 Okay. Shall I go ahead? Yes. Okay. Yes, please. Yeah. Professor Ram Krishnan, Director TFR, Professor Birj Arora, Professor Uma Ram Krishnan, Professor Sugrachunawala, Dean Omibaba Center for Science Education, Dr. Deepachari, host of today's program. Many previous awardees of the Omibaba Award in Science Education were with us today. My colleagues at the Omibaba Center and at TFR, a very warm welcome to you this afternoon for this function, which is the award handing over of the Omibaba Award in Science Education. I trust that all of you are safe and well and also your close ones. It is tough times and very difficult times for all of us. On behalf of all of you, express also my sympathies. Those who are suffering across the country and elsewhere. It would have been a great occasion if we could all meet together at the Omibaba Center. We've had the previous award functions there. It's always been a thing to be cherished to be remembered. It would have been wonderful to have you all here on the campus, but we do the best possible under the circumstances and we're really happy to be able to organize the online thing. And I'm happy that Prasoma is here with us to give the talk. We also received a message from Dr. Satyanarayana. He could not be with us due to unavoidable circumstances, but we hope that there will soon be an occasion where he will also be addressing us. So the Omibaba Award in Science Education was instituted in the year 2006 through a generous endowment made by Professor Vijarora who is also here for work in science education defined very broadly. It has been given every two years since 2006. Since 2020, the award is given to two awardees every two years. Thanks once again to another generous endowment by Professor Vijarora. So, in fact, for the first time this in 2020, we have two awardees whose names will be announced today and the citations read. To give you a bit of a background, let me just mention the previous awardees of the Omibaba Award in Science Education. In 2006, it went to Professor Bhaktavar Mahajan of the Omibaba Center. In 2008, it went to Professor Vijay Gambhir of the Omibaba Center. I'm very happy that he is able to join us today. Welcome to you, sir. In 2012, it went to, in 2010, sorry, it went to Professor Arnab Bhattacharya from TAF. In 2012, it went to Professor Sudhakar Agarkar who is also with us. Welcome to you, Professor Agarkar. In 2014, it went to Professor Vijay Singh of the Omibaba Center formally. There was also an honourable mention to Sri Anand Ghasas also of the Omibaba Center. In 2006, the award was given to Dr. Vivek Montero. In 2018, the award went to Professor Anil Satgopal. And in case you're wondering why all these names are all lonely from the TFR extended family, I'd like to inform you that the award is for members, current and past members. That's the alumni of TFR and proudly to, it gives us a lot of pride to say that all the names, even those whom you may not immediately associate with TFR are all associated with TFR. They're either members or former members or alumni of TFR. So this is the background to the award. Today we have two awardees and I invite Professor Ram Krishnan, a director of TFR, to hand over the award and also to read the citation. Thank you Ravi. I'm extremely glad to be a part of this event. I consider in these troubled times, even though this is an online event, it's like a silver lining. I think we need something to be positive about and I'm extremely glad that this 2020 award is given to two recipients, equally deserving and coming from two different disciplines. I think the award winners, let me first announce Dr. B. Satya Narayana from High Energy Physics Group of TFR and Professor Uma Ramakrishnan from NCBS Bangalore. So let me first read the citation for Dr. B. Satya Narayana. The Homi Baba Award in Science Education 2020 is presented to B. Satya Narayana for his active leadership and sustained efforts in engaging with society at large and college students in particular through developing lectures and experiments, demonstration, especially in electronics, nuclear and high energy physics and other science engineering and technology topics that have reached colleges in small and remote locations across the country. An active engagement with outreach activities of TFR and ILO, that is India-based neutron observatory, science exhibition from local to national levels and the organization of asset. This is a famous advance in science and engineering and technology series of colloquia in TFR for decades and spearheading novel initiative such as skill and knowledge enhancement programs called SKEP of the IEEE. So the award is, unfortunately he is not here because of some family emergency, but I think we will give the award to him for his excellent contribution to the science education. The second one is given to Professor Uma Ramakrishnan. The citation reads as the Homi Baba Award in Science and Technology 2020 is presented to Professor Uma Ramakrishnan for her outstanding contributions towards conservation biology. She has extensively used conventional and online science communication platform to highlight and bring concepts related to extinction, conservation, evolution and biodiversity to a wide section of society and fostered interaction with various government agencies and other stakeholders that have impacted national strategies for conservation of ecology. So this award is given to Professor Uma Ramakrishnan. Thank you. Over to Ravi. Thank you very much, Professor Ramakrishnan and congratulations to Professor Uma Ramakrishnan. I'll now hand over to Dr. Deepa Chary for the rest of the program. Thank you very much Professor Subramanyam and also a professor as Ramakrishnan for starting the function and I think it's now time to listen to one of the public talk of Homi Baba Award in Science Education 2020 recipient by Professor Uma Ramakrishnan. My name is Deepa Chary and I will introduce the speaker shortly but I'm mostly here to do timekeeping and also coordinating the session and question and answer. So overall we have about an hour so Uma you can be said to take questions at the end or like to have questions in between as well. And we'll try to take questions from Zoom as well as we'll cover some questions from YouTube if possible which I can try to read it out for you at the end. So our first speaker then is Professor Uma Ramakrishnan and she is a popularly known as Wildlife Conservation Biologist and Professor Ramakrishnan is a current Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the National Centre for Biological Sciences NCBS Tiyaka Centre in Bangalore and her research work is primarily in the area of conservation genetics of endangered species emerging infectious diseases and molecular ecology and Professor Ramakrishnan has received her doctorate in biology from University of California San Diego in USA in 2010 and subsequent to that she did post doctoral fellowship at Stanford University for about two years and later in February 2005 she joined National Centre for Biological Sciences in India and where she's currently working as a professor in ecology and evolution and