What do you do? Do you enjoy it? Why? I am a doctoral candidate at the National Institute of Technology Karnataka. My dissertation focuses on intelligent systems for predictive modelling in financial applications.  Aside from my PhD research topic, I enjoy working on problems that have the potential to make an impact through different aspects of research such as social, business and technology. Through my PhD programme, I have moulded research skills to work on funded projects or serve as independent consultant. What were your early career ambitions? After not performing well at school, my parents suggested that I take up a course at an ITI (Industrial Training Institute). This meant that I would be a skilled technician in an organisation after graduating. However, I decided to study for a Diploma in Electronics and Communication Engineering, which is technically a higher degree, as I did not want to limit my career prospects. The initial semesters were tough, but later I picked up with the help of learning in peer student groups. How did you make the decision between pursuing a career in academia or industry? Once I completed my diploma, thoughts of applying for jobs surfaced. However, at that time in India, a new scheme was introduced whereby diploma holders could apply and join the second year of an undergraduate programme. I stayed at the same institute where I had studied for my diploma and was awarded a BTech in Information Technology in 2007. Around this time, the economic recession was prevailing, the dot-com bubble had mostly subsided and the industry in India was changing rapidly. I felt that my place was not in industry, as I did not believe I had the excellent coding skills it required. I took up my first job as a lecturer on a contractual basis at Cochin University Engineering College at Kuttanad, which is a state-funded public university. After my first stint as a lecturer, I personally felt that academia provided a better comfort zone and space for professional growth. What were some of the challenges on your journey? Most of colleges where I worked already started to regulate for more qualified (PG/PhD) teaching staff. I was interviewed and received a job offer from Amrita University in Quilon in early 2008. But in that year, a breakthrough occurred while I was trying to qualify for GATE (Graduate Aptitude for Engineering), a national exam that provide chances to pursue Master’s and PhD programmes. More recently, this exam has been a criterion for selection for some positions public sector companies. I received a strong grade and rank, which I don’t think I would have got without the exposure and subject knowledge I’d acquired during my undergraduate training. What did you do next? After unsuccessful applications to graduate schools for Master’s programmes, I worked for a short period as technical staff at an institute for a government funded project on digitisation of a library with nationwide reach. Later in 2009, I applied for an MTech (Master of Technology) programme at a state public university and was selected for a teaching assistance scholarship. As part of the dissertation project work, I applied for an internship at ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization). Even without support from the university or a scholarship from ISRO, I worked on a two-semester project on the development of a software tool prototype for space research applications, which resulted in a related IEEE publication. How does being based in India affect the way you work? There have not been many drastic changes in India, from academic point of view, in recent years. There are constant checks and performance reviews either in government posts or private institutions. To an extent, although private institutions offer higher salaries, they also demand a higher workload as part of accreditations that may actually work positively in long run. What advice would you have for others trying to work in a similar sort of environment? There can be a sense of lethargy and inertia certain positions. The best policy is to keep searching for grants for funded projects, extend your professional skills, such as research reviewing and talking at conference and workshops. Undertake student support programmes like mentoring and community initiatives for spreading knowledge. What do you love about living and working in India? In my case, the government funded my research and hence I feel a sense of moral duty to give back to my nation. India has potential for growth both scientifically and economically; at least historically that has been evident. What’s your top career tip to younger colleagues? Stay focused and keep your eyes open for higher education and research opportunities. Reach out to your seniors, teachers and peers for advice. What else would you say to others trying to build a scientific career in India? From my experience, joining the best-ranked institute does not necessarily mean you will receive top training or skills, unless you have a true passion for your research.  Smart work and motivation can instil students with the confidence to perform well and be recognised in academia. Make use of generous government scholarships as well as privately funded schemes.

