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Novel route to achieve hierarchical ordering of colloidal crystals
Colours are one of the most striking ways in which Nature showcases her beauty. Be it the vividly-patterned wings of the butterfly, the elegant feathers of the peacock or the myriad-coloured birds—they all enthral, mesmerize and charm each of us alike—from a child to an adult, a layman to a scientist, a writer to a poet.
However, unlike the colours due to dyes and pigments, most of the colours observed in living organisms are primarily due to underlying periodic structures. Nature remarkably self-assembles these structures from individual building blocks that could be as small as a millionth of a millimetre. Apart from their aesthetic appeal, realization of these structural colours has tremendous applications in our everyday life. Structural colours can have a significant impact on modern electronic gadgets such as smartphones and laptops. The display panel of the devices based on structural colours will use the ambient light itself to power themselves, which in turn can also solve the problems of poor visibility of screens in excess glare.
Over the last decades, scientists across the world are striving hard to realize structural colours in laboratory that can mimic the beautiful colours seen in nature. However, the major impediments in realizing them have been the low mobility of the building blocks, namely colloids and nanoparticles, on surfaces. Owing to their large size, these particles do not diffuse significant distances on the surfaces before meeting another one of their kind, so that they would grow further on. For any useful application, tuning of this separation between the growing centres is very crucial.
In a major breakthrough, scientists at the city’s Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research and Indian Institute of Science have developed a new strategy wherein they can precisely control the spacing between these growing centres. They have taken recourse to soft-lithography to engineer surfaces with inhomogeneous yet periodic structures. With great ingenuity, they have been able to introduce attraction between the building blocks and the engineered surfaces that locomote the building blocks to the desired sites before the ensuing growth could begin. This technique gives a facile control over the growing structures and that too with much-needed simplicity in the growth techniques. These findings that will shortly appear in prestigious scientific journal “Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. (2016)” are expected to have a crucial impact on the photonics industry.
Chandan K. Mishra, A. K. Sood and Rajesh Ganapathy, _Site-Specific Colloidal Crystal Nucleation by Template-enhanced Particle Transport_, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), U.S.A. vol 113 (43), 12094 (2016)”.
The role of variability in Motor Learning
The role of variability in motor learning
BioSystems Science and Engineering (BSSE) student, Mr. Puneet Singh, under the supervision of Prof. Aditya Murthy and Prof. Ashitava Ghosal, explored whether motor variability–often unwanted characteristic of motor performance–has any significance in motor learning. They proposed that motor variability has two components, one caused by redundancy and other due to random noise. In this work, Singh et al. quantified redundancy space and investigated its significance and effect on motor learning. They proposed that a larger redundancy space leads to faster learning across subjects and that noise is not the redundant component of motor variability. They also tested this hypothesis in neurologically diseased conditions to get a mechanistic understanding of how reward-based learning and error-based learning interact and how such learning is affected by redundancy space.
Publication: *P. Singh, S. Jana, A. Ghosal, A. Murthy* “Exploration of joint redundancy but not task space variability facilitates supervised motor learning”, PNAS, 2016 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1613383113 <http://www.dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1613383113>
Foundation stone for new Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy Research (ICER) Building at IISc
On 28 December 2023, Shri R K Singh, Union Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy, laid the foundation stone for the new Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy Research (ICER) building at IISc. The centre is supported by Power Finance Corporation (PFC) under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative. This marks a crucial step towards shaping the future of energy research and sustainable technologies.
ICER’s research initiatives focus on a spectrum of renewable energy domains, including net zero technology development for green hydrogen, sCo2, power, turbine, and clean coal technology, as well as pioneering research and development activities on green energy technologies such as generation of hydrogen and other biofuels from biomass, advanced batteries and energy storage systems & sustainable technologies.
PFC has sanctioned Rs 60.74 crores for construction of the new building, which is scheduled to be completed by March 2026.
Speaking about the event, Shri R K Singh, Union Minister, said, “I am delighted to be at this esteemed institution with a rich history, contributing to its legacy. India has transformed into a global leader in renewable energy, achieving our 2030 target nine years ahead. With 43% of the total installed capacity being non-fossil, we’re leading in solar, wind, and hydro. Our growth surpasses developed nations, making us a major player. The power sector has revolutionised, ensuring universal access and a significant increase in rural and urban power availability. India is different, better, and a global leader in energy transition, setting the pace for a sustainable future.”
