{"id":1187,"date":"2013-03-27T05:30:18","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T05:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/?p=1187"},"modified":"2013-03-26T18:31:48","modified_gmt":"2013-03-26T18:31:48","slug":"away-from-home-march-round-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/2013\/03\/away-from-home-march-round-up.html","title":{"rendered":"Away from home: March round-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>\u2018Away from home\u2019<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0blogging series features\u00a0one Indian postdoc working in a foreign lab every Wednesday. The posts recount the experience of these postdocs \u2014 the triumphs and challenges of lab life, the cultural differences, what they miss about India \u2014 and, most importantly, offer some useful tips for postdocs headed abroad.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>summary of the month\u2019s entries, including an interactive\u00a0 map pinpointing the labs these postdocs are based. All these interesting entries and summaries can be found under the\u00a0\u2018<\/a><\/em>Away from home\u2019<\/a>\u00a0category of the\u00a0Indigenus<\/a>\u00a0blog.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

We will continue to update the map each Wednesday and hope that you will join in the online conversation using the\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>#postdochat<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0hashtag.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Nanotech dream for rural India<\/a><\/h2>\n

The first post in March was from\u00a0Archana Swami<\/a>, a Ph.D from IGIB, New Delhi, India and currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Laboratory of Nanomedicine and Biomaterials of the Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, USA. Archana is also part of the Robert Langer group at The David Koch Institute at MIT, Boston, USA. The young researcher and mom talks about how family forms an integral support base for women scientists. She harbours a fond dream of transforming Indian villages armed with nanotechnology and says the\u00a0scientific community in Boston is so enriched that it\u2019s very easy to find good collaborations and learn new science with them.<\/p>\n

Biomaterial and some \u2018craic\u2019<\/a><\/h2>\n

We heard from\u00a0Akshay Srivastava<\/a>, a doctorate from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, and currently a postdoc at the\u00a0National University of Ireland, Galway. Akshay is living it up in Ireland bathed in good cheer and making\u00a0targeted gene delivery vehicles for regeneration of the inter-vertibral disc. He says\u00a0many institutes and universities in India are doing world class research and there’s good amount of funding in science now. His only cribs are\u00a0India’s bureaucracy and the government\u2019s not-so-professional attitude towards the health industry, of which he wants to become a part when he comes back home.<\/p>\n

\u2018Research not Nobel-driven\u2019<\/a><\/h2>\n

Our last blogger of March was\u00a0Arghya Basu<\/a>, who wears many hats \u2014 that of a membrane protein researcher, an amateur photographer and a weekend hiking enthusiast. A doctorate from\u00a0Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, India, Arghya now lives his many passions working at the University of Alberta, Canada and says research might not always fetch you a Nobel but should be able to make life better for some. He gives out a harsh weather alert for postdocs headed towards Canada but says\u00a0if you are the adventure loving sort and also enjoy the magic of science, \u00a0research and Canada are for you.<\/p>\n

Our\u00a0Away from home<\/a>\u00a0interactive 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\u2019t covered yet.<\/em><\/h3>\n

\"AFH<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our\u00a0\u2018Away from home\u2019\u00a0blogging series features\u00a0one Indian postdoc working in a foreign lab every Wednesday. The posts recount the experience of these postdocs \u2014 the triumphs and challenges of lab life, the cultural differences, what they miss about India \u2014 and, most importantly, offer some useful tips for postdocs headed abroad.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,108,11],"tags":[109],"class_list":["post-1187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academics","category-away-from-home","category-careers","tag-postdoc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/indigenus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}