Practices might differ from country to country, but undergraduate students can be better served in research, says Shaun Khoo. One of the things that excited me about taking up a Canadian postdoctoral position was that, for the first time, I would get a chance to work with and mentor enthusiastic undergraduate researchers. I looked forward to the chance to gain mentorship skills while helping out future scientists, and maybe, eventually, freeing up some of my own time. As an Australian, I had never been pressured to volunteer in a lab — most Australian students don’t do any undergraduate research unless they enroll in an extra honours year, because the law prohibits unpaid student placements that are not a course requirement. This hasn’t held back overall research productivity in Australia, but it is a stark contrast to the North American environment, where many undergraduates feel pressure to get research experience as soon as they begin university. Most graduate medical students, for example, have previous research experience, and North American graduate schools have come to expect this from applicants. In Canada, nearly 90% of graduate medical students have past research experience1. Numerous articles extol2,3,4 the virtues of undergraduate research experience, but, unfortunately, evidence supporting the benefits of undergraduate research is limited. Most studies on the topic rely exclusively on self-reports that are corroborated less than 10% of the time by studies using more-direct measurements. For example, surveys find that undergraduate student researchers say that they have developed data-analysis skills — something that would normally involve lots of practical work — yet, when interviewed, most of them admit to never having done any data analysis. Like many postdoctoral researchers and graduate students, I spend most of my time with undergraduate students working on technical skills that they might need to work in the lab, but that don’t necessarily improve their conceptual understanding. For example, if I teach a student how to use a cryostat, they might become proficient in slicing brains, but they won’t necessarily learn how synaptic transmission works. Even if we manage to instil excitement for the intricacies of research in our undergraduate students, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that for the vast majority that continue in academic research, there will be no permanent jobs — we might just be saddling our undergraduates with unrealistic expectations. So how do we avoid wasting our time as mentors and our students’ time as learners and researchers? Here are my suggestions. Consider long-term goals. Undergraduate students should reflect on how their research experiences will prepare them for professional success. Should they be aiming for research experiences that are based on their courses, because it will better improve their understanding of scientific concepts? Will a given opportunity help them to reach their career goals by getting into a professional graduate programme? Can they commit to staying with a research programme long enough to become effective and potentially be a co-author? Acknowledge and offset opportunity cost. Undergraduate research requires significant time investments from both students and research supervisors. Undertaking such research might mean forgoing paid employment or other experiences, such as student societies, sport, performing arts or campus journalism and politics. Mentors can help undergraduate students by facilitating summer-scholarship applications or finding ways for students to get course credit for their work. Train for diverse careers. Most undergraduate students will pursue non-research careers or join professional graduate programmes. Those who try to continue in academia will eventually face a bleak post-PhD academic job market. Just as PhD students need preparation for a wide range of careers, so do undergraduate students need to build a transferable skill set. Mentors can encourage undergraduate students to build communication skills by, for example, encouraging them to present in lab meetings, or facilitating teamwork by having groups of undergraduate students complete a project together. Improve undergraduate research experiences. There’s limited non-anecdotal evidence that undergraduate research improves a given lab’s research productivity, or even student learning, but such research isn’t necessarily a waste of time. Before undergraduate students pad their CVs with research experience, they should reflect on what they will achieve by conducting research, and they should seek out meaningful projects to work on and develop relevant skills for their future career. For mentors, we have an obligation to consider the career development of undergraduate students and, for the sake of our publication records, we should aim to work with students who can commit at least a year to our projects. And, as much as possible, we should try to take the pressure off undergraduate students to do research, so that it can be an enjoyable learning experience rather than a box they need to check. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-07427-5 This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged. You can get in touch with the editor at naturejobseditor@nature.com.   References 1. Klowak, J., Elsharawi, R., Whyte, R., Costa, A. & Riva, J. Can. Med. Educ. J. 9, e4–e13 (2018). PubMed Google Scholar 2. Smaglik, P. Nature 518, 127–128 (2015). PubMed Article Google Scholar 3. Ankrum, J. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05823-5 (2018). Article Google Scholar 4. Trant, J. Nature 560, 307 (2018). Article Google Scholar Download references

Drive for accessibility sees research relayed in regional tongues instead of English Scientists and policymakers across India are aiming to bring science to the nation’s citizens and residents whose main language is not English. They’re producing content such as articles and podcasts, and giving talks about discoveries and studies in health science, biology, biotechnology and astronomy in some of the nation’s 22 official languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Kannada and Tamil. As one of the languages used officially by the Indian government, English is largely considered to be the country’s language for science — but just 12% of the nation’s 1.3 billion citizens can speak and write it. Those who are trying to broaden the mix note that many more people will be able to access scientific content if it is available in other languages. “Speaking and writing in regional languages makes science more inclusive,” says Maggie Inbamuthiah, founder of Mandram (which means ‘platform’ in Tamil), an organization based in Chennai that seeks to create a platform on which ideas in science and technology are communicated in regional languages, including Tamil and Kannada. Initiatives to write about science and produce science-related content in languages other than English have been under way for several decades, as many urban schools and most higher-education institutions moved to