Update for residents of West Bengal only: Deadline to apply has been extended to 25 Oct 2019.

Location: Gorumara Forest, Dooars, West Bengal.

Seminars

27th Dec: Introduction to OAR

Dr Siddharth Ghosh and Dr Moumita Ghosh, Directors of Open Academic Research

We will present how India's academic research and innovation is doing in the context of world and where OAR can support the current young creative minds. OAR's output so far and future plan will be highlighted. We will also inform some practical informations about the workshop and end with acknowledging the organisers and creative minds.

Sam Thomas and Chinmay KV, Creative Thinkers' Representative of Open Academic Research

Our talk on the first day of the OAR Workshop shall be primarily based on my experiences of OAR and its influence on us. We would also like to talk on certain relevant issues regarding education in India. Sam would be sharing some of his recent academic experiences in Japan.

27th Dec: An interactive writing session

Dr Siddharth Ghosh, Overleaf Advisor, University of Cambridge and Leiden University

Being an OARian, I am awarded to be an Overleaf Advisor. I have initiated OAR because I have been fortunate to have some outstanding mentors who have guided me at the beginning of my career on certain topics. I have been designing an undergraduate and graduate-level course on them. This short seminar is a crash course on the same where I will cover critical thinking, scientific English and writing, science journalism, writing papers and fellowship proposals, choosing scientific and technical research topics. At the end, we will interactively start writing our first texts for OAR workshop.

27th Dec Evening: Atomic scale engineering of piezoelectric nanomaterials

Dr Moumita Ghosh, FEI Electron Optics/Thermo Fisher Scientific

Piezoelectric lead free nanostructures from ll-Vl group lack in commercial sensing applications due to their low piezoelectric constants. Introduction of atomic defects to these crystalline nanomaterials change their optical, mechanical as well as piezoelectric behaviours and introduce a new property—ferroelectricity in them. Data analysis and interpretation from different nanomaterials-characterisation methods indicate ferroelectricity is responsible for increasing piezoelectric response in these nanomaterials.

28th Dec: Data presentation and visualisation

Dr Moumita Ghosh, FEI Electron Optics/Thermo Fisher Scientific

We will learn how to present complex data in forms of graphs, visualisation, and animations. We will also highlight dos and don'ts in the context of good and bad ethical practice. Prerequisites: Attendees must actively participate and have some data either from of their own or from the literature as we will interactively present them.

28th Dec Evening: Noncommutative coarse geometry

Dr Tathagata Banerjee, Indian Statistical Institute Bangalore

In the beginning we will explore coarse geometry and what does it's noncommutative version means. We will be looking at the major examples of our theory. Further, if time permits I would like to speak on a technical lemma which attempts to close the gap between noncommutative and classical coarse geometry.

29th Dec Lunch talk: Studying Motion Dynamics without Tracking

Harish Sasikumar, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore

Simple and fast methods to analyze motion from a video is desirable for researches in various disciplines. A straight-forward method for these studies is tracking, where the positions of individual entities are tracked over time followed by computational analysis of their trajectories. Though the information of particle dynamics is present in its entirety in this method, it is inefficient. The tracking requires large computation capabilities and the tracking data requires a correspondingly large memory. However, often we are not interested in the entire data, or in fact prefer summaries. For instance, we would be interested only in the local velocities and flow directions. In this talk, a tracking-free method to obtain the summary statistics of movements of microparticles will be introduced. The direct application of this method to characterize velocity distributions and local directionalities will be presented. Also, an indirect application of this method as a probe for particle-surface interactions will be presented.

29th Dec Evening: Adaptive Optics: From Astronomy to Medical Imaging

Dr Abhilash T, University of Twente

How do astronomical objects look like? What are the constituents of blood and how do they look like? How do tumour grows and affect our body? For the last few centuries, the field of optics has been revolutionizing in order to answer these kind of questions. However, light scattering induced by the inhomogeneities in the refractive index of the media (for eg. inhomogeneity in the atmosphere, tissues in the biological specimen, etc.) causes serious limitations for imaging. Adaptive optics has become an important part of modern optical techniques in order to tackle this problem. In this talk, I will discuss about the various applications of adaptive optics focusing on current challenges.