Prof Govindan Rangarajan, IISc Director, said, “The generous funding from PFC is a significant boost to our efforts to address critical energy-related challenges. The new building symbolises a shared vision for a sustainable future powered by clean energy sources. Research at this Centre will yield a number of novel solutions that can propel the country to the forefront of the global fight against climate change.”
Battling persistence in TB bacteria
26 December 2023
– Sindhu M
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), in collaboration with NCBS and InStem, have uncovered an important mechanism that allows the tuberculosis (TB) bacterium to persist in the human host for decades. They found that a single gene involved in the production of iron-sulphur clusters could be crucial for the persistence of the TB bacterium. The study was published in Science Advances.
Tuberculosis (TB) is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), which can be present in the human body for decades without any symptoms. “Mtb needs humans to survive. In many cases of Mtb infection, the immune system can detect the bug and clear it out,” explains Mayashree Das, first author and PhD student at the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology (MCB), IISc. However, in several asymptomatic individuals, Mtb hides within deep oxygen-limiting pockets of the lung and enters a state of dormancy in which it does not divide and is metabolically inactive. In doing so, it successfully hides from the immune system and TB drugs.
“Due to persistence, there is a bacterial reservoir in a subset of the human population at any point which can reactivate and cause infection. Unless we understand persistence, we will not be able to eradicate TB,” says Amit Singh, Associate Professor at MCB and corresponding author of the study.
Singh’s team grew Mtb in liquid cultures containing special supplements needed for its growth in a state-of-the-art Bio Safely Level-3 facility at the Center for Infectious Disease Research (CIDR), IISc. Several proteins in Mtb depend on iron-sulphur clusters for functioning. These clusters consist of iron and sulphur atoms organised in various configurations like chains or cuboids. The iron atoms in the cluster can pass on electrons from one site of a protein complex to another in cellular reactions such as respiration and carbon metabolism.
“The iron-sulphur cluster-containing proteins are important for essential processes such as energy production by respiration, enabling the bacteria to survive harsh conditions of the lungs and causing infection. So, we wanted to study the mechanisms that Mtb uses to build these iron-sulphur clusters,” explains Singh.
IscS and SUF-mediated Fe-S cluster biogenesis controls persistence of Mtb (Image: Mayashree Das, created using Biorender)
Iron-sulphur clusters are mainly produced by the SUF operon in Mtb, a set of genes that get switched on together. However, there is another single gene called IscS that can also produce the clusters. So why would the bacterium need both?
To solve this mystery, the researchers generated a mutant version of Mtb that lacked the IscS gene. They found that under normal and oxygen-limiting conditions, iron-sulphur clusters are produced mainly by the action of the IscS gene. However, when the bacterium faces a lot of oxidative stress, the iron atoms of the clusters become oxidised and released, damaging the clusters. Therefore, there is an increased demand for producing more clusters, which switches on the SUF operon.
The researchers then sought to find out how the IscS gene contributes to disease progression. They infected mice models with the mutant version of Mtb lacking the IscS gene. The absence of the IscS gene led to severe disease in the infected mice rather than a persistent, chronic infection typically seen in TB patients. This is because, in the absence of the IscS gene, the SUF operon is highly activated – albeit in an unregulated fashion – leading to hypervirulence. Depleting both IscS and the SUF system dramatically reduced the persistence of Mtb in mice. Therefore, the team found that the IscS gene keeps the activation of the SUF operon in check, causing persistence in TB.
The researchers also noted that bacteria lacking the IscS gene were more likely to be killed by certain antibiotics. “It becomes sensitive to some antibiotics and resistant to some. We would also like to explore this further,” says Das. The team suggests that combining antibiotics with drugs targeting IscS and SUF might be more effective. Singh is hopeful that a better understanding of the IscS and SUF systems in Mtb can eventually pave the way for eradicating persistence of TB.