an English-based curriculum. Those multi-language efforts started to expand with the advent of the Internet, which has provided easy access to content, new media, platforms for distribution, and the ability to find collaborators and new audiences. Digital spaces and media have brought new players to the undertaking, and have re-energized those who have been involved in these efforts for years. Language evolution Although digital platforms and social media help researchers and others to communicate scientific findings and discoveries to the public, any such endeavour is pointless if readers, viewers or listeners cannot speak or read that language. Few of India’s languages have an up-to-date lexicon of scientific terms, and many researchers in the country have long become accustomed to thinking and writing about science in English, says Inbamuthiah. Still, she notes, language is fluid and adaptable. “We enrich a language by adding new words,” she says. “With time, we become more comfortable using them.” Today, the effort to communicate science in multiple languages has a number of participants. Kollegala Sharma, a zoologist and senior principal scientist at the Central Food Technological Research Institute (CSIR) in Mysuru, India, has been producing Janasuddi (jana means both smart and knowledge and suddi means news in Kannada), a weekly science podcast, since September 2017. The 20-minute episodes, which comprise science research, news and interactive sessions that might include audience questions or comments, is in Kannada and is circulated through the WhatsApp platform. Listeners mainly include public high-school teachers — about 1,000, up from the 20 or so when Sharma first launched the programme. It’s also available on public radio. The Indian government is supporting the endeavour. K. VijayRaghavan, a molecular biologist and principal scientific adviser for the government, is a vocal proponent of making science accessible to people in their first language. He is working to provide increased funding and support for such efforts, and engages with many science communicators on social media, including Twitter. Spreading influence Other initiatives are emerging. Research Matters, a website that curates science news and articles in multiple languages and has more than 700,000 visitors, launched in November 2016. TED Talks India was launched in December 2017, and features prominent scientists who discuss topics such as neuroscience and astronomy in Hindi, the most widely spoken language in India. In January, the Indian Department of Science and Technology teamed with Doordarshan, a public service broadcaster, to launch two science-communication initiatives, DD Science, shown on Doordarshan, and Internet-based India Science. Both feature science-based programming in Hindi and English. Others are also exploring the podcast realm. Last July, IndSciComm, an online science-communication collective, started Sea of Science, a podcast series in Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Assamese and Tamil that talks about model organisms used in biological research. The series producers say that it is challenging to translate scientific terms and concepts into regional languages. “But working on them is just as much about love of language and wanting to reach out to people as it is an exercise of scientific understanding and language experience,” says Shruti Muralidhar, a neuroscience postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and one of the producers. She says that they had to turn to online dictionaries, scientific lexicons and Google for support. The producers also worked out a system of ‘romanization’ that helped them to keep some terms intact while maintaining the cadences and sentence structure specific to the language. While writing the script for the Tamil podcast, producer Abhishek Chari, a freelance science communicator in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had to translate the English word ‘metabolism’ into Tamil. Etymologically, it comes from the Greek word metabolē (from metaballein, ‘to change’) plus the suffix ‘-ism’. But trying to directly translate this word into Tamil (possibly with the term maatram, meaning ‘change’) won’t capture the biological meaning that the word ‘metabolism’ is used to convey, says Muralidhar. “Looking it up on Google Translate, valarchithai came up as a Tamil equivalent of metabolism. This worked perfectly because valarchithai is a compound word consisting of ‘grow’ (valar) and ‘disperse or shatter into pieces’ (chithai), so the term would mean ‘grow plus disperse’,” she says. “The agglutinative (putting multiple words together) nature of the Tamil language came to our rescue.” Last June, Inbamuthiah partnered with the Bangalore Life Science Cluster (BLiSC) to organize The Jigyasa Project, a one-night presentation in Bengaluru of science talks and audience-interactive sessions in Kannada, Hindi and Tamil. A second presentation was held in December 2018. Each event included six scientist-presenters, had 100–150 attendees, and covered topics from genetics to intellectual property. The organization plans to continue to hold events every June and December. The 12 scientists who took part agreed that their presentations were challenging because they required them not just to translate talks into another language, but also to translate the underlying scientific concepts. “I was quite nervous giving a talk in Hindi, and it was a big challenge for me,” says Uma Ramakrishnan, a molecular ecologist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru. “I thought about what I was going to say, and rehearsed it with some of my Hindi-speaking students, just to make sure I was communicating my thoughts correctly. Local benefits Ramakrishnan thinks that the effort to communicate science in languages other than English is very important, especially for field researchers like herself, whose work is local and regional, such as investigating tigers in Rajasthan or biodiversity in the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot along India’s west coast. “Doing fieldwork across India, my team and I have often informally communicated our research in Hindi or Malayalam to local people,” she says. “For the people who live in these places, this is one way in which science can feel tangible and local. Platforms like Jigyasa provide an opportunity to make this more accessible to a larger audience.” Mahinn Ali Khan, spokesperson for BLiSC, says that she observed a real sense of camaraderie between the audience and the scientists at Jigyasa. “Speaking in your own language helps you immediately drop the formality and reserve,” she says. Khan thinks that, although researchers are eager to engage with non-scientists, the shift to accepting science as a subject that can be discussed in a language other than English still faces some resistance from the public. “At this point, these are passion-driven projects for most of us,” agrees Inbamuthiah.   If you have a career story that you'd like to share, then please complete this form, or send your outline by email.