her work deals with standardizing genetic methods to study biodiversity of course we'll know a lot about it today and also to study population rise as well as decline of certain species and even how biodiversity is created by studying a spectrum of geographical locations in Indian subcontinent and I'm sure she has many interesting observations to share about western guards and I'm really looking forward for that as well and her work with the endangered species like tigers in India is very well recognized nationally as well as internationally Professor Ramakrishnan has received several awards and recognition in past 15 years she's a Fellow of Indian National Science Academy and in 2017 she received Senior Investigator Award by DBT Welcome Trust India Alliance she was a Fulbright Fellow in 2016 she also received Parker Gentry Award by the Field Museum in Chicago for her extensive research in the area of population genetics evolution history and conservation of tigers and other mammals in India she also received Viard Innovation Fellowship in 2014 and she has been an Inc Fellow in 2013 in 2012 the Department of Atomic Energy also felicitated Professor Ramakrishnan with Outstanding Scientist Award Professor Ramakrishnan has published over more than 100 research papers in reputed journals like PLOS, Genetics, PLOS, Neglected Tropical Diseases, Molecular Ecology and her papers have over 3000 plus citations which acknowledges the impact of her work within the science research community she has also served in the editorial team of Conservation Genomics Frontiers in Ecology and Environment and Frontiers in Conservation Science at Leading Positions and particularly in the pandemic period she has been involved in setting up a pop-up COVID-19 testing laboratories with three other faculty members at NCDS in STEM and this facility has tested over one lakh samples since April 2020 Professor Ramakrishnan has also been a part of content team of COVID-Gyan which is an initiative to archive COVID-19 outtake related resources which are gathered for informational purpose and also for awareness so we also really privileged to listen to the public talk by Professor Uma Ramakrishnan who is such a passionate biologist and ecologist and we hope to get some insight about genetics and biodiversity area particularly through her most recent work in the relation with the endangered species so yeah without any delay now I request Professor Uma Ramakrishnan to present her talk which is titled as Understanding Discussion and Communication about Indian Biodiversity so thanks again and please proceed Professor Ramakrishnan Thank you, thanks everyone, thanks for that wonderful introduction and I'm a little nervous about the talk today because I'm trying to actually talk more about not science alone but the other activities that we've been involved in so before you get distracted by the slides I wanted to say that all of us are heartbroken and in despair about what is happening internationally and right around us and it feels almost a little sad to be talking today in the middle of this really terrible situation we are in but as a scientist while I pause in sorrow I also feel that science and technology is the way forward through knowledge, evidence for the future so I truly believe that I'm not just saying it and I hope that we can all be part of contributing to that future so thanks very much for this honour it's really an honour for me and I'll go ahead and share my screen and start my talk so I changed the title a little bit but basically you know I guess for me the bedrock of all my activities or everything I do is wonder and curiosity and this is kind of simplistic maybe and sometimes I have wondered as a scientist shouldn't I be more just objective and look at the most important question what's paradigm changing but I've been lucky to have been able to just wander around curiously investigating things which caught my fancy and part of this is also because I've been at TIFR which allows such freedom of research exploration the other thing which I should say right in the beginning is this award though in my name is not to me at all I'm very very lucky to have worked with an incredibly passionate and fantastic set of colleagues, students and postdocs and some of them are here not all of them and most of the pictures you'll see today are by Prasenjit Yadav who was in the lab but later decided to become a photographer he's a professional photographer with passion geographic so some of the people whose work or outcomes of their work I present will be shown here but there are many others whom I couldn't chance on pictures in the last minute so thank you to all of you whom I had the pleasure and honor to work with this is actually a testament to your efforts much much more than anything else so what I'll do today is just do a quick tour eye candy of India's biodiversity and talk about how through these 15 years of research, teaching and communication I've had the opportunity to work on things like tigers and their conservation, biodiversity in the western guards and just scratching the surface just starting because it's such a complex and deep place in terms of knowledge, northeastern India and hopefully also in the end, I hope you'll be convinced that none of this is on my own, it's all a very very combined effort with many many people participating so there's a picture from the western guards and you can see these beautiful forests from there to the northeast this is Meghalaya, again very wet and subtropical the dry areas, the added areas of central India which also have these kind of ponds or wetlands, this is Barasingh you see in Kanha Tiger Reserve to the cold and high elevation habitats in the Himalayas, this is a photograph from Sikkim in winter and the spectacular wildlife from this leopard in Ranthambore to this pair of fighting tigers also in Ranthambore the diversity of both vegetation, biomes, habitats as well as species is really very very unique and spectacular in the Indian subcontinent but basically these charismatic species, unique species, endemic species live amongst a lot of people and so this is just to remind us that you know this elephant herd as it crosses the road has to be mindful of the vehicles which are passing by and this picture taken from a drone in Kurg is kind of really, it really makes us pause because it makes us realize that what we think of as these pristine large forests are really what is left now, what remains now are fragmented and small patches and so it becomes a very difficult challenge then for biodiversity, for animals to sustain in these relatively small and fragmented habitats. So I think you know biodiversity is something which has been on the international kind of mind of many, on the mind of many people internationally we've seen in the last few years climate strikes and many many calls for declining biodiversity and one of the you know one of the main things that has been stressed is that it's not just that biodiversity is beautiful and I can be as I myself just called it but it's because biodiversity and these ecosystems provide us many services, the