REFERENCE:
Das M, Sreedharan S, Shee S, Nandy N, Banerjee U, Kohli S, Rajmani SR, Chandra N, Seshasayee ASN, Laxman S, and Amit Singh, Cysteine desulphurase (IscS)–mediated fine-tuning of bioenergetics and SUF expression prevents Mycobacterium tuberculosis hypervirulence, Science Advances (2023).
CONTACT:
Amit Singh
Associate Professor
Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: asingh@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91-80-22933275
Website: https://cidr.iisc.ac.in/amit/
Mayashree Das
PhD student
Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: mayashreedas@iisc.ac.in
NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:
a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in
Tunable shells to encapsulate tiny droplets
14 December 2023
– Vivek Kumar
Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed a novel technique to encapsulate liquid droplets used for various applications, including single crystal growth and cell culture.
The technique exploits the capillary effect – the rise of a liquid through a narrow space – to coat droplets in a composite shell containing oil-loving and hydrophobic particles. It offers the ability to tune the shell thickness over a wide range, allowing the encapsulation of droplets of different sizes. The study was published in Nature Communications.
Droplets are important in a variety of fields. “In microreactors, droplets can be used to create different reaction environments or mix different chemicals. In drug delivery systems, droplets can be used to deliver drugs or other agents to specific tissues or organs. In crystallisation studies, droplets can be used to control the growth of crystals. And in cell culture platforms, droplets can be used to grow cells in a controlled environment, which can help to improve cell viability and proliferation,” explains lead researcher Rutvik Lathia, PhD student at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE), IISc.
However, there are several challenges in using such droplets. They are vulnerable to contamination from the ambient environment, the ease and success of a particular process depends a lot on the surface they’re dropped on, and they can vanish into thin air pretty fast. While encapsulating droplets with liquids or solids that don’t mix with the droplets (like water droplets inside an oil shell) is a plausible solution to avoid these issues, making a shell that is hardy, continuous and has an adjustable thickness at a super tiny scale has proven elusive so far.
To address these challenges, Prosenjit Sen, Associate Professor at CeNSE, and his team have developed a new capillary force-assisted cloaking method to trap droplets within colloidal particles and liquid-infused surfaces.
First, they carefully coated droplets with small hydrophobic and oil-loving beads, turning them into what they call Liquid Marbles (LM). When these LM are kept on oil-infused surfaces, capillary forces kick in, allowing the oil to rise up into tiny pores created between individual beads. These beads play a crucial role in promoting and stabilising the formation of a liquid film around the droplet, effectively encapsulating it. The researchers were also able to use wax instead of oil to create a solid shell by adjusting the temperature.
Such encapsulation reduced the evaporation rate of droplets by up to 200 times, increasing the lifetime of these droplets, the team found. They were also able to adjust the shell thickness flexibly over a wide range – from 5 μm to 200 μm. This allowed them to accommodate droplets with volumes ranging from 14 nL to 200 μL.
“Our method of encapsulating droplets introduces a multitude of new opportunities in the realm of droplet-related applications. The tunable nature of the shells, both solid and liquid, allows for precise control over various parameters, making it versatile for applications in chemistry, biology, and materials science,” says Sen.
The researchers used these coated droplets to grow single crystals successfully. They could also use the coated droplets for biological applications such as 3D cell culture and growing yeast cells in the lab with improved success rates.
“So far, we are able to make wax-based solid capsules and oil-based liquid capsules,” Sen adds. “Now, we are looking into newer materials to form capsules with different properties that could enhance tunability further, such as polymer-based capsules.”
REFERENCE:
Lathia R, Nagpal S, Modak CD, Mishra S, Sharma D, Reddy BS, Nukala P, Bhat R, Sen P, Tunable encapsulation of sessile droplets with solid and liquid shells, Nature Communications (2023).
https://www.nature.com/
CONTACT:
Prosenjit Sen
Associate Professor
Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: prosenjits@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91-80-22933516
Lab website: Microfluidic Devices & Heterogeneous Systems Lab
Rutvik Lathia
PhD Scholar
Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: rutviklathia@iisc.ac.in
NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:
a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in
Boosting immunotherapy in non-responsive cancer cells
11 December 2023
– Surabhi Chandra
Cancer immunotherapy primes a patient’s immune system to better find and destroy cancer cells, improving upon the body’s natural ability to fight tumours. Contemporary immunotherapy approaches aim to stimulate immune cells called T cells to target tumours. In this process, the production and functioning of a cytokine (a small signalling protein) known as Interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) are essential for the immune system to eliminate tumours effectively. These approaches affect fewer normal cells when compared to chemotherapy or radiation. However, they are either very expensive or less efficient.
