Ms. Aparna Varma PhD student of DBS working with Dr. Amirul Islam Mallick has received the “Best Oral presentation Award-VIROCON 2023″ for her work titled “Neutralisation of SARS-CoV-2 Spike-pseudotyped lentivirus by polyclonal antibody raised against RBD variants” in VIROCON-2023, held at ICAR-National Research Centre for Banana, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu (1st to 3rd December – 2023).
Ms. Grishma Kasle PhD student of DBS working with Prof. Jayasri Das Sarma has won the first prize for oral presentation under the “Young Investigators forum talk” at the 15th Annual meeting of Neuroupdate Kolkata scheduled for November 25 & 26, 2023.
Prakash Biswas from DBS HPI lab has won the best poster award in the 11th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE LABORATORY ANIMAL SCIENTISTS’ ASSOCIATION (LASA) INDIA, LASACON 2023 held in IISc Bengaluru.
Team iGEM IISER Kolkata 2023 has won the Gold Medal in the iGEM 2023 Jamboree. This is our fourth consecutive gold for our Institute in the IGEM competition.
Mr. Saptarshi Maji (18RS020) has won the Camillo Golgi Best Poster Award at the Organelle Biology & Membrane Trafficking (OBMT) Conference 2023.OBMT 2023 was held between October 9th-11th at National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), Manesar.
Ms Srishti Dutta Gupta (19RS batch) won the best poster presentation award at the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS) Asia-Pacific Chapter Conference 2023, held between 16-19th of October in HongKong
Dr. Amirul I. Mallick has received the “Catalyst funding for pump-priming projects” from BactiVac Network, University of Birmingham, UK, for his ongoing research on developing live vector-based mucosal vaccine strategy against Campylobacter jejuni
Dr. Neelanjana Sengupta received the Chemical Research Society of India Bronze Medal (2024)
Mr. Rohan Sarkar, PhD student at The Dog Lab, DBS, has been awarded First Prize for poster presentation at the ISAZ 2023 conference held at the University of Edinburgh during 11-14 June 2023. Rohan also received a students’ travel grant from ISAZ and a SERB travel grant to attend the conference.
PhD student of DBS working with Prof. Sumana Annagiri have received Student Research Grants for 2023. Their names are given below.
Mr. Manish Kumar Pathak – $1500, Topic – Examination of how ants rescue nestmates when they face an “Earthquake” and if they show any preferential rescue towards some of their nestmates as compared to others.
Ms. Anwesha Acharjee – $1995, David Tuber Applied Animal Behaviour award, Topic – Impact of pesticides on the memory of a non-target tropical ant.
Mr. Subhasis Halder – $2000, Physiochemical mechanisms of queen control via a novel fertility signal in an ant.
IPhD students of DBS have been selected for the Prime Minister Research Fellowship (PMRF) in this cycle. Their names along with the names of their supervisors are given below.
Eshika Halder (Supervisor – Prof. Annagiri Sumana)
Sauratej Sengupta (Supervisor – Prof. Supratim Datta)
Mr. Rupam Paul (Doctoral candidate, 18RS) working under Dr. Arnab Gupta supervision received the prestigious Carl Storm International Diversity Fellowship to attend and present his research work at “Cell Biology of Metals Gordon Research Conference 2023” West Dover, VT, United States.
Mr. Manish Pathak, who is a senior PhD student working with Prof. Sumana Annagiri, has just secured funding worth $1000 for an outreach activity. This grant will enhance two other grants that he and some other students have received earlier from the European Society of Evolutionary Biology and The Society for the Study of Evolution, both highly reputed international bodies. Together, the three grants sum up to about Rs. 4 lakhs, which is being utilised by them to conduct a three-phase outreach program to enhance the understanding and teaching of evolution for school teachers from Jharkhand and West Bengal. Let us applaud this effort by Manish and the other students of the Ant and Dog labs.
Dr. Radhika Venkatesan has been awarded with the Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers.
Dr. Neelanjana Sengupta has been selected by the Biophysical Society (USA) to be their Ambassador for India. Her term will be from January 1, 2023 till December 31, 2025.
PhD students of DBS have been selected for the Prime Minister Research Fellowship (PMRF) in this cycle. Their names along with the names of their supervisors are given below.
