Vijyoshi - 2019 National Science Camp 06-08 December 2019 J.N. Tata Auditorium, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru FOUNDED BY Department of Science and Technology Government of India ORGANISERS INSPIRE Program, Government of India FOUNDED BY 6 - 8 December 2019 The aim of the annual National Science (Vijyoshi) Camps is to provide a forum for interactions between bright young students and leading researchers in various branches of science and mathematics. With boundaries between disciplines fast disappearing, these camps serve as an ideal platform for the young participants to get an exciting global viewpoint of questions relating to basic sciences as well as application Department of Science and Technology oriented themes. Government of India As in the previous meetings, a comprehensive programme has been designed for the participants. This includes thought ORGANISERS provoking lectures followed by a round of discussion at the end of each day’s programme. Apart from all this, the previous meetings have ultimately served to motivate and inspire the participants by bringing them together, in what is hoped will be their first step towards a career in research in the basic sciences and mathematics. Prof. A K Nandakumaran Convener Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana Indian Institute of Science Bengaluru – 560 012 A Program of Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India Organised by KISHORE VAIGYANIK PROTSAHAN YOJANA and NATIONAL SCIENCE (VIJYOSHI) CAMP - 2019 INSPIRE PROGRAM INSPIRE Program, Government of India 1 Program - 6/12/2019 08.00 – 09.00 Breakfast 09.00 – 09.30 Inauguration 09.00 – 09.05 Welcome speech Prof. A K Nandakumaran, Convener, KVPY 09.05 – 09.15 Inaugural address Prof. Anurag Kumar Director Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru 09.15 – 09.20 Vote of Thanks Prof. Santanu Mukherjee 09.20 - 10.00 Photo session followed by High Tea 10.00 - 11.15 Lecture 1 Speaker Prof. Kankan Bhattacharyya Title: Seeing Tiny Things - A Tale of Two Nobels in Last Five years Session Chair Prof. Biman Bagchi 11.15 - 12.30 Lecture 2 Speaker Prof. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath Title: Human Brain: Complexity Behind Simplicity Session Chair Prof. Sandhya Visweswariah 12.30 - 14.00 Lunch 14.00 - 15.15 Lecture 3 Speaker Prof. Peter R. Saulson Title: Listening to the Universe with Gravitational Waves Session Chair Prof. S. Asokan 15.15 - 16.30 Lecture 4 Speaker Prof. Dipendra Prasad Title: An Overview of Mathematics for Young Students Session Chair Prof. Apoorva Khare 16.45 - 17.30 Interactive Session with Speakers from L1-L3 17.30 - 18.00 Tea / Coffee 2 Program - 7/12/2019 08.00 – 09.00 Breakfast 09.30 - 10.45 Lecture 5 Speaker Prof. Sundaram Thangavelu Title: Proofs from the Book Session Chair Prof. Phoolan Prasad 10.45 - 11.30 Tea / Coffee 11.30 - 12.30 Interactive Session with Speakers from L4-L5 12.30 - 14.00 Lunch 14.00 - 16.00 Cultural Program 16.00 – 16.30 Tea / Coffee 16.30 – 17.15 Interactive Session with Prof. Nagasuma Chandra (Associate Dean, UG Program, IISc Bengaluru) 17.15 – 19.15 Lecture 6 Speaker Prof. Uday Maitra Title: Part-I: A Periodic Table with a Difference! Part-II: Learning Chemistry through Experiments Session Chair Prof. P. K. Das 19.15 – 20.15 Dinner 3 Program - 8/12/2019 08.00 – 09.00 Breakfast 09.30 - 10.45 Lecture 7 Speaker Prof. Marlene Zuk Title: Sexual Selection and the Evolution of Animal Signals Session Chair Prof. Maria Thaker 10.45 - 11.15 Tea / Coffee 11.15 - 12.30 Lecture 8 Speaker Prof. Rahul Pandit Title: Life-Threatening Cardiac Arrhythmias: What Can We Learn from Numerical Studies of Mathematical Models for Cardiac Tissue Session Chair Prof. H. R. Krishnamurthy 12.30 – 13.00 Interactive Session with Speakers from L7-L8 13.00 - 14.00 Lunch 14.00 - 15.15 Lecture 9 Speaker Prof. Sanat Kumar Title: Grafted Nanoparticles Offer a Unique Suite of Properties Relevant to Sustainability Applications Session Chair Prof. Jaydeep Basu 15.15 – 15.45 Interactive Session with Speaker from L9 15.45 - 16.30 Concluding remarks 16.30 - 17.15 High Tea and Departure 4 Lecture 1 Seeing Tiny Things - A Tale of Two Nobels in Last Five years Prof. Kankan Bhattacharyya Chemistry Department, IISER Bhopal One of the long standing dreams of science is to see tiny small things like one single molecule or an isolated live cell. Elementary kinetic theory of gas predicts that every molecule is different in terms of average velocity. In all scientific experiments, however, we deal with very large number of molecules – of the order of Avogadro Number. Thus the individual properties of the molecules are averaged out. In 2014, William Moerner, Eric Betzig and Stefan Hell received the Chemistry Nobel Prize for developing what is known as Single Molecule Spectroscopy. One half of the 2018 Physics Nobel prize is awarded to Arthur Ashkin. Ashkin invented Optical Tweezer to make small polymer particles or biological cells stationary within the focus of a laser beam and subsequently, transporting and manipulating them. In my talk, I will discuss these two amazing discoveries and finally, may add a little of our own work. 5 Prof. Kankan Bhattacharyya