water we drink, the air we breathe and the fruits we eat and without it human sustenance is very difficult and of course the biggest example for us now is emerging infectious diseases like SARS-CoV-2 which tend to spill over in situations where there is you know high biodiversity loss and high human wildlife interface. I've been lucky to participate for the last 15 plus years in a very fantastic masters program in wildlife biology and conservation, which is was initially just housed at the NCBS, but has since been adopted by NCBS-TIFR and we've had the real pleasure to teach, interact with several batches, now 120 graduates, these are master students admitted every other year and basically they are a whole generation of young people who are equipped with skills to try to deal with these problems of wildlife and its conservation. The problem is quite simple like I just said, India is a mega diverse nation with four biodiversity hotspots and the last remaining populations of many of these charismatic species. India for example holds 75% of the world's tigers, so if tigers are to survive it will only be in India. And unfortunately this coincides with 1.3 billion people and 5% of its area which is protected. So being engaged with the students, teaching them two courses through their masters program, taking on many students for their masters thesis, provided an opportunity to really convey these concepts about conservation and especially my perspective which comes from a genetic lens, kind of a technological approach and a deconstructionist approach to looking at biodiversity. And this program has been extremely successful. I'm not taking credit for it at all. These slides are in fact courtesy Jayashree Ratnam who's the program director, but you know something like 50% of the students who finished this master's program directly joined the workforce in conservation science and practice. Practice means they're actually doing things on the ground to facilitate conservation. About a half of them actually end up doing PhDs but subsequent to their PhDs continue to work on and during their PhDs on Indian wildlife and ecosystems as their research topics. So basically many of these students end up joining NGOs, academia, and sometimes very rarely, even forest departments through the IFS or the Indian Forest Service. And very few of them actually leave the field. So basically this kind of a program over even the last 15 or so years has had a significant impact on knowledge for sure in conservation science and biodiversity research in India. Something like 30 to 40% of papers in the last several years have actually been authored by students and alumni. I've also been very lucky to be on the organizing committee and participating with the Student Conference on Conservation Science. This is just a snapshot of the report from 2020 where we unfortunately had to have a virtual conference. But this is a really fun conference. It's completely attended by students and the talks are by students and save for penaries. It's a very student oriented conference. So it gives an opportunity for students from all over the country and internationally to come together and discuss conservation. A key feature of this conference are workshops. And I, for example, been teaching a workshop on conservation genetics and landscape genetics every year for the last 10 or so years in this conference. And this is a picture of a panel discussion we had on careers in conservation, contrasting careers in say academia versus in the NGO sector or in government. And I think these kinds of fora for discussion for students are really important because it allows them to really think about what they may be going in for when they are going into this field. And it also allows, I mean, there are very few institutions where there is research going on in this area of high quality. So it allows students from all over access to people who are doing research in the field and, you know, allows them to then kind of build their careers even better. So I'll talk a little bit about tigers now I won't talk too much about my work but I've been lucky to work for 15 years on these really charismatic endangered species. And I have to say that I still feel like there's a lot we don't understand the principal questions we address are looking at, you know, using genetics to understand what the populations of tigers are of course tigers exist in protected areas mainly in tiger reserves, but it so happens that they are sometimes able to move between protected areas. And so the landscape that they occupy in a genetic sense is larger. However, ongoing changes are affecting the situation. So basically, though what I've done is I've used tigers as a tool to study things like conservation, extinction, habitat fragmentation, genetics and evolution. And I've used them as a scapegoat to actually communicate a lot of these concepts. And many times, because they're so charismatic. That's the only reason I've gotten all of these opportunities to talk at many fora and to participate in articles, which are outside of the academic realm. So we all I mean, you know, we all get these opportunities and I think it's really great to take them up. Sometimes they feel like oh my another talk some more work. On the other hand, for example, with the ink talks or the via talk communicating with audiences who don't know anything about tigers biodiversity or genetics evolution is really a valuable opportunity for us to communicate, you know, concepts in these in these areas. We've also worked a lot with artists and we've done this. For example, here we work with Pooja Gupta who helped put together this caricature of basically portraying the results of our paper, which suggested that you know, fragmentation results in, you know, loss of connectivity, and especially things like human habitation, right, human habitation results in tigers being cut off from each other. Now, this might sound very, okay, obviously does, but actually showing it with data is something which I think is very valuable. And we could also do models in this case, simulation models of the future to say, for example, you know, if, if this, you know, whatever the development scenario happened, extinction probability would increase by this much. And these kinds of arguments are very powerful, especially when communicating in the context of the legal system. Again, our work was, was used in a case, a court case against the widening of this highway. So basically, this is NH seven, which bisects Kanha on this side, and paint tiger reserve over here. And this tiger reserve is the famous place where Radyat Kiklim Kipling wrote jungle book. And basically, our data and data of others as well, showed that there is good connectivity or movement of tigers between these two areas. So when this was this road was to be broadened from a two lane highway to a six lane highway. You know, the suggestion was that we thought, and others thought as well that it would become a barrier, and that would no longer be connectivity between these two, these two tiger reserves. As a result, a natural biological process would be disrupted. So