Bolstered by government support, a wealth of investment and an eager graduate workforce, the country’s biotechnology industry is booming. Anu Acharya was in her twenties when the human genome was first mapped in its entirety. In 2000, the young Indian entrepreneur was just breaking into the biotechnology arena with her first start-up — the genomics and bioinformatics company Ocimum Biosolutions in Hyderabad. She saw the Human Genome Project’s achievements as opening up a new world of possibilities in personalized medicine, informed by an individual’s genetic profile and predispositions — but at the time, the field of genomic medicine was dominated by Western science. “I wanted to make sure that India had its own voice heard in that,” Acharya says. So, a decade later, she launched her second biotech start-up — molecular-diagnostics company Mapmygenome, also in Hyderabad — to bring the personalized-medicine revolution to India’s diverse population. “Because, ultimately, when you’re making medicine precise, it has to be for specific individuals and populations rather than based on one population that has been studied.” Acharya is among India’s rapidly growing ranks of biotechnology entrepreneurs and start-ups that are riding a wave of government enthusiasm, free-flowing venture capital and growing demand from an increasingly wealthy population that wants better treatment options. These factors are helping to drive India’s biotechnology industry beyond its historical focus on unbranded generic drugs and into the innovation limelight. By the end of 2016, there were more than 1,000 biotechnology start-ups in India, and more than half of these had been established within the previous 5 years. Australia, by contrast, has 470 biotechnology companies and the United Kingdom 3,835. The biotechnology industry in India was valued at US$11 billion in 2016, and is forecast to grow to $100 billion by 2025. More than half of the biotechnology start-ups are in the medical arena — diagnostics, drugs and medical devices — but 14% are in agricultural biotechnology, 3% in bioindustry, 1% in bioinformatics and 18% in biotechnology services. India is already eyeing the prospect of its first biotechnology ‘unicorn’ — a start-up valued at more than $1 billion. The potential unicorn in question, Biocon in Bangalore, started in 1978 as an enzyme manufacturer but is now making a name for itself in the research and development of biological drugs for treating diabetes, cancer and autoimmune diseases. By March 2018, its revenue had topped $650 million. India has long been a global player in the manufacture of generics (unbranded versions of existing pharmaceutical products), accounting for 20% of global exports of generics and earning just over $17 billion from that market in 2017. So what has prompted the nation to move beyond such a lucrative comfort zone and into the more risky game of biotechnology innovation? Government support In 1986, with the encouragement of then-prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, India became one of the first countries in the world to have a government unit dedicated solely to biotechnology. The Department of Biotechnology started with a relatively modest budget of between 40 million and 60 million rupees ($557,000–835,000), growing exponentially to 24.1 billion rupees in 2018. In addition to establishing 17 Centres of Excellence in Biotechnology at institutes and universities around the country, the department has supported the creation of 8 biotechnology parks, or incubators, in cities such as Lucknow, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kerala. The aim of these parks is to provide facilities for scientists and small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), where they can develop and demonstrate their technologies and even build pilot plants. The hope is that this will speed up the commercialization process. The park staff also provide mentorship and guidance on issues such as intellectual property, business plans, proposals for clinical development and exit strategies. This support is helping to address some of the logistical challenges that have hampered industry in the past, says Tej Singh, a biophysicist at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi and president of the Biotech Research Society, India. “They created some sort of industrial regions in many areas, but there were issues like electricity, water [supply]; all these small things used to take time,” Singh says. “But the government has addressed these things nowadays; this current government particularly is very proactive.” The Department of Biotechnology has also supported biotechnology research infrastructure, including a high-resolution mass spectrometry facility in Mumbai, flow-cytometry, imaging and microarray facilities in Delhi, and animal-house facilities in five other regions. The jewel in the departmental crown, and the scheme that attracts the most attention, is the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC). This is a not-for-profit, public-sector enterprise that was set up by the Department of Biotechnology in 2012 to “stimulate, foster and enhance the strategic research and innovation capabilities of the Indian biotech industry, particularly start-ups and SMEs”. “The idea of forming BIRAC was to support the innovation ecosystem in India, and to nurture innovators from academia and industry to work independently or together,” says Shirshendu Mukherjee, mission director of the Program Management Unit at