In a new study, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) tried to understand how different types of cancer cells respond to IFN-γ activation. They found that only some types of cancer cells respond well to IFN-γ activation, while others don’t. They also suggest some approaches that can be used to make these non-responsive cancer cells better respond to immunotherapy. The study was published in Frontiers in Immunology.
“IFN-γ is produced by immune cells such as T cells or natural killer cells. It binds to tumours, and induces apoptosis [cell death],” explains Avik Chattopadhyay, first author and PhD student at the Department of Biochemistry, IISc. “Reports in the literature have shown earlier that if there are lower amounts of IFN-γ or defects in its signalling, then the tumours don’t respond well to the immunotherapy processes.”
Avik Chattopadhyay working in the lab (Photo: Nikita Ramteke)
In the current study, when the team first treated cancer cells in the lab with IFN-γ, they found that the colour of the cell growth medium changed to yellow, indicating that the cells were releasing acidic byproducts such as lactic acid. This led the team to dig deeper into the role of these byproducts. They found that the higher amounts of lactic acid produced in the cell culture medium was due to increased glycolysis, a series of chemical reactions that extracts energy from glucose.
The team found that cancer cell lines derived from the liver and the kidney showed increased production of nitric oxide (NO) and lactic acid upon IFN-γ activation. This, in turn, increased the production of toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) leading to oxidative damage, which eventually kills the cancer cells.
However, cancer cell lines derived from the colon and skin did not produce NO or lactic acid even after being treated with IFN-γ, indicating that they might respond poorly to immunotherapy.
The researchers then tried to see how these non-responsive cancer cells can also be tweaked to produce lactic acid and NO, and therefore respond better to immunotherapy. They tested different ways, including treating the cells with salts like potassium lactate and other molecules. Such mechanisms – especially adding potassium lactate – reduced cancer cell growth drastically even in the initially non-responsive cancer cells. This observation – that lactic acid plays an important role in the cancer cells’ response to immunotherapy – was surprising to the researchers as lactic acid is often thought of as a dead-end metabolic product.
“The study is really a proof-of-concept at this point,” says Dipankar Nandi, Professor at the Department of Biochemistry, IISc, and corresponding author of the study. He adds that further experiments need to be carried out in animal models to see if certain compounds targeting metabolism can boost anti-tumour responses to hard-to-treat cancers, in synergy with IFN-γ activation during immunotherapy.
L to R: Dipankar Nandi, Avik Chattopadhyay, Nikita Ramteke, Sirisha Jagdish and Aagosh Karhale (Photo: Prem Singh Anant and Micky Anand)
REFERENCE:
Chattopadhyay A, Jagdish S, Karhale AK, Ramteke NS, Zaib A, Nandi D, IFN-γ lowers tumor growth by increasing glycolysis and lactate production in a nitric oxide-dependent manner: implications for cancer immunotherapy, Frontiers in Immunology (2023).
CONTACT:
Avik Chattopadhyay
PhD student
Department of Biochemistry
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: avikc@iisc.ac.in
Dipankar Nandi
Professor
Department of Biochemistry
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: nandi@iisc.ac.in
Phone: 080-22933051
NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:
a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in
Water supply without electricity: IISc researcher’s solution for Chhattisgarh’s irrigation challenges
07 December 2023
– Ananthapathmanabhan MS
In India, access to irrigation is a major problem. Punit Singh, Associate Professor at the Centre for Sustainable Technologies (CST), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), has been working on a solution to address this irrigation scarcity for the past 10 years in Chhattisgarh.
Chhattisgarh receives river water supply from the Ganga, Godavari, and Mahanadi basins. While canal networks have been developed to cover a substantial portion of the region north of Raipur, a large part of the tribal-majority areas in southern Chhattisgarh lack reservoir-based irrigation. Many farmers in the region primarily rely on Kharif-based (monsoon) crop yields. Alternative methods like pipe-based irrigation have been explored but have not gained popularity or acceptance.
