Last week, I got an opportunity to talk to some of my colleagues
from Biology and Chemistry who joined between 2006 and 2008, that is, within the
first two years of IISER. The people I
spoke to are H.N. Gopi, M. Jayakannan, Mayurika Lahiri and Girish Ratnaparkhi. They shared some fascinating stories from
these early days: stories of adjustment, setting things up, moving, expansion
and readjustment. This post and the next
are based on their inputs.
IISER started functioning from one floor of NCL Innovation
Park in 2006. Due to limited space,
several faculty members shared what they call “hot desks” in the same office. From 9 am to 6 pm, they designed curricula, taught
classes (many for the first time), cleaned and prepared teaching labs themselves
as there were no lab attendants, made purchase indents for lab equipment and held
regular meetings to design their future labs/offices. After dinner, many returned for a “second
shift”, during which they corresponded with their collaborators or students from
former work places, wrote papers and made grant applications [1]. The second shift could continue into the wee
hours of the morning.
People could walk into our director Professor Ganesh’s
office anytime they needed to [2]. Many
a times, they would enter feeling worried, but would come out of the office with
a big smile sharing his dreams about the future of IISER.
Professor Shashidhara (Shashi) walked from his place of
residence in Panchwati to the permanent campus, Innovation Park and Sai Trinity
Building every single day to oversee the progress at each point (and give
things a good push whenever needed). He patiently
taught new faculty members from scratch how to work through administrative
rules and regulations for acquiring equipment and setting up labs as many were
fresh out of postdocs and were doing it all for the first time.
When a potential faculty candidate visited for a job
interview in those days, it was easy to get discouraged at the state of
affairs: no research labs, no offices and no PhD students. Apart from generous start-up grants, some of
the things that attracted the early people to join were clear communication
from the leadership about future plans, love of teaching and personal
ambition. The sense that they were
building the institute and were equal contributors to every stage of
development gave them a feeling of personal empowerment. My colleague Mayurika mentions, “When I first
visited for my job interview in 2007, I only saw the floor at Innovation Park
and empty spaces in Sai Trinity building [3].
Shashi told me that things would be ready before I joined and I
instinctively believed him. Sure enough,
things were ready by the time I joined in March 2008. I did not feel any negativity around me.
”
The central wing of the Sai Trinity building was inaugurated
in January 2008 and was adequately ready for the biologists within a couple of
months.
That was the time when experimental faculty had to spend
maximum time in acquiring equipment for the labs. While doing this and
allocating lab spaces, they decided upon a few healthy practices, which
continue till date: first was the practice of shared labs. Except a handful of cases where the nature of
research is highly specialized, spacious common
labs were to be shared by multiple members.
This not only reduced wastage of resources, but also taught faculty to
treat resources as shared facilities rather than individual possessions. As a colleague puts it jokingly, the tendency
to act as “estate builder” was cut off right at the beginning. Second was the practice of looking ahead: in
any lab, some extra space was kept aside for future faculty. When people ordered equipment and material
for themselves, they ordered in extra quantities so that a new faculty would
have enough workspace and resources to get started immediately upon joining. This was very crucial because the Sai Trinity
years witnessed a burst in hiring.
In the meanwhile, the right side of the Sai Trinity building
was acquired for chemistry and the chemists started moving there. At one point of time, 11 faculty members and
40 students shared a lab space of 1800 square feet.
Around that time, Biology and Chemistry started looking for
suitable PhD students. The first
advertisement for PhD went out from Chemistry in January 2008. There would be at least three more rounds of
advertisement and selection procedures before 4 students were selected in July
2008. Biology also got their first few
PhD students in August 2008. These
students took course work for a year and also actively helped with setting up
the labs in Sai Trinity building. By
summer of 2009, the labs were well equipped and ready for active research. Publications based on work done at IISER started
coming out by 2010.
One of the reasons my early colleagues did not cave in to
disappointment or exhaustion from frequent moves is that from the very
beginning, no one lost sight of the final product, the permanent campus. Gopi describes the happiness they felt while
they witnessed the official land transfer of the permanent campus land to IISER
in a ceremony at Pride Hotel in 2008: “We knew this informally, but were really
thrilled when we saw it happening officially.”
Jayakannan mentions that even before all the moves across temporary
locations happened, they started planning for the permanent campus. Sometimes, they would wear construction hats
and spend time at the construction sites.
“We adjusted to what was available with belief and sense of involvement
in what was to come. The institute
always came first.”
But, Girish has a simpler explanation for the
(more or less) high spirits: “Nothing big broke during the moves. This kept everyone happy.”
[Stories of further moves and other groups coming up in
future posts. The second part of this post is here.]
[2] We still can: it’s just that we don’t need to do so all
that much anymore. I only discovered the
location of the director’s office last month, when a group met there to plan
our 10 year celebrations.
[3] An office complex in the heart of Pashan, which was to
remain our temporary campus for a long time.
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