30th Dec Lunch talk : Learning Styles & abilities

Mohua Roy, Counselling Psychology & Career Counselling, Cognitive Behaviour Therapist and certified Narrative Therapist, Thetaskills.com

30th Dec Evening : Controlling vacume to modify chemistry

Dr Balasubrahmaniyam B, Tel Aviv University

The chemical properties of molicules, in general, are determined by their electronic structure. In this talk we will be discussing, how to modify vacuum electromagnetic fields around the molicules to modify their chemical properties.

31st Dec Evening: Tools of Complex Systems

Dr Siddharth Ghosh, University of Cambridge and Leiden University

Complex-systems require a broad range of computational and experimental tools. At continuum domain, multi-variable decomposition often NP hard and at nanoscale domain, uncertainty principle acts as the biggest barrier. My research interest is to develop quantum coherent (in other words non-dissipative) methods to detect single molecules for ultra-fast dynamics. Some of the key interdisciplinary topics of my research are confined light-matter interaction, single-molecule nanofluidics, noninvasive functional dynamic mapping of cells, mesoscopic persistent current in macromolecules, and a living-lab of research-education.

I will give two example of continuum mechanics - nanotribology of soft-matter (like PDMS and articular cartilage) and nanomechanics of atomic defects in inorganic solid-state-matter. The nanoscale continuum is fragile in fluid when single-molecules flow at the border of continuum and quantum world, it is intriguing to play at this interface to see who wins. In quantum mechanics, phonons represent vibrational relaxation of a quantum systems. Can we see an interface where phonons and electrons couple to each other? To answer this, I will also touch upon experimental and theoretical insight of light-matter interaction in nanomaterials, like carbon nanodots, graphene quantum dots, and ZnO nanorods. In order to play in these fields, manipulation of optics and electron-optics is important. I will also show how to use single-photon optics to beat the resolution of conventional optical lithography by demonstrating a method for ultra-high aspect nanostructures and electron-beam to enclose nanotrenches to create nanofluidic channels. If time permits, I will talk about single nanoparticle electrostatic traps, mesoscopic persistent current, and a living-lab situation to understand the evolution of research-based education from the perspective of quantum coherence.

31st Dec Lunch talk: Three accidents and a startup

Dr Anirvan Chatterjee, HaystackAnalytics

I will broadly talking about my research starting from my PhD days, to my Postdoc(s) across Univ. of Oxford, IIT Bombay and The Technical University of Denmark. The common thread binding the talk will be key events which led to me taking the final leap of faith in launching a startup to address one of the burning health issues in India, and kick-starting a revolution in the way science is perceived and undertaken in India.

Hopefully the talk will impress upon all the things that are not the most obvious choices to make, as a research scholar from India, and should generally be avoided. Finally, I would like to share how, uncompromising ethics, was only one thing that stood by my side, through the highs (n<11) and lows (n>223).

For those who are looking for the “meat” of the talk, here are the keywords: Tuberculosis, Molecular epidemiology, Antimicrobial resistance, Genomics, Metagenomics, Giant Viruses, High Performance Computing, Quantitative Analysis, Big-Data.

1st Dec Evening: Grow, empower and differentiate - a cellular perspective

Nikhil Hajirnis, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology

In physics, scientists are striving to understand the forces of universe and states of matter. Have you wondered if life itself could be a state of matter? Why not! It has mass, occupies volume, can be changed from one state in another and is made of atoms and molecules. What do you think combines the forces of physics, principles of chemistry and mathematical formulations that transcends the materialistic world into an ever-active biology? We shall be discussing how an animal embryo, a single celled state, deeply integrates all the above-mentioned fields to develop into an amusing super specialised organism.