In keeping with the promise of an annual compendium, here’s Nature India‘s second one compiling the big science events from India through 2014.
It has been a delight putting together the second issue of the Nature India Special Annual Volume, primarily because 2014 was full of big science news — India’s space scientists proudly placed the Mars mission in orbit and the country’s biologists made a mark in international proteomics research by mapping the human proteome.
During the year, Nature India also tracked an annual event that is quietly making a mark on the Indian science scene — a new initiative that is helping bring back Indian scientists settled in various parts of the world back to their homeland. Our cover story takes a look at this — the Young Investigators Meet in faraway Boston, Massachusetts. Parallely, we spotted another new pattern — that of foreign scientists trickling in to work in Indian labs.
Though their numbers are still not worth calling it a ‘trend’ of sorts, we thought this time was as good as any to put the sightings on record – a primer that might influence future science policy of this country. Besides our continued focus on climate change, policy issues that made it to our coverage in 2014 were the ban on unproven stem cell therapies — a long-standing cause for concern — and, a new push for genomic medicine in the country’s healthcare system. We also got to hear from the experts on where the legal battle on Genetically Modified crops is headed.
All these made it to our annual compendium, Nature India’s second such, that hopes to be an important addition to the science calendar of India — a must have for anyone interested in keeping abreast with the research highlights of the year, newsmakers, trends in R&D, careers and policy issues.
In the seven years of covering science in the largest democracy of the world, Nature India has closely witnessed some world-class science and scientists changing the face of science in this country. Deservedly, they should go down in history as pioneers of this new scientific boom. Beginning 2014, therefore, Nature India started chronicling what we call “the contemporary history of science in India” through annual compendia like these. For our special volumes, a group of editors and eminent scientists handpick contents from our coverage through the year. Affiliations and research interests of some people might have changed after publication of these articles. We have mentioned the publication date on top of each article so that they make sense.
As always, I welcome readers’ feedback to improve our successive volumes and to do justice to Nature India’s tagline: “All about science in India”.
More on the content and subscription of the issue here. Also, stay tuned for a Nature India Special Issue on “Proteomics Research in India” next week!
[Read about Nature India Special Annual Volume 2007-13 here.]