in collaboration with an NGO called wildlife conservation trust and individuals in this NGO who filed public interest litigations, we were able to they were able to get a judgment against the NH AI the National Highway India, requiring them to build a 700 meter underpass. So basically the road goes up over here. And this allows then animals to move between the protected areas. And recently so this is this is a picture from, I think, 2019. This was 2016 when the construction started. And that's when the case started, and then they were able to continue and finish this highway. So in a sense, basically, this has allowed connectivity to continue in the Central Indian landscape. And there's been also data, like camera trap data by others, showing that tigers are still moving. And this has a solution, which has actually worked. So, you know, apart from this many times, there are many stakeholders for our results. Another biggest challenges is trying to basically, you know, integrate, you know, like the timelines of research versus communication of issue of these kinds of results to management. So for example, we've been working with the Rajasthan Forest Department for a long time now, we've been working in Rajasthan for about eight years now in on different questions. The last six years we've been working in Rantambo Tiger Reserve. We are where we are studying the effects of population isolation on tigers what happens to them, do they get inbred, and what is their future trajectory. So for example, you know, this workshop where there is, you know, the plan to introduce tigers into new areas of Rajasthan. And this plan is being made without any scientific, you know, rigorous scientific planning of which individuals to introduce, how many individuals to try to introduce them and so on. And sometimes as a scientist, you feel hesitant because actually you don't know what's going to work for sure. You can't say for sure, okay, you take these two individuals, you'll have a successful population. You can only make an educated guess. And many times, you know, the results of your work may not even be published because publications take a really long time. So the paper, for example, which is discussing the effects or potential effects, proving in reading and showing the potential effects of in reading is in revision right now so it's still not even published right, but we did, we did interact with the department in Rajasthan, and we did suggest who might be good individuals to introduce as they were planning these new populations. At the same time, on the right hand side, you can see attending me and my student Vinay attending meeting, beating off, you know, the forest secretary, the state forest minister, the head of forest force, chief of life warden in Odisha, where we've been we've been studying melanistic tigers, and our results indicate that the reason for a high presence of melanistic tigers in Odisha, that's only place they're there, is because of isolation. The fact that this population has no connectivity. And so here, for example, we were trying to argue that how do we allow natural connectivity how do we allow tigers to actually move from this park in Odisha, to other places and vice versa. And that's a very difficult, it's very easy for me to say, but for the forest minister, it's a very difficult conversation, because, you know, he has to figure out what where is this land going to be to allow for connectivity. Right. But on the other hand, if we just published the paper, it's, it's nice, but it doesn't really change the situation on the ground. So we always have to walk this line, you know, between, you know, the scientific results, of course, without the science or the evidence there's absolutely no, you know, point of anything else, people should I stop for something. No, no, go ahead. And so on. So anyway, so sorry. So, so the other thing is like I said, because people love tigers, there are very charismatic species, we got an opportunity to participate in the science train. I don't know whether all of you know about this. It was an initiative by the DST in 2017-2018 a train was outfitted with exhibits, and this train went all across India, and thousands and lakhs of school children were able to visit this train and so we designed these exhibits they actually even got a stuffed tiger from somewhere I don't know where. And then basically, our work was showcased here. And so we were able to basically reach out to to many of these, you know, I guess, children from across India, hopefully, they got some perspective of what how a scientific intervention can be used in the context of conservation. I don't want to there's a have a link here and this is a book we worked with to get on together with Pratham. The idea was it's a leader level one book. And in Rantam board we work with several assistance local people who have been working on tigers as part of research teams. They're not trained researchers, but their knowledge of systems and of the area and of tigers is very, very deep. And so in this case we actually worked with one of our assistants Mujahid to help kind of co-write this book, which was illustrated by an artist from Shanti Niketan, and is basically brought out by Pratham. And this kind of a book will go all over the country and, you know, give a glimpse of how, you know, how tigers, their life history, it's not about genetics, because it's a leader level one book, but it does communicate some ideas about tigers and their biology. I'll just move on to the western guards and a lot of this work we did basically on looking at a speciation as a result of topography of islands and it's been, you know, primarily spearheaded by then campus fellow postdoc Robin, who's now a faculty at the Institute of Isotropathy and they showed, for example, that the shape of the mountains, you know, can result in speciation because it results in isolated pockets, which then over time change enough to become different species. Communicating about tigers connectivity in some sense it was very easy. Okay, but when we started talking about the small birds on the tops of mountains. It was really not easy was really not easy people did not find it very interesting. And on the other hand, though, this kind of communication was very important, because many of these habitats where these birds live are very endangered, especially these high altitude habitats in the western guards, the shoalas in the grasslands, very unique habitats. So here we were very lucky to collaborate with Prasanjit Yadav, who is the, I said as I mentioned the National Geographic photographer. And he, you know, he's a spectacular and we just, we just helped to, you know, work with him we just worked with him, told us about the science we're doing took went along with him to the sites we're working and so on, and he was able to actually put together a story, which is on the website on Sky Islands. And this, this is the cover photo, it's the first picture ever of a green meteorite, which she happened to get because he was trying to capture, this is Ooty, and he was trying to capture this night. You know, seeing, which