Latest news with #IISERPune
Indian Express
26-05-2025
- Science
- Indian Express
‘We have found some flaws': Why IISER scientists are red-flagging RFD
On Monday, as monsoon arrived early in Pune, IISER was among the areas to be lashed by heavy rains. Dr Argha Banerjee, associate professor and deputy chair, Earth and Climate Science, at IISER, says hundreds of papers have been written all over the world that climate change is going to change the precipitation patterns and increase extreme events. 'It is the kind of situation that initiatives, such as the Riverfront Development (RFD), should be designed for,' he says. A few weeks ago, Banerjee, Radhika Mulay and Tresa Mary Thomas, who are with the Earth and Climate Science department and the Center for Water Research at IISER Pune, released a paper, titled 'A brief review of the Hydrology and Hydraulics report for the Mula-Mutha Riverfront Development Project'. It summarises that climate change effects were not considered, flood levels were underestimated and world-class scientific expertise present in city institutes must be utilised. Among the warnings from the report is that 'while the precise increase in the flood levels and flood frequency at the scale of the city are challenging to predict, it is imperative to consider significantly higher design floods … and ensure the city's flood resilience. The RFD report fails to address these critical concerns, and may not prepare the city for the unexpectedly high flood levels due to climate change. This can be remedied by extensive consultation with the world-class experts in climate and hydrology in institutes like IMD, IITM, IISER Pune, etc. that are present in the city'. 'Since we have a general interest in water and the RFD was going on right in front of us, we decided to have a look at the Detailed Project Report of the RFD: Annexure 2 – Hydrology and Hydraulics. We looked at the report from the basic science perspective. We did not run any of their simulations or redo the calculations. We just checked the basic science of it and from that perspective, already, we have found some flaws that we have highlighted in our report,' says Mulay. One of the main factors pointed out is that 'there is very little data analysis'. 'Though Pune is home to the IMD and there are a few stations in the region, it is still a very complex terrain. The IMD data is not always good enough as precipitation varies a lot over a short distance. This tells us that we have to be careful and that care is missing in case of the RFD. We have pointed this out. We don't really have a solution but we can say that the data that exists was not looked into carefully,' says Banerjee. The report emphasises that the RFD design team did not use their own estimates and, instead, relied on the estimates from the Irrigation Department, Pune. 'A recent Maharashtra Engineering Research Institute report came up with significantly higher flood discharge estimates than those suggested by the Irrigation Department. The extreme monsoonal rain can lead to floods, when the river levels and the storage in dams are already high. This was not considered in the RFD estimates of flood levels. It may be prudent to consider the combined effects of the average monsoon discharge and the discharge due to the extreme rainfall. In addition, a strong gradient in the rainfall from the Western Ghats to Pune, together with the sparse network of hydrometeorological stations in this catchment, makes all the above flood estimates inherently uncertain,' says the report. The report also states that the RFD plans to replace 240 hectares of greenery, 'largely with concrete without any serious evaluation of the carbon footprint associated with the infrastructure development'. 'It is unclear if the damage to the ecosystem during the construction phase has been assessed. Additionally, the Environmental Impact Assessment report should be independently reviewed by scientists and experts in the city working in the relevant fields,' it states.
Indian Express
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
First time in India, science breaks down walls between researchers, ordinary people
As with every good talk, this one began with an anecdote that was also a joke. It involved a scientist, a frog trained to jump on command, a cruel experiment that is repeated on many other frogs and a final, eye-opening conclusion — that frogs without legs are deaf. Shraddha Bhurkunde from IISER Pune was quick to clarify to a packed house at the Orange Art and Book Cafe in Aundh that this was a fictional narrative. What came next, however, were true stories, as far as science knows, about real-life events that led to the end of dinosaurs. Dinosaur doomsday unfolded through games, storytelling, banter, humour and scientific sleuthing. Bhurkunde's session inaugurated a one-of-a-kind event, Pint of Science festival, on a thundering, rainy Monday in Pune. Pint of Science is a concept that breaks down the wall between the people of science, such as researchers, and the rest of the population. The event is the concept of Dr Michael Motskin and Dr Praveen Paul, research scientists at the Imperial College London. In 2012, they invited people affected by Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, among others, into their labs to tell them about their research. A year later, the first Pint of Science festival opened in a pub, creating an informal space for some of the biggest names in science to 'explain their ground-breaking work to lovers of science and beer'. In the past 10 years, it has reached 27 countries. Now, for the first time, it is in India, with Pune, Delhi and Bengaluru being the selected cities. In Pune, the second venue is Doolally Taproom in KOPA Mall. The force behind bringing Pint of Science to India is Debarati Chatterjee, a theoretical astrophysicist at IUCCA who is an expert on analytical and numerical description of compact stars (neutron stars and white dwarfs). 'We have a wide spectrum, covering everything from astrophysics to neuroscience to AI to astrobiology and chemistry. I was really happy to get in touch with very well-known speakers in so many disciplines and came to know so much breakthrough work that is happening. I was really happy that there are so many women scientists who have come forward to support this outreach which will inspire a lot of young people,' says Chatterjee. Hamsa Padmanabhan from the University of Geneva took the audience, which included several Class VI students, through 'Lessons from the Earth's deadliest extinctions'. 'During its 4.5 billion-year-old history, our planet has been witness to at least five major extinctions. Of these, the most destructive one was called the Permian Triassic Mass Extinction, which took place around 252 million years ago and destroyed about 96 per cent of all marine and 70 per cent of all terrestrial species. But how did such a large-scale wipeout take place?' she said. As she spoke about how 'a sharp rise in carbon dioxide levels in the millennia leading up to the extinction, possibly triggered a global warming runaway and made conditions hostile for life', it was only a matter of time before it became evident that humans had learned nothing from the past. Sneha Rode went from Earth to Mars and back and forth and carried the audience along with captivating data, images and quizzes. Earth vs. Mars: The landform showdown changed ideas and challenged preconceptions about the similarities and differences between the blue and red planets. There were valleys and craters and a deep scar on the face of Mars and the fascinating Olympus Mont, the largest volcano in the solar system, which makes Earth's Everest look like a baby. Though it was late and raining, people still gathered around Rode as the venue buzzed with geology.