BIRAC. Mukherjee says India has always excelled at basic research but has faced challenges in translating that into commercial outcomes. BIRAC’s mission is therefore to “take innovation from the bench to the bedside, from the lab to the field, from the desk to the market”, he says. In just six years of existence, BIRAC has supported 316 start-ups, which have generated $125 million through 122 products and technologies, including a cattle-feed supplement, a new process to manufacture human albumin and immunoglobulin, microfluidics-based diagnostics and a rapid test for malaria. Its initiatives include ‘biotechnology ignition grants’ of up to 5 million rupees for start-ups and entrepreneurs to take a proof-of-concept through to the first major step on the path to commercialization. Another is a ‘glue grants’ scheme, which connects clinical-science departments with those for basic science in institutes and universities in the hope that this will encourage partnerships and collaborations. BIRAC has also joined forces with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, on the Grand Challenges India initiative to tackle global health and development problems. “I always call my Grand Challenges programme ‘in India, for India and beyond’,” says Mukherjee. “So we will do it in India, we will validate it in India, we will use it India, our citizens will use it, and then if it goes beyond India we are happy to do that.” Consumer demand A similar motivation is driving at least some of the scientists and entrepreneurs such as Acharya, who get into the biotech space because they feel that Western biotechnology isn’t necessarily addressing the needs of the Indian population. One example is Vivek Wadhwa, a technology entrepreneur at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering at Silicon Valley, California, who has invested in Indian medical-diagnostics company HealthCube in New Delhi. “I did a big study on the pharmaceutical industry in India, and I concluded that Western companies were not addressing Indian disease because it wasn’t profitable enough for them,” Wadhwa says. But as the cost of technologies such as genome sequencing and medical sensors comes down, Wadhwa says, it has now become viable for Indian biotechnologists to harness these advances for the Indian market. And what a market India is for these innovations. The country’s population is 1.36 billion and rising, and health care is one of India’s fastest-growing sectors, driven by higher incomes and an increasing prevalence of lifestyle diseases, such as heart disease and stroke. By 2022, the health-care market in India is expected to be worth $372 billion. “People are finally realizing that the consumer, or the patient, actually has control over their own health,” says Acharya. The rising middle class wants better health and medical choices, and she says that’s one of the main drivers for investment in biotechnology research and development. For example, Biocon has developed the first recombinant insulin to be produced in India, and an antibody-based treatment for head and neck cancer. In 2017, Indian vaccine manufacturer Bharat Biotech in Hyderabad began the first clinical trials of its vaccine against the mosquito-borne virus chikungunya, which re-emerged in India in 2006 after 32 years and infected more than 1.4 million people. Another major driver of the biotechnology boom in India is the accessibility of funding, from both government and private industry. In one 2016 report on biotechnology, India ranked only 49th out of 54 countries. But it scored particularly highly on the availability of venture capital compared to countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Acharya says that some of the investors who have made their fortunes in manufacturing generic pharmaceuticals are now investing in biotechnology. She says much of the capital investment in early-stage biotechnology is coming from India, whereas investment in medical devices is flowing from Japan, China and the United States. But late-stage investment is still an issue. “A lot of early-stage start-ups are getting funded but I think the challenge is still the late stage,” she says. “It’s not just the first two to three years; it’s more how do you take it from start-up to scale-up? I think that’s the challenge in terms of getting to where we need to get in terms of biotechnology.” Human resources One thing India has plenty of is people. Recognizing that human capital can be a key resource for a nation not as well endowed financially as Western countries such as the United States or United Kingdom, the Department of Biotechnology implemented or supported various training initiatives. These include the Biotech Industrial Training Programme, set up in 1993 for recent graduates, and 12 Biotech Finishing Schools in Karnataka state to train Indian graduates and researchers in biotechnology. That programme “created a very large number of institutions or departments of biotechnology in institutions and also departments of bioinformatics”, says Singh. For example, in September, the state of Gujarat proposed India’s first university focused entirely on biotechnology. “A decade or so ago, India didn’t have the engineers or scientists it does today — it’s been graduating them in droves,” says Wadhwa. “It has millions of technologists who now just need to be connected to the medical practice and they can be solving great problems.” Singh notes that these graduates aren’t waiting for a job to walk up and tap them on the shoulder; they’re