KERNEL Issue 1, 2021 Editorial - IISc
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Research Newsletter of
the Indian Institute of Science Issue 1, 2021
KERNEL
Editorial
ARTPARK:
INNOVATION AT PLAY
Robotic avatars. Delivery
drones. Remote learning
labs. Read more about
the futuristic challenges
being pursued by a new
technology innovation hub
at IISc.
Stories in this issue of
Kernel also describe new
species of vine snakes
across peninsular India,
Autonomous drone charging pad developed at ARTPARK/RBCCPS (Photo courtesy: RBCCPS)
a greywater recycling NEW TECH HUB FOR AI AND ROBOTICS AT IISc AIMS TO ADDRESS SOCIALLY
system installed in a remote AND ECONOMICALLY RELEVANT PROBLEMS
Karnataka village, and “I hope patients will be comfortable in is being developed in collaboration
the influence of unusual speaking with me, and would consider me with TCS and Hanson Robotics, as part
midlatitude disturbances not just as a machine, but as a friend,” of a mission-mode project under the
announced Asha, a first-of-its-kind robotic new AI and Robotics Technology Park
on the Indian summer nurse in the country, making its debut at (ARTPARK) established recently at the
monsoon. We also profile the Bengaluru Tech Summit in November Institute.
the work of an earth 2020.
Asha is not meant to replace a human
scientist who seeks to Asha, who is learning to speak Kannada, nurse, but to be a “tool” that can be
unravel the secrets of the Hindi and English, is the brainchild of used by the nurse to assist a patient
ground beneath our feet. a team of IISc researchers. The robot who might be far away, explains
Continued on page 2
Asha with the research team (Photo: Samarth Hada)
Continued from page 1
Bharadwaj Amrutur, Professor and Chair of ARTPARK will focus largely on mission-mode explains Amrutur. “This will involve
the Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber-Physical projects that are relevant to society and multiple institutions, including the Ministry
Systems (RBCCPS) at IISc, who leads this the economy as well as “technologically of Civil Aviation ... companies like Swiggy
initiative. “The nurse could operate this audacious,” says Umakant Soni, the and Flipkart may also be interested.”
robot assistant to deliver care without newly appointed CEO of ARTPARK and
physically coming to the [patient’s] home.” co-founder of venture studio AIfoundry, All of these initiatives will require
This can be especially helpful during IISc’s collaborator in this initiative. “AI and developing new technologies, including
pandemics like COVID-19. robotics is going to lead to close to those related to 5G networks, autonomous
15.7 trillion dollars of new economic value. vehicles and manufacturing processes,
Asha works via virtual reality. A headset and But India’s share might be a mere one for which testbeds will be set up at both
a pair of gloves capture the human nurse’s trillion dollars, whereas China’s would be IISc and Challakere campuses. Other
facial expressions and hand movements, eight trillion. If we need to reach 10 trillion technologies, such as speech-to-speech
and relay them to the robot. As the nurse dollars as an economy ... we need to take translation for robotics and mechanisms for
physically moves their hands around – these technology moonshots.” sharing confidential data securely, are also
to open a pill bottle or take a patient’s planned.
temperature – the robot performs the Another example of a socially-relevant
same action. project that ARTPARK plans to pursue, In addition to cutting-edge research,
titled “Project Eklavya,” is the setting up of a major focus of ARTPARK will be
In the future, the interaction could be made remotely connected labs to help students “Technopreneurship” – spawning deep-
more intuitive, through voice commands, in rural areas watch and perform science tech companies in the domains of AI and
for example. “Five or 10 years from now, experiments in real time. “One of the big robotics, says Soni. “We are planning to
we will have very good communication challenges is that in government schools in set up a venture studio in ARTPARK. Its
networks. I could just speak through the rural areas, the labs will not be working or role will be to create ventures out of these
smartphone, instructing the robot,” says the instruments will be broken,” says Soni. pathbreaking mission problems that we are
Amrutur. “That’s a really challenging Instead of taking new equipment to these solving. We are also creating a $100 million
research problem. No one in the world has areas which may be difficult and expensive venture fund to support these companies.”
done it.” In theory, a nurse sitting in one to maintain in the long run, ARTPARK Student fellowships, courses and workshops
state or country might be able to control will focus on setting up remote labs in for students and industry professionals are
a robot next to a patient in another state urban areas where robots will operate the also on the horizon.