Indian Express
06-05-2025
- Science
- Indian Express
IISER Pune researchers among laureates of 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, faculty members Professor Seema Sharma and Professor Sourabh Dube, along with 23 past and present research team members, have been selected as laureates of the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Sharma and Dube are members of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) collaboration. The CMS experiment is one of the largest international scientific collaborations in history, involving about 5,500 particle physicists, engineers, technicians, students and support staff from 241 institutes in 54 countries. Along with CMS, this year's Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to three other large global collaborations, namely, ALICE, ATLAS, and LHCb, at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), located in Geneva, Switzerland. 'Each of these collaborations consists of thousands of researchers worldwide working towards understanding the fundamental nature of particles and in identifying and characterising new particles,' an official statement issued by IISER Pune said on Tuesday. The Breakthrough Prizes are prestigious awards, often referred to as the 'Oscars of Science', given annually in the fields of Physics, Life Sciences, and Mathematics to recognise groundbreaking achievements in science. As members of the CMS from IISER Pune, the research groups of professors Sharma and Dube and others involved in the work are laureates. Also included are IISER Pune alumni, some of whom did their MS thesis in the CMS group and a few others who have gone on to take up research roles in other large collaborations elsewhere. According to IISER, Pune's statement, Dube's research focuses on the search for beyond standard model phenomena, which aim to address the open problems in particle physics. Sharma's group focused on searching for new elementary particles which can shed light on yet unanswered questions like dark matter, hierarchy problem, and matter-antimatter asymmetry, to name a few, the statement added. The CMS experiment is a multi-purpose detector which studies proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The LHC is the highest energy particle accelerator in the world and recreates conditions that presumably existed in the first few millionths of seconds after the Big Bang. The primary goal of their research is to explain the nature of matter and the physical laws that govern the fundamental interactions.
India.com
30-04-2025
- Science
- India.com
Scored 93.4% marks in high school. failed in JEE and NEET. then got admission in world's top institute, he is....
Scored 93.4% marks in high school, failed in JEE and NEET, then got admission in world's top institute, he is… Success Story: 'Failing and learning from it makes a person stronger than someone who never takes risks.' This quote perfectly describes Hritwik Haldar, whose success story is inspiring several aspirants who give up after one or two failures. Haldar studied in a government school. He was not a brilliant student and faced difficulties in his studies. But rather than giving up, he kept moving forward. Let's know Hritwik Haldar's story. Who is Hritwik Haldar? Hritwik Haldar hails from West Bengal and received his early education in a Bengali-medium government school. Like most of the students, he also found studies a burden and used to appear in exams by rote learning. He changed his method of studying when he reached Class 10th. Haldar started focusing on understanding the subject instead of rote learning and soon he started getting interested in studies. With the new study method, he got positive results and scored a brilliant 93.4 percent in high school. After clearing Class 12, Hrithik gave several competitive exams, such as JEE, JEE Advanced, NEET and KVPY but did not succeed. He did not give up. A New Path After completing his secondary education, he continued his studies at Ramakrishna Mission School in Belur. Despite not passing the KVPY SB exam a second time, he achieved a top-ten ranking in the SC category, securing admission to the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, a highly ranked institution. Studying At World's Top Institute Hrithik, a former student of a government school, achieved a 9.1 GPA at IISER Pune before gaining admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a prestigious institution ranked 13th globally by QS World University Rankings. His success at MIT followed strong academic performance throughout his studies at IISER Pune.
