National Centre for Biological Sciences

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The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore is a centre of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India. It is located in north Bangalore, on the campus of the University of Agricultural Sciences at the Gandhi Krishi Vigyan Kendra. The main research in this centre can be classified as


Currently there are 24 such active groups working in NCBS pursuing different problems in the above stated areas.

Faculty additions are planned in the current areas of research at NCBS, in plant biology, and in emerging areas at the interface of biology and the physical sciences.

Contents

[edit] The Birth of NCBS

The idea that TIFR should start a Centre for Biological Research was first raised in 1982, following a suggestion by Prof. S. Ramaseshan, then Director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, that a joint TIFR-IISc Centre could be located on the IISc campus. The Centre was to function as "an autonomous unit under the aegis of TIFR and conduct fundamental research and teaching in areas of biology at the frontiers of knowledge". It was to be grown around a group of outstanding individuals and not according to a "rigidly preconceived plan". Its program was to be broad-based, dealing with all levels of biology: cell biology, development of animals and plants, brain research, behavior, ecology and theoretical biology.

[edit] The Campus

The Campus at University of Agricultural Sciences has been designed by the well-known architect Raj Rewal. It is spread over an attractive 20-acre plot surrounded by forests and green fields.

[edit] FACULTY

[edit] Biochemistry, Biophysics and Bioinformatics

Dr. Jayant B. Udgaonkar
Mechanisms of protein folding and unfolding
Dr. M. K. Mathew
Exploring the architecture and function of transmembrane ion channels
Dr. R. Sowdhamini
Computational approaches to protein science.
Dr. G. V. Shivashankar
Single molecule biophysics of gene regulation
Dr. Mrinalini J. Puranik
Photophysics and photochemistry of biomolecules
Dr. Mukund Thattai
Comparative biology of genetic networks
Dr. Yamuna Krishnan-Ghosh
Nucleic Acid Structure and Dynamics
Dr. Kaustubh Rau
Laser-cell interactions

[edit] Neurobiology

Dr. Obaid Siddiqi
Genetic analysis of chemosensory perception
Dr. Mitradas M. Panicker
Gene Regulation in the Mammalian Nervous System
Dr. Upinder S. Bhalla
Computational neuroscience
Dr. Sumantra Chattarji
Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
Dr. Sandhya P. Koushika
Genetic approaches to understand axonal transport

[edit] Cellular Organization and Signaling

Dr. Sudhir Krishna
Molecular pathogenesis of HPV 16 infections
Dr. Apurva Sarin
T Lymphocyte Death and Homeostasis in the Periphery
Dr. Satyajit Mayor
Mechanisms of Endocytosis in Metazoan Cells
Dr. V.Sriram
Mechanisms of lysosome/vacuole biogenesis and mitochondrial remodeling
Dr. K.S. Krishnan
Cell Biology of the Synapse
Dr. Madan Rao (Adjunct faculty)
Dynamics of intracellular trafficking


[edit] Genetics and Development

Dr. K. VijayRaghavan
Nerve and muscle development in Drosophila
Dr. Gaiti Hasan
IP3 signalling pathways in Drosophila
Dr. Veronica Rodrigues (Joint appointment with Department of Biological Sciences, TIFR, Mumbai)
The Development of functional neural networks iin Drosophila
Dr. Quasar S. Padiath (New Faculty-Yet to start)
Molecular genetic analysis of complex neuro-psychiatric disorders
Dr. Uma Ramakrishnan
Discerning the Evolutionary history of human and animal populations

[edit] Admissions

NCBS conducts national level selection test every year (along with TIFR admission test) followed by interviews. Currently the centre offers PhD as well as integrated PhD programmes.

