people who’ve passed through my lab, this is a convenient place to put all these thoughts in one place. Also acknowledgement to the legendary John Eisen (of metagenomics … Continue reading

Posted in Blog, Ethics in science, Recommendation Letters, Teaching, science career, scientific_writing | Leave a comment

Microtubule-Motor Adventures

This post could also be called what I learnt from keeping an open mind, and how important it is to emphasize negative controls. Having said that I am inspired to write by Steve Koch (U. New Mex) and his commentary … Continue reading

Posted in Microscopy, Microtubules, Molecular motors, Uncategorized | Comments Off

Cellular biophysics courses at Bachelor-Masters level

India Biophysics at All India Insitute for Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi: MSc, MD and PhD in Biophysics: Mostly structural biology, biostatistics, mathematical biology and genomics National Institute for Medical Health and Allied Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore: Dept. of Biophysics offers MPhil, … Continue reading

Posted in Biophysics, Blog, Research, science career | Comments Off

ffmpeg

Loads of pain converting simulation output (ppm and TIF) time series into a movie format that a journal likes has led me to start this page. Heres a list of standard ffmpeg (Mac OSX 10.12.3, Terminal) tools used on Terminal … Continue reading

Posted in Blog, Movies, Scientific computing, ffmpeg, scientific_writing | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Pausing and Reflecting on iGEM with former Students

A recently organized workshop at Pune university virtually invited me to speak about iGEM and synthetic biology. It was an opportunity for me to do something I’ve been meaning to do for a while- have a dialogue with some of … Continue reading

Posted in Commentaries, Synthetic biology, Synthetic biology, Teaching, iGEM | Comments Off

Label Free Microtubule Microscopy

The exciting work of Mohammed Mahamdeh and Joe Howard (J.Microsc. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmi.12744) prompted me in the December break from teaching in 2018 to try and reproduce it, using the Nikon TiE inverted epifluorescence microscopy in the lab. With the able presence … Continue reading

Posted in Biophysics, Cytoskeleton, Device development, Microscopy, Microscopy, Microtubules, Research | Leave a comment

Volunteering for COVID

The pandemic has affected everything and everybody to different degrees. And academics and research is no exception. It is all the more amazing that in this crisis moment, many of the lab members – Kunalika and Neha- have been volunteering … Continue reading

Posted in Lab achievements, Lab updates, Outreach | Leave a comment

On synthetic biology

The area of synthetic biology is exploding. Or so it would seem. With Craig Venter, the old hand of genomics now promising everything from bio-energy to solving the climate change crisis, it seems like the solution to the ills of … Continue reading

Posted in Synthetic biology, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Newly minted PhD: Anushree

With excellent work on automated kymography, and more recent work on label-free tracking in DIC microscopy, Anushree Chaphalkar defended her thesis today and richly earned a commendation from the examiners. Congratulations Dr. Chaphalkar! Anushree’s work was also covered in the … Continue reading

Posted in Blog, Lab achievements, Lab updates | Leave a comment

Visitor from Rome

Garima Verma, a PhD student candidate at the University of Rome, Italy will be visiting us for a few months. Garima is working in the lab of Dr. Grigioni Mauro, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, e Umberto Nanni del Dipartimento di Ingegneria … Continue reading

Posted in Blog, Lab updates | Leave a comment