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.
In April 2013, we heard three great stories from diverse parts of the world — Australia, Finland and USA. Here’s a summary of the month’s wonderful entries.
Living with epigenetics & ‘strine’
For Amita Limaye, who worked at the National Centre for Cell Science in Pune, India before moving in as a postdoc to the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Darlinghurst, the multiculutral city of Sydney is a welcome change. Getting used to the famous Aussie twang, however, remains a challenge for her! Her dream is to bridge the gap between epigenetics and translational research.
Coping with Northern lights & darkness
Bhupendra Verma is a PhD from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India and is working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland right now. Bhupendra gives postdoc aspirants some brilliant tips to chose their lab as he slowly comes to terms with the harsh weather, the beautiful Northern lights and the long periods of darkness in Helsinki.
‘Indian academics must welcome global desis’
Suvasini Ramaswamy shares her alma mater with Bhupendra. She is also a PhD from the Indian Insititute of Science, Bangalore and works as a post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, San Diego, California, United States. She tells us about her work in stem cells and regenerative medicine, the enviable weather in La jolla that keeps her going and that inherently Indian phenomenon of ‘jugaad’ (roughly translating to ‘a creative quick-fix’) — something she says makes Indians rustle up innovations in their backyard. Suvasini’s flair for science communication also saw her author this piece for Nature India some time back.
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