Jyotirmayee Padhan (Supervisor – Dr. Babu Sudhamalla)
Sarbajit Layek (Supervisor – Dr. Neelanjana Sengupta)
Dishari Dasgupta (Supervisor – Dr. Anindita Bhadra)
Ph.D. student of DBS Mr. Anirban Roy, working under the supervision of Dr. Babu Sudhamalla, abstract “Engineering an acetyllysine reader with a photocrosslinking amino acid for interactome profiling” with ID #43 has been accepted for the 6th Max Planck Freiburg Epigenetics Meeting (30 Nov 2022 – 2 Dec 2022). This is a very prestigious meeting in the field of “Epigenetics and Chromatin Biology”
Ph.D. student of DBS Ms. Afruja Khan (19rs107), working under the supervision of Dr. Amirul I. Mallick, has won the “Best Poster Award” for her work on “Bacterial OMVs” at 44th All India Cell Biology Conference, held at the University of Kashmir, J&K from 2nd to 3rd September 2022.
PhD student of DBS Mr. Manish Kumar Pathak, working under the supervision of Prof. Annagiri Sumana, has received a grant of $1000 from the Society for the study of Evolutionary Biology – an international body. This grant is given to conduct a workshop to school teachers to educate them regarding evolutionary Biology. Both theory and simple experiments that they can perform to teach the future generations.
He has received another grant for the amount of 4000 EUR from the European Society of Evolutionary Biology to conduct outreach activities. He plans to use this to educate potential teachers and select high school children regarding the subject of Evolution in West Bengal and Jharkhand.
Mr. Debdeep Chatterjee, a final year BS-MS student of DBS working under the supervision of Prof. Supratim Datta, has been recruited by Gingko Bioworks, a Boston-based biotech company
PhD student of DBS Ms. Ishani Mukherjee working under the supervision of Dr. Anuradha Bhat has been awarded the prestigious Developing nations Student Research Grant by the Animal Behaviour Society, USA.
PhD student of DBS Mr. Rohan Sarkar working under the supervision of Dr. Anindita Bhadra has been selected for a grant by Animal Behavior Society, USA
PhD student of DBS Dr. Arunita Banerjee worked under the supervision of Dr. Anindita Bhadra has won the third prize in the Talk Your Thesis contest organised by India Science Festival 2022
Mr. Manish Pathak (17RS049) a PhD student working under the supervision of Prof. Annagiri Sumana has received the prestigious Rosemary Grant for working on the last chapter of his thesis that deals with rescue of ants trapped inside their nest! He will examine not only rescue strategies but also explore if more closely related female ants and immature individuals are preferentially rescued as they are more valuable for the colony.
This international grant from the Society for the Study of Evolution consists of $3500 and has been given to an Indian student working in India for the first time in more than one decade of its existence.
Mr. Chandan Goarin (17RS059) a PhD student working under the supervision of Dr. Amirul Islam Mallick has been selected for the DBT-Newton Bhaba short-term Ph.D. Placement Program 2022. He will be working at Kingston University, London with Prof. Andrey Karlyshev for 3-4 months.
Dr. Radhika Venkatesan has been elected as Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, London
Prof. Jayasri Das Sarma has been elected as Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences.
Ms. Priti Roy, a final year PhD student working under the supervision of Dr. Neelanjana Sengupta, has received a best poster award at the recently concluded Theoretical Chemistry Symposium (TCS 2021).
Prof. Jayasri Das Sarma has been elected as Fellow of the Indian Academy of Neurosciences (IAN)
Mr. Madhav Sharma, Integrated Ph.D student has working under the supervision of Prof. Jayasri Das Sarma has received the “Professor SS Parmar Research Foundation (USA) Award” for best poster at the recently organized 39th Annual International E-conference of The Indian Academy of Neurosciences (IAN) themed “Neuro-Glia in Health and Disease”.
Mr. Pallab Dutta, currently a DBS PhD student with Neelanjana Sengupta (formerly DBS Masters student) wins the National HPC Hackathon, with undergraduate team members Mr. Parth Bibekar and Mr. Abhay Kshirsagar.
Prof. Jayasri Das Sarma has been elected as the Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI). It’s indeed a proud moment for our Department.
Congratulations team IGEM IISER Kolkata for winning a gold medal at #iGEM2021! That’s a hat trick for IISER Kolkata . Congratulations for the 4 nominations in the special categories. We are very proud of what you have achieved in spite of the pandemic!