[edit] Open Faculty Positions

Applying for faculty positions at NCBS:

1. What are the positions available. NCBS is keen on making about one new faculty appointment a year. If you have 0-3 years of postdoctoral experience, we shall normally consider you for a Fellow (Assistant Professor) level position; if you have 5-6 years of postdoctoral experience, for a Reader (Senior Assistant Professor) level position. If you are a senior independent investigator, we can consider you for positions at the Associate Professor or Professor level. If we want you badly, you can ask for more.

2. Who can apply We have so far not particularly targeted specific areas of research. We usually tap the large pool of internationally trained Indian scientists. Apply if your research will complement the existing broad areas of research at NCBS. Apply even if it does not, but you feel capable of initiating a completely new research activity. Apply if you are extraordinary with an exceptional track record. Especially if you are at the beginning stage of your scientific career.

3. When to apply In general, the earlier the better. Apply when you have clear-cut plans for future research. When you have proven your productivity (quality, not just quantity is important; preferably both) in your current position. When your track record demonstrates that you possess the requisite intellect, technical capabilities, commitment and potential.

4. How to apply Send your CV with a list of all publications, and a 1-2 page summary of your research accomplishments so far. Send reprints of your papers, in hard copy. Most importantly, send a 3-5 page research proposal describing your plans for future research over a 5-10 year period. Ensure that you bring out the importance of your general area of research, and of your specific projects in this context. Remember that your application will be perused by biologists trained in very different fields, so write accordingly. Take care in writing this well. Send the names and addresses (including email) of eight referees who can comment on your application and on your abilities.

5. After you apply Your application will undergo a preliminary screening along with others. If selected, you will be invited to visit NCBS, and we will write to your referees. You may prompt your referees to send in their letters, but ask them to wait for our letter because we ask them specific questions about you. Your application will be considered further only after you visit. Your application will be kept "alive" for a year.

6. When you visit You will not have to undergo a formal interview. You will give a research seminar and thereafter talk to all faculty members individually. Plan on spending at least 1.5 days at NCBS.

The seminar: Give this the importance it deserves. We find that excellent talks are given by those who have practiced beforehand. Plan a good introduction, not too long, not too short. Target your audience well; remember that it will have widely varied backgrounds. If you feel your work is very different from what an audience at NCBS might be used to listening, have a slightly longer introduction. Remember that presenting too much data can be counterproductive if you lose the audience early on. Strike the right balance. Make it obvious that you have not only the ability to produce data, but also the capability to think wisely about it. You have one hour; make the best use of it.

The individual interviews. These are informal. Different faculty members look for different things. How will your work complement theirs? What benefit will your recruitment have to them, to NCBS? What new ideas, methodologies will you bring to NCBS? Will you improve the average at NCBS? How broad are your research interests? How focused are you? How keen are you to join NCBS? Are you in demand elsewhere? Are you serious in returning to India from abroad? Is the commitment there? Faculty members will also describe their own work to you. If you have taken the trouble to find out what each one works on, so much the better.

Meetings with the Dean and NCBS Director. Come prepared with a list of all that you would need to get started fast at NCBS, if you were to be selected. Don't be bashful about your requirements and budget estimates: we see no point in your joining NCBS if you cannot do what you want to. NCBS has been rather generous in providing start-up funds for new investigators it wants.

7. Then what Your application will be looked at closely by an internal committee. Your case will be presented to and be discussed by the whole faculty. We feel it necessary that the faculty be generally enthusiastic. Upon a positive nod from the faculty, your application will be steered through an internal committee, an Appointments and Promotions Committee, the NCBS Management Board, and finally the TIFR Council. All this can take a few months, but we inform you soon of the outcome of the faculty deliberations.


Jayant Udgaonkar Dean

[edit] The NCBS Young Investigator Programme

This new programme is for exceptionally talented, young scientists, who wish to establish themselves rapidly as independent researchers. Those who have only just finished their PhD degree and would like to work independently, young scientists with some post-doctoral experience and those who have taken a career break and would like to return to the laboratory are encouraged to apply. Approaches that address new questions or take novel paths are encouraged, as are those that involve collaborative efforts within or outside NCBS. Applications will be examined at least twice a year.