or country. The team behind Asha is also apparatus or equipment, but students in
working on developing technologies that rural schools can be given access to control What sets ARTPARK apart from other
will allow the robot to display more human- the robots remotely so that they can perform technology innovation hubs around
like emotions, and understand and speak in their experiments. the country is that it brings together
multiple Indian languages. academic research, industry translation
Yet another area of research that ARTPARK is and entrepreneurship under the same
Assistive robots like Asha are one of several involved in is using drones to safely deliver roof, according to Soni. “In Silicon Valley,
research challenges that ARTPARK has medicines, food or other items in urban research can travel all the way [from
undertaken under the broad theme of AI areas. It plans to set up “Dronery” facilities academia] to the market in a structured
and robotics. It has been set up as a non- to build these drones and also work with manner,” he says. He highlights the
profit company with seed funding of Rs industry and government partners to map example of how Google was born out of
170 crore from the Department of Science out air routes or corridors for drones to research at Stanford University. “If we need
and Technology’s National Mission on move smoothly across large distances. “We to come up with a company like Google
Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems could set up these corridors somewhere in AI and robotics, we need to build that
and Rs 60 crore from the Karnataka state from the north of the airport to the IISc research translation ecosystem in India,
government. Its goal is to provide a platform Challakere campus, and have these drones and IISc has to be a pioneer in that.”
to translate academic research to industry routinely deliver things to show that we
and startups faster and more seamlessly. can do this kind of delivery in a safe way,” - Ranjini Raghunath
KERNEL | ISSUE 1, 2021 | Pg 2
Ahaetulla farnsworthi and Ahaetulla sahyadrensis (Photos: Ashok Kumar Mallik, N S Achyuthan and Vivek Philip Cyriac)
DISENTANGLING
VINES
A MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL TEAM HAS DISCOVERED FIVE NEW SPECIES OF VINE SNAKES ACROSS
PENINSULAR INDIA
Vine snakes are among the most common Wall’s vine snake (Ahaetulla isabellina) be detected by genetic analysis,” says
snakes in peninsular India, found even in in the Western Ghats rainforests alone. Mallik. “Our earlier discovery of another
many peri-urban areas wherever there is These species were superficially similar in deeply divergent vine snake, Proahaetulla
some greenery. This species was believed their morphology (what they look like) but antiqua, suggests that the entire lineage
to be widespread throughout the drier parts separated by geographic (or ecological) of vine snakes (Ahaetulla) evolved
of the peninsula as well as in the Western barriers. Another morphologically distinct around 26 million years ago during the
Ghats. But new research shows that this and much larger species, the long-nosed mid-Oligocene from its sister group
species actually comprises several vine snake (Ahaetulla oxyrhyncha), was Proahaetulla.”
different species. distributed in the lowlands and drier parts
of peninsular India. Kartik Shanker, Associate Professor at CES
Based on extensive sampling across says, “The discovery helps us document
peninsular India, a team of researchers “All the vine snakes were assigned names species diversity but also sheds light on
from the Centre for Ecological Sciences related to the locality or based on a the evolutionary history of vine snakes
(CES) has now described several new morphological character, but we named in South Asia. Ahaetulla nasuta is one
species of vine snakes from the region. the species Ahaetulla farnsworthi after my of the first snake names that we learned
Led by former student Ashok Mallik as part favourite mad scientist who inspired me as aspiring herpetologists. One almost
of his doctoral research, the team carried to become one, Dr Hubert Farnsworth from feels sad that we had to assign it to
out field visits across India to collect [the cartoon] Futurama. In fact, the snake the Sri Lankan population, but it is far
morphological data, tissue samples and also looks a lot like him,” says Achyuthan more exciting that we have all these new
specimens to understand the patterns of Srikanthan, a researcher at CES who was species in India.”
distribution and diversification of vine part of the team.
snakes. The study, published in the journal
The researchers also delineated the Zootaxa, was carried out in collaboration
Asian vine snakes, distributed throughout Travancore vine snake (Ahaetulla with researchers SR Ganesh from the
the continent, belong to the genus travancorica), separated by morphology Chennai Snake Park, Saunak Pal from
Ahaetulla and the recently described and a geographic barrier from the Gunther’s the Bombay Natural History Society, and
Proahaetulla. Once the team started its vine snake (Ahaetulla dispar). In addition, Princia D’souza from IISc.
research, they were surprised to discover they recognised distinctions between the
that the common green vine snake brown vine snake in the Western Ghats and - Kartik Shanker’s lab
(Ahaetulla nasuta) in India was a complex the one found in Sri Lanka, and gave the
of several species. They found four distinct Western Ghats form a new name (Ahaetulla
small-bodied and short-nosed species: sahyadrensis). There are now six species of
the Northern Western Ghats vine snake vine snakes endemic to the Western Ghats.
