Every Wednesday, our ‘Away from home’ blog series features one Indian postdoc working in a foreign lab recounting his/her experience of working there, the triumphs and challenges, the cultural differences, what they miss about India, as well as some top tips for postdocs headed abroad. You can join in the online conversation using the #postdochat hashtag.
Our last blogger this year is Niti Kumar, a PhD from the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), New Delhi, currently a postdoc at Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Munich, Germany. Niti says her chemistry teacher propelled her into science with some funny correlations she made between chemistry and life! Read on.
We’ll post the next blog in this series in the New Year 2013. Till then, enjoy the holidays and ‘Away from home’!
Niti Kumar strikes an equilibrium in life through the principles of thermodynamics!
When friend doesn’t pay attention, it’s an exothermic reaction!
During early days in school, science was just another subject for me to pass and to be promoted to the next grade. It was in Xth grade that I started to develop interest in science. The credit goes to my chemistry teacher Mrs. Indu Das, who had a different style of teaching. She drew analogies between chemical reactions and our daily lives. That made science interesting. She would say,”When you are caught doing something wrong, there is an ‘endothermic reaction’. When your friend does not pay attention, it results in an ‘exothermic reaction’! To have equilibrium in life, learn thermodynamics.”
Polypeptide peeking
I did my PhD. work at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), New Delhi. It involved nucleic acids biophysics. For my postdoc, I wanted to make a transition into the field of proteins. I joined the lab of Prof. Ulrich Hartl at Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Munich, Germany. He has made seminal contribution in the field of protein folding and the lab works in diverse areas. Further, I knew that Max Planck Institutes are never hit by recession!
I am an EMBO post-doctoral fellow at Department of Cellular Biochemistry. As of now, I use biophysical and biochemical tools to investigate the conformational state of polypeptide while it is still attached to the ribosome. This work aims to understand the co-translational folding of polypeptide on the ribosome.
Enjoying work and life
My lab is quite international. We learn to communicate and respect other nationalities. We get a chance to eat and learn cuisines from different nations. Further, the scientific and non-scientific division is very organized and works quite efficiently. Most importantly, people enjoy work and life.
Though MPI are lavishly funded, it might become a disadvantage sometimes as experiments become heavily dependent on commercial kits. We ignore the possibility of simple, elegant and cost-effective experiments on certain times.
Lost but not gone
Top tips for postdoc aspirants
As a post-doc, you have a different role to play. Therefore, it is very important that students do some homework about the lab, institute and country before venturing out.
So,
1. Check publications and number of people in the lab you wish to join (check how many Asians, Europeans, and Americans are there in the lab).
2. Be aware of differences in communication styles — it pays to be direct and to the point in western societies.
3. Take a basic language course for smoother integration in and outside the lab.
4. Come with an open mind to learn new things in science and life, and enjoy both. If you do not like the place, please move on.
Miss being carefree
I miss the sense of belonging and comfort which I received from family and friends while in India. Here, if something goes wrong, I need to fix it myself.
I do plan to come back to India sometime.
Our Away from home interactive map, pictured below and updated every Wednesday, is dotting up the US and Germany. Stay tuned as we add more Indian postdocs from around the world. Feel free to suggest names of postdocs from unusual countries we haven’t covered yet.