taking matters into their own hands. “Graduate students who come out in large numbers from Indian institutes of technology and institutes of management are not looking for jobs so much; they create small start-ups and then they grow very fast,” Singh says. Working in biotechnology in India does present its own unique set of challenges, says Acharya. “Some operational things that you never have to think about in the United States you have to plan more in India, because a lot of times we are still importing the reagents and things like that.” Red tape Although the government of India is enthusiastic about supporting the biotechnology industry, Acharya says the regulatory process for getting products approved could be more streamlined. In agricultural biotechnology, the government’s Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee has been working to make it easier for companies to get approval for genetically modified crop field trials from state governments. The drug approvals process in India has hit some rough patches in recent years, and the authors of a 2017 World Health Organization report suggested that innovation there could be outpacing regulation. Even the government’s own National Biotechnology Development Strategy for 2015–20 acknowledges that timelines and regulatory steps for biotechnology drug approvals are not user-friendly. It has proposed reforms, including the establishment of regulatory departments that are fluent in good practice in the clinical, manufacturing and laboratory arenas. There are also concerns about the environmental impact of India’s pharmaceutical industry. An investigation in 2016 found “unprecedented” levels of pharmaceutical pollution in the water system of Hyderabad (C. Lübbert et al. Infection 45, 479–491; 2017), which is home to a significant proportion of biotech start-ups and generics manufacturers. However, as the US Food and Drug Administration reportedly steps up inspections of overseas pharmaceutical suppliers, environmental standards could be forced to improve. Despite the challenges, there is palpable excitement about what lies ahead. “Right now, we are seeing the beginnings of a revolution in biotechnology in India,” Wadhwa says. Acharya is still fired with the same enthusiasm that propelled her into biotechnology nearly two decades ago. “Any innovation in this space can actually impact lives,” she says. “That’s why I continue to be in it.”   This article is part of the Nature Spotlight on Indian biotechnology, an editorially independent supplement. Advertisers have no influence over the content.

Illustration by Michelle Thompson; Photos: Getty, Shutterstock A push to reverse its brain drain is providing the expertise to tackle its domestic problems. When Anil Koul told his friends that he would be moving to India to start working at a government research and development organization, most of the reactions were of disbelief, “even sympathy”, he says. “Some thought it was a crazy idea — moving from the world’s largest health-care giant to a governmental, bureaucratic set-up.” Koul took charge of the Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), in the northern city of Chandigarh, in 2016, relocating from Johnson & Johnson in Belgium, where he was senior director and head of the respiratory diseases group. The move to IMTECH — a branch of India’s government-run Council of Scientific and Industrial Research — was atypical. Few scientists return to India after holding top positions abroad, and fewer still move into the less-lucrative public sector. The scientific landscape that Koul has returned to is vastly different from the one he left in 1998. India is now actively participating in and, in some cases, leading advances in pharmaceuticals, agriculture and energy. The country’s efforts in space exploration are a point of particular national pride. India is preparing for its second Moon mission in 2018 after a successful maiden Mars mission in 2014, and is spreading its wings in international astronomy collaborations. The country will host the third laboratory of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) project in Hingoli, while the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics in Pune is working on the design of the ‘Telescope Manager’ — the central command system of the Square Kilometer Array. These could be signs that India is enjoying ‘brain gain’ — Indian researchers are returning to their country of birth with newly minted research skills gained while abroad. This is a far cry from the state of the country’s scientific sector 40 years ago, when entire cohorts of graduates from India’s research institutes left for US institutions in search of better economic and educational opportunities. “We are now in an era of globalization and international cooperation,” says immunologist Indira Nath, a member of the Indian National Science Academy. “Scientists going abroad is no longer a big issue.” To-do list But India still faces significant challenges. It is home to one-quarter of the world’s tuberculosis (TB) cases, and continues to be ravaged by mosquito-borne infections including malaria and dengue fever. Around 700 million Indians (56% of the country’s population) have no sanitation, 240 million have no access to electricity and 97 million lack clean drinking water. Natural disasters such as droughts, floods and storms — already common across Southeast Asia — are set to increase in frequency and ferocity as the world’s climate changes. It falls on publicly funded