Parijat Sarkar (Alumnus of the 08MS Batch) who completed his BS-MS with Biology Major has been awarded prestigious NASI-Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award (2021) in the area of Biomedical, Molecular Biology and Biotechnology.
Dr. Rubina Mondal, along with Prof Anindita Bhadra and Prof. Alexandra Protopopova from the University of British Columbia, has been awarded the WALTHAM Foundation grant to study free ranging dog welfare and behavior in animal rescue shelters in India. She will be working as a postdoctoral fellow in the Dog Lab.
Ms. Vaishali Mulchandani, working under the supervision of Prof. Jayasri DasSarma has been selected for the Prime Minister Research Fellowship December 2020 cycle.
Ms. Danita Daniel and Mr. Rohan Sarkar has been awarded ABS Developing Nations Grant by the Animal Behaviour Society (USA).
Ms. Samarpita Sen (15MS020) got selected for the prestigious Gates-Cambridge Scholarship 2021. Supported by this fellowship, she will pursue her PhD at the University of Cambridge. Currently she is working with Prof. Arnab Gupta at DBS.
Prof. Jayasri Das Sarma has been awarded with the SERB-POWER Grant
Dr. Rituparna Sinha Roy awarded with the SERB-POWER Fellowship (2021)
Dr. Purba Mukerjee has been selected for the Har Govind Khorana Innovative Young Biotechnologist Award, 2020.
Dr. Anindita Bhadra has been awarded with “J. Ammal National Women Bioscientist Award 2020-21″
It is our pleasure to inform you that the IISER Kolkata Student Chapter of the Biophysical Society, formally christened the “Gangeya Student Chapter”, has been approved by the Biophysical Society. The correspondence and the letter (attached) are below. The Chapter formally begins on 1st February, 2021. The first president is Madhura Chakraborty.
We note that this is only the second BPS Student Chapter from India (and Asia):
https://www.biophysics.org/student-chapters
Ms. Priti Roy, a Ph.D student in the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics research group in DBS, has been selected for the (Virtual) Travel Award for participating in the international Biophysical Society Meeting (2021). Congratulations!
Aritra Lahiri is one of the recipients of the GYTI awards 2020.
News link on social media
Integrated Ph.D. student Aritraa Lahiri(13IP005)from Dr.Amirul Islam Mallick’s lab has been selected for SITARE-Gandhian Young Technological Innovation(GYTI) Appreciation Award 2020 by SRISTI-DBTBIRAC.This award is accompanied by research grant of Rs15 lac for two years to undertake life science research with high translational potential. click for details
Tithi Mandal, a Ph.D student in the Cell Biophysics Lab, has been awarded the RSC Soft Matter Poster Prize at the’International Symposium on Cell Surface Macromolecules 2020′, held in IISER Pune in February 2020. Congratulations to Tithi!
Mr. Debottam has been selected for the Marie Sklodowska Curie Individual Fellowship which he can hopefully avail if his thesis review and defence happen on time. The details of his fellowship are given below.
Project title – “Why do individuals cooperate? Exploring the behavioural, cognitive, and hormonal mechanisms governing cooperation in macaques.”
University and Department details – Utrecht University, Animal Ecology Group.
Host – Dr. Jorg J Massen (https://www.jorgmassen.com/).
Recent study published by Dr. Anindita Bhadra in the news:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02818/full
This paper reports a set of experiments conducted with free-ranging dogs in different areas to test their ability to comprehend complex pointing gestures by humans. Two kinds of pointing gestures were used, which pet dogs are known to follow – dynamic distal cues and momentary distal cues. This study revealed that free-ranging dogs can follow both the pointing gestures given by unfamiliar humans, which suggests that they pay attention to unfamiliar humans and adjust their behaviour accordingly. Moreover, the dogs showed positive and negative reinforcement, suggesting that they learn from immediate experience with humans. This is the first-ever study that has tested innate abilities of dogs to learn to respond to humans without any prior training and has implications for the understanding of adaptations of dogs to living among humans, especially in the urban environment.