is actually showing you these mountain tops, slightly dark, compared to all of this. So basically this concept of Sky Islands. There are islands in the sky. And basically there are people all around. Right. So they're isolated because just like islands in the sea, these habitats are isolated from each other this sky island is isolated from this sky island. Okay. And this was really, I don't want to click here because then I have to switch screens and stuff. But if you have a chance, it's a really spectacular story. And he basically portrayed how we had done this work. How had we understood that the presence of these Sky Islands leads to speciation or the generation of diversity novel novel species. So even that was okay, like it was, it was, it was, I'm all did you have a question, or should I keep going. Maybe in the end. So, this was also fine. But National Geographic goes out to lots of people. So a lot of people in the world, suddenly learned about these beautiful habitats in the western parts. And you know, the kinds of unique species that they hardware, right. And there's no way as a scientist, however fantastic a paper I write, I can ever get that kind of reach. So this kind of reach really amplifies, you know, any kind of a scientific, you know, product or research that is possible by us. But you know what was even more interesting about birds is a lot of people do like birds because they have birds song and they sing. And here again, we were lucky to have this kind of a really, you know, very different version, something I've, you know, I probably never do again with a beatboxer called Ben Mirren. And this here I just, I will show you this. But basically, what Ben Mirren did was I'll talk while I'm while I'm switching screens. What Ben Mirren did was that he actually, he took these bird songs from the Shola birds, right. And he mixed them to make like these, you know, beatbox. These birds, these same birds, which are different species, you know, driven by the sky islands. And he basically mixed this like any, whatever, like the music person would do, and created these audio tracks. I'll switch back now. And you know, this, this was something which basically played house full to, you know, people in the Western Ghats. So this is Koraikanal, Utti, you know, all these places, people were so enthusiastic, and they really came in large numbers to hear about through these music, through the sound, hear about speciation, hear about evolution on these sky islands, right. So music is really universal in that sense. And it was really a very different and unique collaboration he just came down for a few weeks. And we did this going to different parts of the Western Ghats. And these birds, which people were hearing every day outside their house, suddenly, it came alive as to why they sounded like that, who they were and how they were different from So also this work on biogeography allowed us to allow the opportunity for me to actually participate in this i biology series, which is, which is basically a set of talks which are online. And again, if you look at these talks, most of the examples of evolution, most of the examples that we see in textbooks are all about systems studied in the temperate area in the US in Europe because most of science has really happened there or maybe Africa, right. But there's very few talks, which actually talk about speciation evolution conservation in in a place like Asia or India so it was really lucky and nice for me to bring these concepts to students across the world with an Indian system. And I think that was that was a really special opportunity. So also for the last about 10 years we've been really lucky to funded by the Department of Biotechnology to be working in in the northeast of India. And here we are working on different themes. The first project was on ecology and climate change in in the Sikkim Himalaya. And here you can see, we had as part of this project several PhD students, all of whom are finished now are in faculty positions they're full bright fellows, and so on, really contributing very extensively to the field. And it was a really amazing opportunity to work in a very different habitat in a different place on these in these mountains, but also with people. And to bring work together with them to kind of create knowledge and understand more about biodiversity here. And while working in the Sikkim Himalaya I was generally fascinated by the Himalayas itself. And as Dr. Deepa mentioned, I was lucky to get an opportunity through the DAE outstanding fellowship on standing at this award to actually investigate more about biodiversity there. And one of my students here pilot Toby, who's, who's from Manipur was very passionate, not just about science, but throughout about communication. He used to regularly run these web of life activities with, you know, children from the villages where he worked close to where he worked. And also we would have evening you know movies and things like that. We would carry a projector and show various kinds of, you know, science films and so on, and have discussions with people about biodiversity. Not only that he also, you know, has done a workshops on, you know, molecular biology and genetics. So sometimes since there isn't a lot of very active research in many parts of the Northeast students there, not get exposed to many of these things. And so it doesn't become something to think of naturally of a career in research, or something like that. Though they are actually surrounded by biodiversity, and the wonder of biodiversity, the science that's playing out of evolution and ecology is actually right around it. The pilot also worked on works on bats and, you know, we have been working recently on emerging infectious disease in the context of bad harvest. I'm not going to talk about that today. But I think this is something which is really going to be a big challenge for communication in the future. The pilot has received grants from the Raffford Foundation, where he's done outreach about bats, bats provide as many ecosystem services, pest control, pollination and so on. And yet they do also harbor a lot of viruses. So going forward, I'm very keen to investigate this, this interface between hazard, you know, the kinds of viruses and they carry, and what might spill over. But at the same time, the communication of this research is going to be very tricky, because it's not just good or bad, there are balances, and whenever there is uncertainty, and you know both good and bad communication is always quite difficult. This is the second kind of part of working with the Department of Biotechnology northeast program. We also worked, and this was kind of a legacy project, which I inherited from Professor Krishnan from DIFR very passionate about biodiversity and the northeast, unfortunately passed away very young. And so I helped out with this project on chemical ecology, with help from Shannon and several other colleagues. And actually, before these online talks and stuff became popular, several years ago, three years ago now, of almost four years ago, we started these online talks, five talks