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 Gupta (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