(Ahaetulla borealis), Farnsworth’s vine
snake (Ahaetulla farnsworthi), Malabar “Widely distributed species may comprise
vine snake (Ahaetulla malabarica) and many cryptic species, which can only
KERNEL | ISSUE 1, 2021 | Pg 3
New toilets at Berambadi using recycled and treated greywater (Photo courtesy: Plasma lab, CST, IISc)
DECENTRALISED TREATMENT
AND RECYCLING OF GREYWATER
A SYSTEM INSTALLED IN A REMOTE KARNATAKA VILLAGE SCHOOL HAS HELPED REUSE LARGE AMOUNTS
OF GREYWATER
Researchers at the Centre for Sustainable The treatment system first passes the potable purposes such as toilet flushing
Technologies (CST) have developed greywater from the hand wash sinks and gardening.
an efficient decentralised wastewater through strainers that screen out large
treatment and recycling system at a food particles from water. “Then, the “Here, plasma technology is used to
primary school in the remote village of water goes through three anaerobic create a high throughput solar powered
Berambadi in Karnataka. sand biofilters – tanks filled with locally ozonator for cleaning up the water
available coarse gravel, medium gravel effectively,” says Rao. The ozonator
A new study shows how the system has, and sand, where bacterial biofilms used in the system works with ambient
over the past year, enabled the reuse of help in the breakdown of nutrients in air as the input gas – instead of oxygen
wastewater and reduced dependence greywater to reduce nutrient levels of – to generate ozone. “This completely
on freshwater resources. “We have water,” explains PS Ganesh Subramanian, eliminates the need for hazardous oxygen
demonstrated for the first time that a former Project Assistant at CST and the cylinders, thus allowing the system to be
decentralised wastewater treatment first author of the paper. easily operated and maintained by the
systems can be economically put staff at the school,” he says.
into practice in a rural setting,” says The greywater from the kitchen sinks, on
Lakshminarayana Rao, Assistant Professor the other hand, is first passed through The authors suggest that a robust
at CST and a senior author of the paper a grease trap to strip off the top layer wastewater management system like this
published in the Journal of Water Process of oil and grease from water. After this, can be replicated in both rural and urban
Engineering. water flows through an anaerobic sludge settings after taking into consideration
bioreactor followed by a stratified factors such as space limitations, baseline
The research team operated the greywater biofiltration chamber. Finally, the filtered greywater quality and daily flowrates.
treatment system for a year and monitored water from both hand wash sinks and “The people from Berambadi village are
different characteristics at the entry and kitchen sinks enters an aeration tank very happy with the system. Based on the
exit points. The performance of every followed by an ozonation tank, where it is success of this sustainable wastewater
treatment stage was quantified in terms treated with ozone for disinfection. management project, several other
of removal efficiencies (REs) of turbidity, schools in Karnataka have approached us
Total Suspended Solids, nitrate, total The ozone is generated using a cold to duplicate it in their schools,” says Rao.
phosphorus, Biological Oxygen Demand, plasma ozonator designed specifically for
Chemical Oxygen Demand and faecal disinfection of wastewater. “Ozonation The study was carried out in collaboration
coliforms. Overall, the system showed removes odours and colours from water, with the Ashoka Trust for Research in
high REs – more than 90% for most of the and eliminates faecal coliforms, thereby Ecology and the Environment, and the
parameters. About 667 litres of greywater disinfecting the water while leaving no University of Glasgow and James Hutton
was treated daily using the system, saving harmful by-products. [It also] enhances Institute in the UK.
around 1,80,000 litres of water annually. the Dissolved Oxygen concentration of the
water,” explains Subramanian. The treated
At Berambadi Primary School, greywater water stored in an overhead tank is then - Shatarupa Sarkar
is produced at the hand wash and kitchen readily available for reuse by the students
wash mostly during the lunch hours. and staff of the school for domestic non-
KERNEL | ISSUE 1, 2021 | Pg 4
Image: Pritam Jyoti Borah
DROUGHTS IN INDIA INFLUENCED
BY NORTH ATLANTIC AIR CURRENTS
ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES FROM THE MIDLATITUDES APPEAR TO DERAIL THE INDIAN SUMMER MONSOON
Nearly half of the droughts during But they have not collated and pooled India. We looked at the winds that were
the Indian summer monsoon in the them together, and deduced that these prevalent in these non-El Niño drought
past century may have been driven droughts may all have a different type of years.”