by, you know, scientists from, and we had a program with about 10 or 15 colleges in the northeast, they would play the talk, and then there would be a live interaction for questions and this was really successful actually, it was really fun to interact with all of these students. And basically again here, this particular program had 15 PhD students, they're not yet finished this program is still ongoing, and there have been several challenges because of the pandemic for them to kind of finish their work. But with these students we've organized several, you know, workshops, and on things like, you know, writing papers, writing articles and so on, which I think are skills which all graduate students should have. Sometimes some of us are more hesitant to do it, maybe just because we've not been exposed enough to people who have done it or we've not, you know, seen enough of that. So as I said, you know, the last, you know, the last year has been really challenging and Dr. Deepa mentioned my participation in helping with the, with the testing facility. It was, it was, you know, it was at the time it felt like it was something which had to be done. Today it almost feels like I don't know what, what should be done, what is the role of science at all today. But of course, like I said, we can't give up hope. But in the, in the last year, I've helped not so much recently, but maybe between, you know, June and December or January with the COVID Gyan site, which was inter institutional effort to bring the best scientific evidence about COVID to the public. And of course, this is a major team effort and the people whom I worked with some of the people I worked with Mina from HBCSC who was really spectacular to work with Anand Vaidya from TIFR Hyderabad, and the comms team at NCBS Mahen Pavitra and Chandrakant. And of course, Sandhya before me from TIFR who handled all of this and much, much more. So, you know, we, we did different kinds of things like articles, a cartoon series by Arvind from Instem, some interviews which were translated into articles with, in this case, Ullas and Sandeep about the serology study in Mumbai. But all of this kind of really seems now like. Okay, now what is the point, where is this all going. And maybe at this point we have to just just pause and, you know, be human in this, in this current moment. But I think that it is a good time to think about the way forward as well. And for one, you know, I can't actually I can't wait to get back to my field research with my students and try and better understand, you know, what kinds of microbial diversity and pathogen diversity is harbored in biodiverse areas like the northeast. And then, like all my work with that research will come communication, sometimes before, you know, sometimes while the research is going on. And, you know, sometimes after, but it's a continuous process, communication is not something which you do after the research is done and the paper is published in many cases it's too late. In summary, I'd like to say that the nature of the work we do, because we work outside the lab requires us to communicate, we have to interface with the Forest Department, we have to interface with local people, and I didn't show any pictures here but every time we do field work, we work with many, many volunteers from across the country who join us on these field expeditions. And this communication has always enriched us, allowed us to actually think more about the questions we're asking. And hopefully, had some had some made some difference to others as well. I really wanted to thank TIFR for the extensive support and freedom. I think freedom is something which is not very easy to come by and that's something which as a faculty member at NCBS TIFR have experienced. And also, I wanted to say that I'm actually very honored to get this award, because many times I would chide myself saying, well, I'm at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. And sometimes I wonder, is this fundamental research? I'm not sure, but that have that I've been honored by all of you today. I hope, says that that doesn't matter whether it's fundamental research or not. So thank you so much. And I'll stop sharing. And I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you for that exciting, full of excitement talk. And what really kind of like attracted me in that talk was how all the research that you talked about, and the spectrum of biodiversity projects that you mentioned, how they actually contributed, you know, towards taking strategic decisions for wildlife conservation in India and like how they help, how that all help the government bodies. So that was quite an inspiration for all of us. And I also appreciate that you took time to explain how the local people, as well as all the students communities extensively contributed in this work throughout so that was quite enriching for all of us as a researcher and also as a community member. So I think that when I can start taking some questions on zoom. So if people have questions they can write, and I also see some hands already been raised so let me just call upon your name so Amol, would you like to unmute and ask a question. Yes. So Mark, as a non biologist, I was intrigued with this idea of sky islands. I mean, one would think that no birds fly so they really don't have to be isolated on some some peaks. So a common occurrence or a rare occurrence and does it depend on birds? Yeah, yeah. So basically actually birds, you know, would be the because they are mobile species which we should see the least differentiation or differences. And for example, we did not work on frogs, but other studies have shown have kind of results and shown that, you know, with frogs and so on, you see much more differentiation than you do with birds. The thing is that while they can fly the top of the mountain is generally cold and wet. So the habitat there, which they're adapted to is very different from the one at the bottom of the mountain. So even if they could fly, you know, it's too far to the next because there are many of most of these are small birds, but basically habitat wise they can't go like this or they can't live in the intermediate habitats. So the barrier or the isolation is also by habitat, and not just by the fact that they live on these mountain tops. Thank you for that question and thank you for taking it. While we wait for others to ask questions I also have one question just maybe out of my own curiosity. So you spent a lot of time, you know, exploring mountains. And I was just wondering, you know, there's rich biodiversity also maybe on wetlands and also maybe under the ocean. So what kind of inspired you, you know, to choose mountains over others. So yeah, if you could. Yeah, so basically I yeah so that's a great question. I don't, I did in my PhD for a little while work on data from marine species but I don't, I don't work in the sea as of now. That's a different skill set I need to know how to dive, which I don't know how to do scuba diving. But yeah wetlands definitely are, you know, very diverse but I think more the issues in wetlands are more around birds, you