News links:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/01/stray-dogs-communication-rabies-health/#
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/stray-dogs-may-understand-human-signals-too-180974024/
https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/stray-dogs-may-have-a-natural-ability-to-understand-human-gestures/article30595074.ece
https://www.anandabazar.com/others/science/even-stray-dogs-capable-of-following-our-pointing-cues-first-shows-bengali-scientist-dgtlx-1.1097296
Patent award jointly to Dr. Parna Ray (DCS) and Dr. Partho Sarothi Ray (DBS) for development of a fluorescent cyclometalated IR(III) complexes and formulations. This patent has potential applications in anti-cancer therapy, fluorescence-assisted tumor surgery, and as a fluorescent marker in research applications.Granted Patent No.324974_978_KOL_2015
Congratulations to the IISER Kolkata iGEM 2019 team that won the Gold in the main event “Giant Jamboree” at Boston, USA. Also the team was nominated for the best mathematical model and best bio-safety measures.”
Dr. Anindita Bhadra has been elected as a member of the Executive Committee of the Global Young Academy for 2019-20 Click for details
Dr. Anindita Bhadra has been selected as a Member of the Royal Society of Biology, London.
News story on our recent paper in Research Matters: Speaking a million words in a single gaze
Aditya Ghoshal’s manuscript has recently got accepted for publication in the journal ‘Behavioural Processes’
The work investigates the diurnal changes in behavioural interactions of male-female (dyadic) pairs of zebrafish. The results revealed a distinct gradient in mating and non-mating related behaviours across time. There was also a temporal pattern in sexual dimorphism of behaviours elicited across time. Our results throw light on the complex dynamics of male-female interactions in wild zebrafish and can have implications in designing experiments involving behavioral testing of zebrafish.
Babu Sudhamalla, Dipjyoti Das and S. Gangappa selected as DBT-Ramalingaswami Fellows
Congratulations to Drs. Babu Sudhamalla, Dipjyoti Das and S. Gangappa for being selected for the prestigious DBT-Ramalingaswami Fellowship.
Watch “Is Computational Biology an answer to our health problems | Neelanjana Sengupta | TEDxHITKolkata” on YouTube
Dr. Sudipta Bar was interviewed by The Company of Biologists Ltd
Sudipta Bar was our PhD student worked under the joint supervision of Drs. Rupak Datta and Mohit Prasad. The paper he published in ‘Disease Models and Mechanisms’ based on his work at IISER Kolkata is highlighted and he was interviewed and The Company of Biologists Ltd. has published interview Click for Details.
Prof. Jayasri Das Sarma of DBS has been elected as a Fellow of West Bengal Academy of Science & Technology (WAST) for the year 2018.
Swarnajayanti Fellowship awarded to Prof. Punyasloke Bhadury
Prof. Punyasloke Bhadury of Department of Biological Sciences has been awarded the prestigious Swarnajayanti Fellowship Award (2017-18) in the discipline of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
Exploiting Tumor-Specific Vulnerabilities for Improved Cancer Treatment
Mr. Mrinmoy Pal (13MS116) recently attended the Else Kröner Forschungskolleg Göttingen cancer symposium 2017, entitled “Exploiting Tumor-Specific Vulnerabilities for Improved Cancer Treatment” from November 15 to November 17, 2017. Mrinmoy also presented a poster during the symposium which was based on the work carried out by him as a DAAD fellow under the supervision of Prof. Steven A. Johnsen at Department of General, Visceral and Pediatric Surgery, University Medical Center Göttingen.
To support the financial cost of this scientific trip to Göttingen, IISER Kolkata awarded him the International Travel Grant.
Interference based mapping of cell membrane fluctuations reveal their active regulation and transient heterogeneities.
Biswas, Arikta; Alex, Amal and Sinha, Bidisha. 2017. “Interference based mapping of cell membrane fluctuations reveal their active regulation and transient heterogeneities.” Biophysical Journal, 113, 1768-1781
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bpj.2017.08.041
Mr. Manmeet Singh, a PhD student in Prof. Jayasri Das Sarma’s laboratory is the recipient of the 2015 Du Pré award.
This prestigious research grant is awarded to young researchers from emerging countries by the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation (MSIF). This award help students to undertake short visits to established multiple sclerosis research centres, either to learn more from each other or to carry out parts of joint research projects. Manmeet has received £5000 grant to travel to the University of Pennsylvania, USA to work for 3 months in the year of 2016 under the joint supervision of Prof. Das Sarma and Dr. Kenneth Shindler, Associate Professor, Department of Ophthalmology under the MSIF Program. His study aims in understanding the role of two consecutive prolines present within fusion domain of Mouse Hepatitis Virus spike protein in demyelination and neuroinflammation.
Stem Cells and Development paper investigates the role of nonmuscle myosin II (NMII) in migration of Wharton’s Jelly-derived mesenchymal stem cells (WJ-MSCs).
