Our ‘Away from home’ blogging series features one Indian postdoc working in a foreign lab every Wednesday. The posts recount the experience of these postdocs — the triumphs and challenges of lab life, the cultural differences, what they miss about India — and, most importantly, offer some useful tips for postdocs headed abroad.

The series has had an excellent response from the scientific and research community worldwide. For our regular readers, and those who are just joining us now, we provide a summary of the month’s entries, including an interactive  map pinpointing the labs these postdocs are based. All these interesting entries and summaries can be found under the ‘Away from home’ category of the Indigenus blog.

We will continue to update the map each Wednesday and hope that you will join in the online conversation using the #postdochat hashtag. 

Work culture matters

In February’s first post, we heard from Shankar Das, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, USA. Shankar narrates the culture shock he dealt with after he landed in the US from Bose Institute in Kolkata, India. Despite the initial glitch, he suggests that every researcher must get international exposure and come back with some essential take-homes. Shankar was our second postdoc from Boston, part of the thriving community of Indian postdocs in the East coast of the US.

Industrial research

In the first ever blog from the industry, Shubhra Chaudhuri told us why industry is a great place to do research and some “serious science”. Shubhra, who did a masters from the University of Delhi, India is currently a postdoc in the toxicology division of The Dow Chemical Company, Michigan, USA.

Making energy storage devices

February’s last postdoc blogger was Gaind P. Pandey, a Ph.D from University of Delhi, India currently at the Center for Autonomous Solar Power (CASP), State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton, New York, USA. The new work culture was something he found difficult to fit into. Besides, he narrates his unique experience with some news-making natural disasters. Pandey stumbled into science ‘accidentally’ and finds himself making high energy storage devices now.

Our Away from home interactive map, pictured below and updated every Wednesday, is dotting up with interesting Indian postdoc experiences. Stay tuned as we add more from around the world. Please feel free to suggest names of postdocs from unusual countries and disciplines we haven’t covered yet.