Cross- posted from the Indigenus blog, a blog from Nature India.

Every Wednesday, Indigenus blog takes a peek into the lives of Indian postdocs working in foreign labs. The ‘Away from home’ series will feature one postdoc each week recounting his/her experience of working in a foreign lab, the triumphs and challenges, the culture factor, tips for Indian postdocs headed abroad and what he/she misses most about India. 

Last week, we met Mainpal Rana, a PhD from the Biological Sciences and Bioengineering Department of Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and currently a postdoctoral associate at the Magee-Womens Research Institute Pittsburgh affiliated to University of Pittsburgh, USA. He told of the joys of not having to wait for reagents for experiments and the woes of not having Indian utensils in an American kitchen. Read more.

The week before, Moumita Chaki, a PhD from Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (IICB-CSIR), Kolkata, currently working as a Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Medical School, USA, talked among other things, about the problems of funding for independent postdoctoral research that visa-holders like her might face in the US. Read more.

Then there was synthetic and systems biologist Kayzad Nilgiriwala who is working as a postdoc at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA. Kayzad completed his Ph.D. (Microbiology) at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai, India and wants to import some strong points from the US research scene when he comes back home. Read more. 

Finally, the first in the series was Kangkan Halder, who completed his doctoral thesis at the Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology (IGIB), New Delhi and is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Applied Synthetic Biology Group at the University of Göttingen, Germany, who offers his advice on how to find a postdoc position in Germany. Read more.

Don’t forget to check back for the latest addition to the series each Wednesday, or follow Indigenus on twitter for more.