Dr. Malancha Ta, faculty of Department of Biological Sciences, recently published an interesting piece of work with her team in the journal ‘Stem Cells and Development’ [Arora S, Saha S, Roy S, Das M, Jana S and Ta M. (2015) Role of Nonmuscle Myosin II in Migration of Wharton's Jelly-derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells. Stem Cells Dev. Apr 29. (Epub ahead of print)]. In this paper, the authors attempted to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms responsible for migration of WJ-MSCs and showed for the first time that inhibition of NMII by pharmacological inhibitors resulted in significant reduction of migration. Further trying to dissect the role of individual NMII isoforms, they established that down regulation of NMIIA but not NMIIB expression led to cells failing to retract their trailing edge and losing cell-cell cohesiveness while exhibiting non-directional migratory pathway. And finally, using a PCR array, they also demonstrated that inhibition of NMII resulted in increased gene expression of extracellular matrix proteins and adhesion molecules which possibly led to stronger adhesions and hence, decreased migration of WJ-MSCs.
JV paper describes Spike protein mediated microtubule assisted transneuronal spread in demyelinating strain of mouse hepatitis virus
Department of Biological Sciences faculty member, Dr. Jayasri Das Sarma, has recently published an exciting work with her student Dr. Kaushiki Biswas which appeared in the recent edition of Journal of Virology [Biswas K, Das Sarma J. (2014) Effect of microtubule disruption on neuronal spread and replication of demyelinating and nondemyelinating strains of mouse hepatitis virus in vitro. J Virol. 88(5):3043-7]. In this paper they show the involvement of microtubules in the transport of demyelinating but not non-demyelinating strains of coronavirus. The significance of the study is the observation that strains of virus that differ only in proteins important for attachment to host cells have profound differences in their ability to cause myelin destruction. This study explains why only some strains of neurotropic viruses cause demyelination. In addition to increasing our understanding of virus-induced demyelination and axonal loss, it identifies a potential therapeutic target in patients with the human demyelinating disease, multiple sclerosis.
Jibin Sadasivan receives Du Pré grant
Jibin Sadasivan, our fourth year Integrated BS MS student pursuing Neuroscience project under the guidance of Dr. Jayasri Das Sarma is the recipient of the 2014 Du Pré award. This prestigious researchgrant is awarded by the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation (MSIF) to young researchers from emerging countries to enable them to undertake short visits to established multiple sclerosis research centers, either to learn more from each other or to carry out parts of joint research projects. JIbin will use his £5000 grant to travel to the University of Colorado, Denver, USA to work with DrRandell J Cohrs, on the dynamic regulation of host immune mediators in the central nervous system during mouse hepatitis virus induced acute and chronic inflammation.
For details of the award announcement follow this link
Rahul Basu receives Du Pré grant
Rahul Basu, a PhD student of Dr. Jayasri Das Sarma at the Department of Biological Sciences, IISER- Kolkata, is the recipient of the 2012 Du Pré grant. This prestigious research grant is awarded by the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation (MSIF) to young researchers from emerging countries to enable them to undertake short visits to established multiple sclerosis research centers, either to learn more from each other or to carry out parts of joint research projects. Rahul will use his £5000 grant to travel to the University of Pennsylvania, USA to spend 3 months working under the supervision of Dr Kenneth Shindler, looking at the role of conventional T cells and B cells in mouse hepatitis virus induced demyelination.
Cell paper combines computational and experimental biology to demonstrate new regulatory mechanism
Department of Biological Sciences faculty member Partho Sarothi Ray has recently co-authored a paper in the prestigious journal Cell [Yao P., Potdar A.A., Arif A., Ray P.S., Mukhopadhyay R., Willard B., Xu Y., Yan J., Saidel G.M. and Fox, P.L. (2012) Coding region polyadenylation generates a truncated tRNA synthetase that counters translation repression. Cell 149, 88-100] which describes a new mechanism of generating new proteins by converting a stop codon into an amino acid-encoding codon by adding an alternative poly-adenine tail to an mRNA. The significance of the study lies in the fact that the discovery is based on computational modeling of a translation regulatory system which was observed to give a constant low level of translation of a protein, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), even when the synthesis of the protein was inhibited. This is one of the first studies which have utilized computational modeling together with experimental validation to discover a new molecular mechanism, emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of scientific discovery today.