Prof. Kankan Bhattacharyya is a modern non-linear laser spectroscopy scientist. His main interest is in femtosecond dynamics in nano-confined systems that include biological assemblies. His primary discovery is the ultraslow nature of biological water. He was the director and chair professor of Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Kolkata. He is a fellow of all of the national science academies of India and a senior editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry. He has received awards from many countries; most notably, the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Chemical Science from the (CSIR, India) in 1997 and the TWAS Prize in 2007. He graduated from Presidency College under Calcutta University, and achieved his master’s at the same university. He did his doctoral research under the supervision of Professor Mihir Chowdhury, an eminent scientist in the field of molecular spectroscopy and photochemistry at IACS (1984). Currently he is a Visiting Professor at Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal. 6 Lecture 2 Human Brain: Complexity Behind Simplicity Prof. V. Ravindranath Centre for Brain Research, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru 560012 The human brain is the interpreter of our senses, controller of movement and in fact responsible for all we embrace as civilisation. It consists of about 100 billion nerve cells which are interconnected through a million billion connections measuring up to 3.2 million kilometre of wiring. This wiring is essential for performing simplest to the most complex tasks. In the last two decades we have witnessed an explosion of knowledge in neuroscience. The stage is set for a more thorough understanding of the brain and for translating this knowledge into strategies to protect the brain from the vagaries of nature, both genetic and environmental. In order to achieve this goal, neuroscience research has accommodated multidisciplinary methods integrating the many levels of functional organisation of the brain, from molecules to neurons to networks to systems and behaviour. Apart from the interest in understanding how the brain performs cognitive functions and finding links between behaviour, brain and mind, there are serious health related issues. Brain-related disorders affect large sections of population and contribute up to one-third of the total disease burden in both developing and developed nations. From birth to old age, a host of neurological and mental illnesses afflict mankind. Most of these are poorly understood and treatments are palliative rather than curative. Through the study of the normal brain and its disorders, brain research can help development of children, enrich adult life, and help us age gracefully. 7 Prof. V. Ravindranath Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath obtained her Ph.D from the University of Mysore in 1981. In 1986, after completing her post-doctoral training at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, USA, she joined the Department of Neurochemistry at National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, (NIMHANS) Bengaluru. In 1999, she established the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), an autonomous institution of DBT, Ministry of Science and Technology, where she continued until 2009. She returned to Bangalore at the Indian Institute of Science as Professor as the Founder Chair of the Centre for Neuroscience. She is currently the Founder Director, Centre for Brain Research (CBR) at Indian Institute of Science. Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath is elected Fellow of all the 3 science academies in the country, namely Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India. She is also a Fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, India, Indian Academy of Neurosciences and Third World Academy of Sciences. She is a recipient of the prestigious S.S. Bhatnagar award (1996), Omprakash Bhasin Award (2001) and the J.C. Bose National Fellowship (2006), S.S. Bhatnagar Medal, INSA (2016) and Padma Shri (2010). 8 Lecture 3 Listening to the Universe with Gravitational Waves Prof. Peter R. Saulson Martin A. Pomerantz ’37 Professor of Physics at Syracuse University, NY, USA Former Spokesperson, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration On Sept. 14, 2015, a gravitational wave signal was received by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). It was generated by the collision of two black holes, each around 30 times as massive as the sun, about 1.3 billion light years away. The signal, the first ever reception of gravitational waves, tells the story of the last two tenths of a second of the lives of those two black holes, and the first few milliseconds of the life of the 60 solar mass black hole that they formed. Since then, LIGO and its sister project Virgo in Europe have heard signals from a number of other collisions; the most spectacular was the reception on August 17, 2017 of the signal of a collision between two neutron stars, similar in “sound” to a black hole collision, but in this case also accompanied by flashes of gamma rays, visible light, radio waves and X-rays.