know, and the diversity of birds and microscopic things, which I haven't studied as much mostly I study mammals. Sometimes I study birds as well like with with Robin or others. It's just been more of a taxa bias and system bias working in the ocean is very tough for sure. Colleagues who work on coral reefs or other systems. It's very tough and it really requires a different physically need to be able to do so that's one of the things I'm wondering now with this work we're, you know, planning to launch on bats because it's crawling into caves, which are often dark and wet. You know, so anyway, we'll see physically we're up to the challenge. Okay, great. Thanks for answering my question. So I think Professor Subramaniam also has raised his hand. Would you like to unmute and ask question case. Thanks, Diva. Thanks for a really interesting talk. I mean, I'm quite envious of, you know, being able to spend those moments and long times in those beautiful places. But I had, you know, like everyone, I guess I'm also very curious about wildlife. So, although this maybe it's more of behavior ecology, but it'd be good to know your view on it. Say it takes, you know, tigers, big mammals. How much of their behavior is, you know, genetically programmed, would you say, and how much is sort of learned from other tigers? Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, I think that's a tough question. I don't think we have any data based on which we can answer that question. They are solitary overall. So we would imagine that learning maybe initially for something like hunting may play a role. But even tigers, cubs which are isolated can learn to hunt. Right. So I think we don't have a lot of information on that, but one place which where something like this may be relevant, especially in the context of is conflict. So for example, you know, now there's a lot of conflict with tigers because they come out of protected areas and hunt cattle. And so are there risky, risky personality individuals who do this or not. And these are some questions which would be very interesting to definitely ask. And maybe a little bit easier to answer than, you know, a much broader question of how much do they learn behavior because we can't really do too much of individual based observations on tigers like we can do for monkeys. We can watch them, we can identify them and keep watching them, but those kinds of elephants also we can do those kinds of studies, but with tigers it's much more difficult because they're very elusive and, you know, I hope that answers your question. Okay, thank you. Again, so there's one more question asked by a DT from HBCC. Aditi, would you like to unmute and ask or should I just ask on your behalf. Yes, go ahead please. Thank you so much for the talk, it's really wonderful. So my question is actually about the nature of awareness programs that you mentioned, and also with schools particularly. So any part, any kind of study that you undertake would actually have a different implication for the population who lives close to your study site, and a different implication say for someone from the city or away from your study site. So keeping that in mind that there's some specific criteria that you have in mind when you plan your education programs, and particularly with young children, if you have any examples to share. Yeah, so basically I have to say that we know we have not done this in a very structured way right, we have not for example evaluated the impacts of these interventions or our interactions. You know, we've just done it as part of like we're there, what do we do in the evenings we can do this on some free day or something like that. But I think it would be really nice to do it in a more structured way, so that we can actually look at what the impact of this is, and whether there is an impact, how to restructure our programs such that there might be an impact. Because, yeah, I mean I think that most of the time we just go in as scientists we go to a place we study we come out right. But it's just that since we are there we feel like okay let's also interact with local kids or the local people. But I think we have not done it in a very study designed way to actually look at that and that would be something very nice. You know if anyone is interested it's not something which I could do, because that's not my skill set, but if someone else is interested will be very nice to work together with to do that. We're going to all of these places right we're going to these places so we have some kind of access, which a lot of people may not, not even access but we end up going there, right. It's not like you couldn't go if you wanted to, but we are going there and so it just is a little less unknown than, you know, if you didn't know about. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, that's a very good question. Thank you. Thank you, Aditi and Oma once again. So there's one more question by Arnab. Would you like to unmute and ask? Yeah, sure. Oma as always such a fantastic talk it's so nice to even watching all this. So two questions actually you know you've done so much in so many different areas. Where do you think, you know, the impact on biodiversity has been sort of, you know, in terms of deciding policy, etc, has been the most. And the corollary is do tigers sort of hog the limelight in the Indian context I mean is it possible that you know the studies on birds or insects or frogs or something else might actually be much more important to do in the future. Yeah, definitely. So, so I think that I would say that the connectivity work, which resulted in this underpass was definitely I mean something I didn't expect. But I think that was something which I think had the highest implication, as well as the work on Sky Islands because for the first time, especially after the beatboxing and stuff like that. The Kerala Forest Department became very proud of these Sky Islands and it was a way for them to market it. I mean, market it sounds bad, but you know, like tigers are marketable. But when you say, oh, these are Sky Islands and speciation is happening here, it's a unique and a new thing. And then you can actually enforce more, you know, protection, as well as maybe tourism or something like that. So those kinds of things I think I think that has impact and there's many opportunities like that for example, you know, you know, route bridges in the northeast which my colleague Prasanjit Yadav has welcome by the way all the pictures almost all are his photographs that I showed. So I think that there's possibilities to enhance also tourism opportunities which would benefit local people by some of these bringing like a limelight on a system or a new place or something like that. Right. Now, the second question for sure tigers hog the limelight. Many other species are doing very, very poorly. The whole for example, even if you're talking about charismatic big things forget about things like frogs. Okay, even if you're talking about mammals, you know, gibbons, holes, vultures, birds, but you know, so I think that again, this is because it is structured that way. There