Singh’s efforts started with a field survey to understand the soil and terrain of Taipadar village in Bastar district. Due to his efforts, Taipadar has now been equipped with a sustainable water pumping system that requires zero electricity. His project uses low-head check dams and cascades of such dams along rivers, with turbine pumps installed to pump water without any electricity.
The turbine uses about 90% of the river water flow at low head (which is then recycled back to the river) to generate power, specifically torque and speed, which is then used to drive standard submersible multi-stage pumps. The novelty lies in the precise design of the system. Depending on specific site conditions, where the water head ranges from 2-4 metres, the objective is to lift and transport water to different elevations, usually between 15 and 25 metres, or even up to 30 metres as required.
Singh started working on developing turbine pumps for electricity generation during his PhD at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. When he returned to India in 2009, he started exploring the deployment of ram pumps in Chhattisgarh, starting with Taipadar. “Two turbine pumps with power generation capabilities were generously sponsored by the KSB Pumps Trust in Germany. I invested about Rs 50 lakh in the ram pump sourced from Rife, USA, and in the construction work which spanned three years,” Singh says. Apart from Taipadar, similar systems were also set up in Girdalpara in the Sukma district and Karhani in the Gourella-Pendra-Marwahi (GPM) district, the impact of which is visible in the field, adds Singh.
In December 2022, the Foundation for Science Innovation and Development (FSID) at IISc joined hands with the Chhattisgarh Water Resources Department (WRD) to scale up the water resource management and irrigation infrastructure in Chhattisgarh. The areas covered under this collaboration include Karhani, Neelawaram (Sukma district), and Pongro (Jashpur district).
“This collaboration supports the project at large. For instance, the responsibility of site work, civil works, and delegating logistical implementation of the turbine will be handled by the state. So, IISc can focus on designing the turbine, and ensuring the proper working of the turbine at the site. The other support is that now we can procure funds and allocate that to vendors,” adds Singh.
Under the collaboration, IISc will test the quality of turbines manufactured by various vendors at a designated simulation facility. Vikram Jayaram, Professor at the Department of Materials Engineering, IISc, says, “This partnership [with the government officials] eases the administrative process behind irrigation projects. As we get the funds from the government, we can distribute the funds to our partners providing the services. Moreover, IISc’s role includes inviting the irrigation engineers to witness the tests and providing essential training. These engineers will further train a local resource person at the specific project site.”
The other people involved in this project include B Gurumoorthy (Chief Executive, FSID) as well as officials from Chhattisgarh, including Anbalagan P, Water Resources Secretary (IAS); Richa Prakash Choudhary, Collector (IAS); Ajay Somawar, Chief Engineer; and Madhuchandra, Executive Engineer.
Over the next few years, the collaboration will focus on installing one or two pumps on each dam, along with piping, storage, and canal networks. “Building 25 per year is the first target and then based on the success, it could be scaled up to all the 400 or more dams,” Singh says. Each project will irrigate about 100-150 acres for rabi and summer crops depending on the conditions and design of the turbine and pumps. “The greatest benefit is that this will free the farmers near the banks from using groundwater, allowing levels to rise,” adds Singh. “This technology is capable of being reproduced in large parts of India that offer perennial water flow.”
CONTACT:
Punit Singh
Associate Professor, Centre for Sustainable Technologies (CST)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: punitsingh@iisc.ac.in
NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:
a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in.
Building energy-efficient computing platforms
2nd December 2022
– Pratibha Gopalakrishna
The massive growth of data centres that consume enormous amounts of energy has contributed significantly to power shortages worldwide. With rising demand for faster and more intelligent computers and devices, there is a pressing need to develop alternatives to traditional electronic components that will make these devices more energy-efficient.
In two recent studies, researchers at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE), IISc, report the development of a highly energy-efficient computing platform that offers promise in building next-generation electronic devices.