Selected candidates will be provided all possible support to further their research goals. These include bench space, generous supplies and equipment as required for the project, access to international facilities such as synchrotrons, genomic resources, transgenic resources etc. Salary support for up to two research assistants will be provided. Should post- doctoral fellows or graduate students elect to join the investigator, their salary will also be taken care of by the scheme. Investigators will get support to attend one international meeting each year and will be allowed to spend up to three months each year in a laboratory other than NCBS, should their collaborations so require.

The scheme envisages, essentially, a 5 year (3- review- 2- year) term. Investigators, still in the scheme after a positive review, who leave to take up academic or research appointments in India will be actively assisted insetting up their laboratories in their new positions. Salary and benefits will be attractive. Accommodation, at nominal rent, will be provided.

Please send applications to:

     dean@ncbs.res.in

for more information write to:

   National Centre for Biological Sciences
   Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
   GKVK, Bellary Road,
   Bangalore 560065, India
   Phone: 91 80 23636421/ 429
   Fax: 91 80 23636662

[edit] Director's Report

The Establishment is a notoriously available punching bag. And so are the established. The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) has moved from the convenient position of having a future to the troublesome one of having to account for its past. It is just over ten years since we started, in a very small way. We are now established and a willing target for close and critical examination. How have we done? The correct answer to this question is simple, but gets us off the hook. The best way to judge success or failure is through the eyes of history. That requires, except when failure is strikingly obvious, an existence of fifty to a hundred years. And, if a fifty or a hundred year-old institution derives its excitement, primarily, from the successes of its founding years, we need not say too much more. But, how does one assess a small, young, institution? Or course, as scientists, we must be objective. This desire, coupled with appropriate technology, has made reviews instant, quantifiable and comparable. How long have you been here? How much money have we spent on you? How many papers have you published? How many collaborators have you had? How often were you the corresponding author? What is the citation index of each of your papers and the impact factor of the journals in which you have published? If you get all these numbers – and of course they are not meaningless – and divide the square root of their mean by 6.3, add 18, sprinkle some garlic sauce on it, you have the number with which you can hoist your institution, or another, up a pole of derision or pride. You can also use this number to write a report on the state of the institute. Of course, a report is a serious matter that can affect people and their lives. So the report is suitably moderate, in other words, subjective – throwing all the precision of quantitative garlictherapy to the winds. While this cynical view of reviews may often be justified, we still must provide a reasonable answer to the question, “How has NCBS done?” Can we summarize this without beating around bushes, no pun intended, of our own creation? There are two ways in which this question can be answered. The first is by a view from within, with all its dangers of exaggeration or breast beating. The second is a view from outside. While I will give a brief summary of the view from within, I must first elaborate on the outside view, or more precisely, how we hope to have one soon. Our Management Board recently considered and agreed with the proposition for an external review of Professor NCBS. The review committee will be chaired by P. Balaram of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and will have as its other members – Professor Utpal Banerjee (University of California, Los Angeles), Professor Gautam Desiraju (University of Hyderabad), Professor Sankar Ghosh (Yale University, New Haven), Dr. J. Gowrishankar (Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad) and Dr. Shahid Jameel (International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biology, New Delhi). This committee’s mandate is to review all aspects of NCBS’s functioning. The committee will have access to all our records and decisions and will also meet with the members of the NCBS community in a variety of different ways, including at a research symposium. The members of the committee are non-NCBS members of our Management Board and are therefore already familiar with our workings, but they are likely to seek inputs from other reviewers and our international scientific advisors. The review committee will submit its findings directly to the Chairman of the Management Board, Professor Shobo Bhattacharya (Director, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research). This committee will take a hard look at us. What will it find? We will know their views soon but here is an insider’s summary, an internal and subjective report, moving from the easiest to the most difficult topic. Our campus, its buildings and infrastructure, is reasonably conducive for doing good science. Our