Playing with electrons

( Prologue: Toasting to the occasion of completing six years at IISc! Wait, this pic is from Aug 2014, six years back, & the toast was to the start of a new chapter in life, i.e. life as a faculty at IISc, but since we can't go to pub due to covid-19 now, I'm putting up this old pic. And wait, that's not me in the pic but my buddy VR Supradeepa, who joined CeNSE, IISc exactly on the same day that I joined. We signed the joining documents together & over the months & years, developed such a real good friendship besides professional camaraderie that my wife.... err... let me not write it here. Anyway, he looks quite young & fit in this pic, I did too! But now in 2020, the two of us are the unhealthiest obese faculty at CeNSE! ) Today I complete six years of service at IISc Bangalore. I joined on Aug 01, 2014, at Centre for Nano Science & Engg. here at IISc. So, a bit of retrospection is due, to take some time out to indulge in nostalgia. It's been a gr...

7 years is a long time to have abstained from writing a blog. I maintained a blog (this one!) back in the day when I was doing my PhD, and I had named it 'Playing with Electrons' because my PhD research was to engineer devices & fabricate them wherein I'd trick the electrons to my advantage by tailoring their energy landscape. And then I stopped blogging, since Nov 2013. That's nearly 7 years. I often thought of creating a new blog but gave up on that idea for reasons I don't remember now. Finally, I thought I'd revive my old blog & continue where I had left. Yesterday, I tried to read a few blogs I had written back in 2012/13, and I realized how much one's thoughts, expectations and understanding of things change over time. Growing old makes one wiser though not necessarily smarter - I recently read somewhere. So here I am, welcoming myself back to my old blog, growing wiser (perhaps), coached by life and shaped by experiences.  I will try to w...

I am looking to starting my career in India by next summer as a faculty member in some institute, preferably in the April-July window. So I would like to pen down very briefly, my experience in this process so far. I finished my PhD quite recently (August 2013) and started looking for faculty positions in India a couple of months before graduation. So I decided not to work in the USA, a very bold move indeed. As of now, I am working as a post-doc in the same group where I did my PhD, finishing some pending work and trying to get some papers published before I heed back to India next year. I decided not to go for industry in USA because I believe I am not made for industry. Working during some fixed schedule such as 9 am-6 pm from Monday to Friday with a week’s vacation in a year, staying too far from family – doesn’t work for me. I love my independence, and freedom to work on my own, and the ability to buy groceries together with my dad in Golaghat (Assam) or to go and hug my s...

A friend of mine told me yesterday that, if suppose the government declares (or makes a law) that a person who is a ch****a (or, in idiot/stupid, a douche bag), will be given Rs. 5 lacs with no questions asked, then what will happen ? He said - "Tab main bhi boloonga ki main ch****a (idiot) hoon, mujhe bhi Rs. 5 lacs chahiye" [ I also an idiot, I need Rs. 5 lacs too ]. Of course, almost everyone will try to prove himself/herself as ch****a (idiot) so as to get those free 5 lacs rupees, and people will fight to get themselves certified as ch****a (idiot). The number of ch****a (idiot) people in India will increase, and eventually India will be full of certified ch****a (idiot) people. I had a hearty laugh ! Makes perfect sense !

Once a day, I close my eyes for few minutes and try to imagine that I am leaving my body and floating in the air as I leave my apartment and see from above. Then I imagine that at a very fast pace, I am leaving the earth’s atmosphere and viewing the whole of planet earth from space, with the sun in the distant background against a dark space. Then I move one step ahead and imagine leaving the solar system as I see the earth becoming smaller and smaller in size and start seeing the Mars and Jupiter zoom across my view. Finally I imagine seeing the solar system from a distance, with the sun barely visible. Then I let my imagination make me travel at unphysical speeds to distant stars, to another part of our Milky Way galaxy. I imagine seeing countless stars and supernovae remnants from a distance, and I ‘choose’ to imagine a random star amongst them. I let my mind take me to near that unknown and random star, and just imagine that it’s got a set of very different kinds of planets aro...

During my recent trip to India, I found it rather surprising (in a bad way) that the weather in Bangalore was very repulsive! Bangalore has been known to offer a pleasant and nice weather, even during summers. If it tends to get hotter, an evening shower cools it off. I had myself experienced it in 2008 when I had stayed there for six months. This time however, the temperature touched 38 0 C (or about 104-106 0 F) and humidity was very high. Local people whined about how this year was the first time since 1984 that such a severe weather was hitting Bangalore even in early April. The reason wasn’t too difficult to gauge. The number of tall apartment complexes has arisen exponentially. Almost everywhere around the city, these super tall buildings have filled up all the otherwise empty spaces, and are offering 2 bedroom apartments at ridiculous prices [somewhere around Rs. 2 crore (~ $ 400000 USD) or so depending on the location, to my knowledge]. This is an insanely high amount of ...

When a PhD student is nearing completion of his/her PhD, the worries, concerns and dilemma pertaining to a post-doc start to loom.  This situation is strongly dependent on the broad area of PhD and also on the specific area within a particular discipline. For instance, to my knowledge and observation, PhD graduates in basic sciences such as physics or mathematics mostly or usually do one or more post-docs, while PhD graduates from say Electrical or Computer Science Engineering usually bypass the post-doc stage - not all such engineering PhDs, but mostly. For instance, if we randomly pick up 100 fresh PhD graduates in Physics or Mathematics, and 100 fresh PhD graduates in Electrical/Computer Engineering, what how would the statistics look like with regard to the percentage of graduates going for post-doc in physics/math vs. those in electrical/computer engineering? I do not have the statistics with me to claim anything, but based on my observation and interaction in the last 4....