research to take the lead in finding solutions. Since India gained independence from British rule 70 years ago, every prime minister has emphasized the role of science in the country’s development. The current incumbent, Narendra Modi, told a meeting of leading Indian science officials in July that science, technology and innovation are the keys to the progress and prosperity of India and that the government aims to apply science to solve the country’s problems. As various policy initiatives make clear, India is betting on science to address its pressing challenges in energy, environmental protection, food, water, sanitation, health care and unemployment. To achieve this, the government is hoping to find more scientists like Koul, who sees his role as an “opportunity to address bigger social as well as scientific challenges”. This is a tall order, and there’s an elephant in the room. Government funding for Indian research and development has stagnated at around 0.85% of gross domestic product for more than a decade, compared with at least 3% invested by technologically advanced nations such as Denmark, Japan and Sweden. Koul is nonetheless optimistic, and has helped to forge a collaboration between IMTECH and Johnson & Johnson, announced in August. They will work in parallel on four new molecules as potential drug targets and explore shorter, safer and more-effective oral treatment regimens for various strains of TB. Biopharma strides Koul’s collaboration is well placed to take advantage of the success of India’s pharmaceutical industry. Building on the solid foundations of the country’s expertise in academic chemistry, major pharmaceutical companies have set up factories to make affordable generic antibiotics, vaccines, and diabetes and HIV medicines. This strength is paying dividends. According to Hyderabad-based Sathguru Management Consultants, India’s pharmaceutical industry was worth US$18.8 billion in 2010 and $41.1 billion in 2017, and is expected to expand to an estimated $72.4 billion in 2022. One-fifth of the world’s generic drugs are made in India, and around half of this manufacturing is based in Hyderabad. The production of generics has certainly helped the sector, but many people hope to see the country grow beyond manufacturing. “We now need to be recognized for new drugs that address unmet medical needs,” says Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, managing director of biopharmaceutical company Biocon in Bangalore. The firm’s growing pipeline of biologics ranges from oral insulin for diabetes to monoclonal antibodies for use in cancer therapy. “There is incredible potential within India to become a powerhouse driving biopharma innovation in the Asian market,” says Vaz Narasimhan, himself a second-generation Indian American and chief executive of Novartis, a pharmaceutical company in Basel. The biopharma industry is increasingly looking for new types of talent, says Narasimhan. He gives the example of data analysts and mathematicians who he says are driving the next wave of medical innovation. Meenakshi Diwan works on a solar panel in India’s Odisha state in 2009 — then part of a burgeoning solar grid with a capacity of less than 10 MW. Now, India has a solar capacity of more than 6,000 MW.Credit: Abbie Trayler-Smith/PANOS Narasimhan’s confidence in Indian pharmaceutical development is significant. Most pharma companies have been reluctant to take on costly research and development to combat ‘poor-man’s diseases’ such as malaria and TB, says Soumya Swaminathan, one of India’s leading experts on TB. Swaminathan was appointed deputy director-general for programmes at the World Health Organization in October. She has led an effort to consolidate India’s fragmented TB research, previously supported by four separate institutions, under one umbrella organization — the IndiaTB Research Consortium. “These diseases are our problem,” she says. “And it is pointless expecting Western pharma companies to be interested in them.” When asked, Indian pharmaceutical companies say they are reluctant to take up research in these areas, citing a lack of government funding for early-stage research, and reams of red tape once a product reaches clinical trials. Pollution pains In April, a collaboration between researchers in Germany and Anil Dayakar, an environmental activist in India, reported that Hyderabad’s pharmaceutical manufacturing was polluting the region’s water system to an “unprecedented” degree, and hurrying the development of drug-resistant forms of bacteria (C. Lübbert et al. Infection 45, 479–491; 2017). The researchers suggested that more regulation was needed to prevent further pollution in the region. The pharmaceutical industry in India is not the only source of contamination — pollution is common to many of the country’s cities, and India’s capital, New Delhi, spends its winters wrapped in smog. Krishna Ganesh, director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Tiruptai, hopes that science can help. “The focus in chemistry is now shifting into areas that involve green and sustainable chemistry,” he says. Research topics include non-toxic chemicals, environmentally benign solvents, organic production and renewable materials. “The main aim should be to get rid of toxic chemicals produced in industrial manufacturing,” and to prevent gases escaping into the atmosphere, he says. Nanotech hopes India’s strength in chemistry has aided its effort to become a leader in the interdisciplinary field of nanotechnology. It’s an