management of utilities – water and electricity, is good considering the context. However, we need to plan our energy requirements of the near future well and with attention to alternative and environment friendly approaches. Our administration works hard and well and hopefully computerization will make it even better. We have much of the major equipment to do modern biology well – as much as can be expected of a small institution anywhere in the world. These are, by and large, used and maintained well. We have relied little on permanent scientific staff, deciding to follow the principles that the users operate and maintain these facilities themselves. This approach has its drawbacks, but we do not see ourselves moving away from the philosophy easily as we do not want to develop an unsustainable and obsolescent work force. We are comparatively under-equipped for workshops in many areas – although we do have an excellent small one. We rely on the many excellent facilities available in other nearby institutes although distances make this a non-trivial effort. Our faculty size is small, we will add only about once every year and a half, thereby exercising some control on our chronological age. Our faculty, drawn from the best laboratories around the world, is extraordinarily motivated. We support them generously at startup, now more so than ever before, but expect them to generate substantial outside research support after the first five years. Which, they usually have. We expect them to do well, by any reasonable measure, and have a tough and fair tenure policy. We encourage collaboration across all geographical and disciplinary boundaries, seeing that a stirring of diverse intellectual and experimental talent can often lead to an unusually stimulating brew. This has indeed happened, more often than initially seemed likely. Our students, postdoctoral fellows and short-term visitors constitute the bulk of our members and, indeed our quality. All of this is very well and no one will, in all likelihood, grudge us the conclusion that NCBS is a place where good science is eminently doable. Has it happened? Has our output matched the investment in talent and facilities? Before answering this, I should make a special plea that although we are legally ten years old; the bulk of our growth is closer to five years. In this period, if you go through our research publications, and read them, it is reassuring that many groups have done very well. This, combined with an ambience that encourages good work is something all of NCBS should justifiably be proud of. Could we have done better? Certainly. Given the talent and drive of our students and faculty, we could have – at a crude guess – done one and a half times to twice as well, by any measure of ‘wellness’. I feel that one important reason why this did not happen is because our Meetings and Workshops program, although growing, is at its infancy. We need to have more students and other researchers from all over the world regularly coming to our campus. This will help us see our work in perspective and also further stimulate the vibrant environment that Bangalore already offers. Another way in which we could be more effective is by greatly increasing the level of our collaborations – with clinicians, human and mouse geneticists, with physicists and chemists – within the country and outside. All of these collaborations are indeed happening and increasingly so. These are good signs whose effects may only be seen in the next couple of years. A third way in which we can be more effective is by starting a program that will attract young investigators, free them of the need to seek funding, and allow them to develop their careers rapidly, before they move elsewhere or compete for positions at NCBS. Disproportionate to its small size, NCBS has also had a very positive impact on the development of what is known as the biotechnology industry in Bangalore. Our faculty have advised companies or served in various state committees, but far more important, our students, faculty and their research have greatly increased the confidence of the starting entrepreneur. Before an institution is built, building it seems an end itself. With the success of building well, comes the complacence that robustness brings. Being a part of the world of science, collaborating, getting more young investigators into the campus and being evaluated by outsiders are all activities that are designed to shake complacence and the sloth that it can bring. Will we choose this? Will we choose the stability and calm of the backwater or the uncertainty, instability and difficulties involved in trying to be a place that can attract the best minds, keep them here and challenge them to do their best? Only the future will tell, but in today’s world the future is measured in years, perhaps, and not in decades. So, we will know very soon! But, enough of introspection and reading tea leaves! There is, hopefully, good science and fun to be had in reading our report and I shall conclude by warmly welcoming the latest addition to our faculty, Quasar Saleem Padiath, a medical doctor and a Ph.D. in human genetics who works on the genetics of complex diseases. Talented new colleagues are the best assurance of a future and as long as we continue to add them, we shall have a great one. K. VijayRaghavan NCBS Director

[edit] External links

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