The CeNSE team who made the discovery. From left to right: Deepak, Navakanta Bhat, Sreetosh Goswami, Sreebrata Goswami and Santi Prasad Rath
Credits: CeNSE, IISc
Instead of using complementary metal-oxide semiconductors (CMOS) which are the building blocks of most electronic circuits today, the team used components called memristors that can both store data and perform computation. By designing unique memristors based on metal-organic complexes, the team could cut down the number of components needed in a circuit, greatly increasing the speed and efficiency.
Images of the electronic platform used in the studies Credits: CeNSE, IISc
“We have now discovered a molecular circuit element that can capture complex logic functions within itself, facilitating in-memory computations in a smaller number of time steps and using much fewer elements than usual,” says Sreetosh Goswami, Assistant Professor at CeNSE who led both the studies published in Advanced Materials. Existing computing architectures process and store data at separate physical locations. The back-and-forth communication between two locations consumes the lion’s share of the computing energy. “We are resolving this problem by performing both computation and storage at the same physical location,” he says.
The platform “outperforms” current state-of-the-art technologies by orders of magnitude, adds Goswami. “We are [now] able to make arrays of devices that are more robust, consistent and stable even compared to commercial technologies like flash memories.”
Previously developed memristor-based circuits also suffer from limitations in speed and have a greater chance of errors accumulating because they carry out operations sequentially. The design of the new platform reduces the number of operational steps, increasing speed and reducing error, the researchers say.
The metal-organic complexes used to build their platform were designed by Sreebrata Goswami, Specialist Scientist at CeNSE. “These [complexes] are like electron sponges that can take and give away electrons for billions of cycles without degradation,” he says. By making small chemical modifications – adding or swapping out one or two ions in the complexes, for example – researchers might be able to adapt the same circuit for multiple functions.
When they built circuits that carry out mathematical operations and compared them with a typical CMOS circuit, the team found that the new platform offered 47 times higher energy efficiency and 93 times faster operating speed, while only taking up 9% of the physical footprint.
Moving forward, the team plans to connect the platform to a sensor – for example, a smartphone screen that senses touch – and study how efficiently the platform processes the data it collects. Santi Prasad Rath, a postdoctoral fellow at CeNSE who designed and fabricated the circuit along with PhD student Deepak, adds, “In an Internet of Things (IoT) platform, this computing technology can be extremely useful.”
Such efforts are critical because scientists believe that we are soon reaching the point where CMOS technology cannot be scaled up anymore in terms of efficiency or performance. “This necessitates the invention of new nanoscale device constructs to enable Moore’s Law over the next few decades,” says Navakanta Bhat, Professor at CeNSE and an expert in CMOS technologies. “The fact that an emerging molecular platform is outperforming a mature technology is quite significant. This is high-stakes research that can help shape the future of our national mission in semiconductor electronics.”
REFERENCES:
Yi SI, Rath SP, Deepak, Venkatesan T, Bhat N, Goswami S, Williams RS, Goswami S, Energy and Space Efficient Parallel Adder Using Molecular Memristors, Advanced Materials (2022).
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202206128?af=R
Rath SP, Thompson D, Goswami S, Goswami S, Many‐Body Molecular Interactions in a Memristor, Advanced Materials (2022).
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adma.202204551
CONTACT:
Sreetosh Goswami
Assistant Professor
Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
sreetosh@iisc.ac.in
NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:
a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in.
CELLINK and IISc inaugurate first Center of Excellence for 3D bioprinting in India
9th December 2022
Following an agreement in August of this year, CELLINK and IISc have opened the doors to the country’s first 3D bioprinting Center of Excellence, which will focus on providing researchers tools to advance discoveries in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and drug discovery
On 9 December 2022, CELLINK, the global leader in developing 3D bioprinters and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) opened the doors to the first 3D bioprinting Center of Excellence in the Indian subcontinent. Housed in the Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering (BSSE) at IISc’s Bengaluru campus, the CoE will provide access to 3D bioprinting systems, enabling researchers to accelerate their work across critical applications with the ultimate goal of improving health outcomes. The CoE was inagurated by Dr Ashwath Naray
The CoE currently houses several CELLINK instruments, including the BIO X, BIO X6 and the BIONOVA X. It will now officially be accessible to the region’s current and future researchers.