is a national tiger conservation authority, which has been whatever approved in the act of parliament. And so it has a budget. And so tigers get the limelight. It sounds very bad to say it like that. I mean it sounds for a scientist it sounds like that doesn't make any sense. But unfortunately, conservation functions within a political framework. And so that's why, you know, that's the case. And there's been a lot of effort to try to change this from a tiger centric approach. I think it'll happen in some time. I hope that answers your question. Thanks. Thanks so much. Thank you. Right. Thank you, Arnav and Uma. So speaking of different animal I think there is one question we can take. It was asked by Sushant. And his question is there is a recent introduction of African cheetah to India. And he's asking what are your news about this and some news articles also claimed that it's just a move of government to keep Asiatic lions inside Gujarat since the forest where cheetahs will be introduced was considered as an alternate home for Asiatic lions outside Gujarat. And African cheetah will be an invasive species. So would you like to give your view on it? Yeah, so definitely African cheetahs are an invasive species. Well, cheetahs are not an invasive species. Cheetahs existed in India and they went extinct. And it's not like the African cheetahs are different species from the cheetahs which lived in India. They're the same species, maybe different because they've been isolated for a long time, but they're not different species like lions and cheetahs. Now, the politics of lion relocation, translocation, moving some lions out of gear to this park Kuno is definitely, it's very political and it has been going on for many years. And so I don't want to comment on that. Whether the cheetah introduction will work, I don't know. It's something which is certainly as from a scientific perspective. It's a very interesting experiment to think about that you're introducing another predator into this landscape. How will tigers and cheetahs interact? What will be the interaction and so on. But overall, I have to say that NP, Madhya Pradesh is very good as far as wildlife management is concerned. They have been very successful. They have high conservation success. They do indulge in a lot of management, which means not leaving things naturally but changing things also. And so it seems likely that if this were to happen, NP is, Madhya Pradesh is a potential state. So yeah, I don't know. I'm curious to know how do they pick the cheetahs they introduce? Are they genetically distinct from each other? What happens in the future? How does the population take off? So in some sense, I feel like all these are experiments we can think and say and make suggestions, but whether it works or not is something we have to see. Okay. Thank you, Uma. So we can take maybe one last question and it is asked by Jien. Jien, would you like to unmute and ask questions? Well, this is not really a question. I keep wondering about this because we have so much of technological know-how. Why can't we leave the earth behind and actually use more and more underpasses so that our houses can be on top of the earth and bridges? We already know how to build them. And why should we leave on the earth at all? We lost the license to leave. I mean, let's leave them to all the others and we just go up. I'm just inspired by the example that you gave, but I always keep wondering. I keep threatening almost all my architect friends and keep telling them, why are you covering all the earth by roads and train tracks and all the concrete everywhere, particularly if you look at the urban places. Of course, I know that what I'm saying is nothing to do with your talk. Your talk was excellent and it sort of inspires people, but I keep wondering about this idea. It's time I think that we have to think of leaving more and more breathing space for the earth and not put concrete on the road on the surface of the earth. And we have an example here. Yeah, that's a fantastic point and that's a fantastic point and I can't say immediately, but I know for example, in this NH7 case, Pushkamstushav, it was about money. Building an underpass is a very expensive thing compared to just laying the road on the ground. So in economies where it's really about money, it's not something which is easy to do. Now, for example, in the US, there are certain counties in Arizona and other places where they have a special tax which you can pay to allow for which goes towards underpasses for wildlife. So you can actually contribute to that and it's not something which is coming out of the contractor's budget or some such thing. It's something which is coming out additionally. So I think that maybe those kinds of solutions in better economies might be possible. I'm not sure how we can do it in a place like India. I can tell you that from my very limited experience, construction quality of any infrastructure in remote locations is very poor. So I really let alone a road, the idea of these, I would imagine that such construction would have to be done very well. Alright, thanks again again and thank you for addressing this question. So if there are no more questions, I think we have now almost come to the end of this function and so I take an opportunity to thank everyone who were involved throughout this. So my particular thanks first of all to and also congratulations to Professor Uma Ramakrishnan for winning the Homibaba Award in Science Education 2020 this year. I also would like to congratulate Dr. B. Satyanarayanan who couldn't be here but is also the other recipient of Homibaba Award for Science Education 2020. And thanks to Professor S. Ramakrishnan, the IFR director and Professor Subramaniam. And also thanks to HBCCD, Professor Chunawala who they all helped us to organize this event. And also thanks to Professor Arora for the generous support to hold this event and make it possible actually. So I also thank all the tech team who managed this event successfully on an online platform and Dean's office for the overall management of this function. Thanks to everyone who had been involved in the nomination process also in the review. And lastly to the audience who really I think it was a treat for all of us today both virtual treat and as well as to see how you know we all could sensibly contribute in biodiversity project irrespective of like what is your area of expertise and discipline. Like if you have interest definitely there is some hope for all of us to contribute in like quite excited excitement full of excitement projects that you mentioned Omar today. So yeah thanks everyone and I yeah I hope that Professor Omar's talk has inspired all of us to see our responsibilities and help through science education research to contribute in awareness of enhancing the awareness of our responsibilities towards nature towards environment overall. So on that note thanks again and I now declare that the program is over. Thank you Omar. Thank you so much. Thanks everyone. I think we'll all just give a round of clap to Omar. Yes we should. Thank you Omar. Thank you. Bye. Bye.