especially tempting area of research because there’s a deep vein of funding to mine, says Kizhaeral Subramanian, a researcher in the department of nanoscience and technology at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore. “Global funding for nanotech had increased from $1 billion in 2000 to $2 trillion in 2016,” he explains. On top of that, Subramanian says that the country has a strong talent pool to draw from owing to the proliferation of nanotechnology degree programmes across the country. From a developmental perspective, the field is a sensible focus as well. As India’s population swells further, the demand for food and clean water is rising. “Nanomaterials can help in water cleansing from bacterial and metal contaminants,” says Ganesh, and nanomaterials may also be able to help with crop protection. For example, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University is researching the production of non-toxic herbicides and fertilizers, as well as emulsions and films that improve the shelf life of fruits and vegetables. Energy dark holes Of India’s 1.3 billion citizens, almost 20% still lack electricity. To help combat this, the country has launched an ambitious renewable-energy plan, broadly focused on solar and wind power. Overall, the country hopes to produce 175 gigawatts from renewable energy sources by 2022 — meeting around 20% of the country’s predicted electricity demand. According to Tata Narasinga Rao, associate director of the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials in Hyderabad, India enjoys between 250 and 300 clear sunny days each year — ideal for solar technologies. The energy plan is helped by cheap land, a vast pool of talent to draw from and enthusiastic government support and infrastructure, says Rao. In a review published this year, the International Renewable Energy Agency lists India among the six countries — with Brazil, China, Germany, Japan and the United States — that accounted for most of the renewable-energy jobs in 2016. One research programme, the Solar Energy Research Institute for India and the United States, brings together the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Denver, Colorado, to accelerate the development of solar electric technologies by lowering the cost of production. As part of this venture, scientists developed a new nanotechnological solar absorption system in 2015. The prototype, Rao says, costs half as much as the non-vacuum tubes currently used in solar collectors worldwide and have enormous potential for industry. There are local quirks to take into account before any company starts cashing in on a solar goldmine. Manufacturers still haven’t worked out what to do about monkeys and rats, which relentlessly and indiscriminately chew telephone, electrical and fibre-optic cables across the subcontinent. Meanwhile, Indian researchers are using crop residues, normally burnt as waste by farmers, to develop advanced biofuel systems and products such as biogas and biomaterials. “India’s strong knowledge base in biotechnology, chemistry, engineering and process engineering can be tapped to do research in the biofuel sector,” says Ahmad Kamal, a chemist at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology in Hyderabad. Calling young scientists back To achieve its grand ambitions, India needs to nurture its new-found brain gain, and is fighting to make itself as attractive as possible through the Department of Science and Technology (DST), one of India’s largest research-funding agencies. In June, for example, the DST announced endowments of $10,000 a month for researchers who choose to move to India from labs overseas. Lipi Thukral, a computational biologist at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi, thinks that the Indian research sector has been unfairly stereotyped abroad. “It is a myth that Indian salaries for scientists are low. They are very good when one factors in the purchasing power of the rupee,” she says. “One can do great science here, too.” Thukral uses high-performance computers to study the movement of biological structures and to model protein folding. After a PhD in Germany, and a postdoc in the UK, she returned to India in 2012 under another DST scheme. Shalini Gupta, a chemical engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, returned to India in 2009 after earning a PhD in chemical and biomolecular engineering from North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, and a postdoc from Imperial College London. Gupta’s team is working on cheap, portable medical tools to rapidly diagnose sepsis, a serious complication of many bacterial infections. For her, India makes the perfect laboratory. “We have the advantage of having ready access to patients, samples and field trials.” Meanwhile, the Indian government plans to develop 20 existing universities into ‘world class’ research institutions with an incentive of $1.54 billion of funding. Policymakers hope this will free the country’s best universities from reliance on the country’s grant commission and associated red tape, and encourage greater institutional autonomy. “There are always challenges in working in a third-world country, but India’s role in the development of next-generation technology cannot be ignored, especially in the fields of pharmaceuticals, agriculture, energy and environment,” says Gupta. “If you are situated close to a problem, you have a bigger advantage in terms of solving it.” Nature 552, S41-S43 (2017) doi: 10.1038/d41586-017-07771-y