“This center of excellence offers the most cutting-edge and industry–leading 3D Bioprinting technology that we at CELLINK have developed, systems that will enable significant strides in research and in developing the future of health. We are extremely proud to be able to partner with IISc, an institute at the forefront of scientific research as can be seen by the new Medical School being led by Director Prof Rangarajan,” said Ms Tomoko Bylund.
“We are extremely pleased to partner with CELLINK to initiate efforts in this frontier technology which can greatly accelerate development of therapies, drug discovery, personalised medicine and many other applications that can have tremendous impact on human health,” said Prof Rangarajan.
Dr Ashwath Narayan congratulated CELLINK and IISc on this futuristic initiative and wished it success.
CONTACT:
CELLINK:
Phone: +1 617 637 5372
Email: akm@cellink.com
IISc:
IISc Office of Communications | news@iisc.ac.in
About CELLINK
CELLINK is creating the future of health as part of BICO, the world’s leading bioconvergence company. When CELLINK released the first universal bioink in 2016, it democratized the cost of entry for researchers around the world and played a major role in turning the then up-and-coming field of 3D bioprinting into a thriving $1 billion industry. Today, the company’s best-in-class bioinks, bioprinters, software and services have been cited in over 700 publications and are trusted by more than 1,000 academic, pharmaceutical and industrial labs. At the forefront of the bioprinting industry, CELLINK aims to alleviate organ donor shortage with biofabricated transplantable organs and remains committed to reducing our dependence on animal testing and increasing efficiencies in drug development with more physiologically relevant bioprinted organ models. Visit cellink.com to learn more. BICO is listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm Main Market under BICO.
About BSSE
Housed at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), India’s premier institution of higher learning and research, the Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering (BSSE) was founded in 2015 with a vision to develop and apply interdisciplinary approaches for understanding and manipulating biological systems. Since its inception, the Centre has been running a successful PhD programme in the broad area of Bioengineering. The programme was expanded to clinician-scientists, in collaboration with leading medical centres in the country. A new MTech programme in Bioengineering has been initiated in 2022. Research at the Centre spans a spectrum of areas at the interface of biology and the physicochemical sciences, with a focus on problems of importance to clinicians and industry.
Science 20 and India – The Year Ahead
26th December 2022
The Group of 20, better known as G20, is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 countries and the European Union. Consisting of both industrialised and developing countries, its main focus has been the governance of the global economy. Over the years, however, G20 has been working towards addressing other related global challenges as well, such as climate change mitigation and sustainable development. Towards this end, it has set up several working groups, one of which is Science 20 or S20.
The role of S20 in furthering the agenda of G20 is crucial. Science will have to play a key role if we are to achieve the economic growth required to pull millions of people out of poverty while ensuring that development is inclusive and sustainable. But scientific advancements alone are not enough. Meaningful development requires the cooperation of member nations so that experiences and breakthroughs in science and technology can be shared with each other. S20 is, therefore, an ideal platform to achieve this goal.
G20, along with S20 and other working groups, will be presided over by India in 2023. The theme of S20 for 2023 will be “Disruptive Science for Innovative and Sustainable Development”. Within this broad theme, the deliberations – to be held in different parts of India over the course of the year (Agartala, Lakshadweep and Bhopal) – will focus on three sets of issues: Universal Holistic Health, Clean Energy for a Greener Future, and Connecting Science to Society and Culture. The consultations will also include an Inception meeting in Puducherry and a Summit meeting in Coimbatore. The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) will be the Secretariat for S20.
India is uniquely placed to drive the agenda of S20 forward. Historically, this land has served as an incubator for ideas in different spheres of human life: political, social, economic, cultural and also scientific. The list of discoveries and innovations made over the centuries reveals India’s rich heritage of scientific inquiry – in architecture, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, metallurgy, textiles, ship building, town planning, textiles and more. For example, advances in chemical sciences many centuries ago allowed us to produce some of the highest grades of metals and alloys in the world.
With its intellectual heritage and current prowess in science and engineering, combined with a tradition of innovation with sustainability, India now has an opportunity to become a leader in disruptive science for development. The S20 summit is emblematic of India’s journey in forging a new path for advancement.
CONTACT:
Science 20 Secretariat
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
secretariat.s20@iisc.ac.in