by atmospheric disturbances from the evolution than El Niño droughts, as well as
North Atlantic region, finds a new study a common cause, which is this midlatitude That was when they noticed an unusual
published in Science. It was conducted by influence,” says V Venugopal, Associate midlatitude disturbance, which emerged
researchers at the Centre for Atmospheric Professor at CAOS and a senior author. from winds in the upper atmosphere
and Oceanic Sciences (CAOS). interacting with a deep cyclonic
The research team looked closely at daily circulation above abnormally cold North
More than a billion people in the Indian rainfall during both El Niño and non-El Atlantic waters. The resulting wave of air
subcontinent depend on the annual Niño drought years, and noticed stark currents, called a Rossby wave, curved
summer monsoon, which brings copious differences in the patterns between June down from the North Atlantic – squeezed
rain to large swathes of the country and September. El Niño droughts follow in by the Tibetan plateau – and hit the
between June and September. a standard pattern. The rainfall deficit Indian subcontinent around mid-August,
When it fails, and most of the country is – departure from a long-term average suppressing rainfall and throwing off the
plunged into drought, the usual suspect is – sets in around mid-June and becomes monsoon trying to recover from the June
El Niño, a recurring climate event during progressively worse. By mid-August, the slump. The wave’s usual course is to go
which abnormally warm equatorial Pacific deficit spreads across the country and a from west to east, but not towards the
waters pull moisture-laden clouds away drought is inevitable. equator, explains Sukhatme. “This inward
from the subcontinent. But 10 out of 23 curving was the peculiar thing that we
droughts in India in the past century Surprisingly, the non-El Niño droughts, noticed during these particular years.”
occurred during years when El Niño was when analysed together, also seemed to
absent. What, then, could have caused follow a common pattern. First, there was The findings underscore the importance
them? a moderate slump in June. Then, during of also considering influences on the
mid-July to mid-August, the monsoon Indian monsoon from outside the tropics,
The IISc study shows that these droughts showed signs of recovery and rainfall which current forecast models focus
were a consequence of a sudden and steep increased. However, around the third heavily on. “The Indian Ocean and Pacific
drop in rainfall in late August. This drop week of August, there was a sudden steep Ocean seem to be at the forefront of all
was linked to an atmospheric disturbance decline in rainfall, resulting in drought discussions surrounding Indian monsoon
in the midlatitude region over the North conditions. droughts,” says Venugopal. “It is perhaps
Atlantic Ocean, creating a pattern of time to focus just as much on midlatitude
atmospheric currents that swoop in “The question was: why does the break influences, which might aid in getting a
over the subcontinent and “derail” the occur this late in August?” says Jai better handle on enhanced predictability
monsoon. Sukhatme, Associate Professor at CAOS of monsoon variability.”
and another author. “We tried to see if we
“As early as the 1980s, people have could trace it back to a forcing agent or
looked at these droughts individually. system that influences the behaviour over - Ranjini Raghunath
KERNEL | ISSUE 1, 2021 | Pg 5
Image: Sayantan Mondal
INSIGHTS INTO WATER LAYERS AT
HYDROPHOBIC SURFACES
Water confined between parallel graphene liquid and sheets, with a substantially only for a short time in the layer. While
sheets exhibits several interesting weakened dielectric permittivity, make these timescales are not substantially
anomalies, one of which is a low static a disproportionately large contribution, different compared to those of water
dielectric constant. A new study carried reducing the effective value of dielectric molecules at distant layers, the dipole
out by researchers in the Solid State and constant of the entire system. moment fluctuations of the interfacial
Structural Chemistry Unit has unraveled layer molecules are quenched.
the origin of this anomaly using linear The team also studied the dynamics of
response theory, a capacitor model and water molecules at a microscopic level. The study provides new insights into
computer simulations. They found that the water molecules the dielectric anomaly of nanoconfined
residing in these so-called “electrically water, a topic of great current interest.
The researchers find that the water dead” layers align in the same orientation
layers at the interfaces between the and yet remain dynamically active, residing
Image: Shikha Laloraya
COHESIN HELPS MAINTAIN CELL WALL IN
BUDDING YEAST CELLS
Mutations in proteins needed to maintain of subtelomeric genes, even when they could be remedied by altering
the structure of the yeast cell wall may are present away from sites known to be the osmotic stress. This hinted at
weaken it, threatening the cell’s survival. silenced. the presence of cell wall defects.
A study in Genetics by researchers at the A compensatory stress signalling
Department of Biochemistry has explored In the new study, the researchers found pathway is activated in these mutants
the role of a protein complex called that yeast cells with mutations in cohesin – important for their survival during
cohesin. proteins had distinctive characteristics. elevated cell wall stress.
Their cell walls were resistant to an
Cohesins attach to various parts of the enzyme called zymolyase, and showed Cohesins, therefore, are vital
cell’s chromosomes, and help organise large depositions of chitin, known to for regulating both chromosome
and distribute genetic material during cell fortify cell walls. They were also more segregation during cell division and cell
division. A previous study in PNAS by the sensitive to chemical inducers of cell wall maintenance, independently.
team described a unique mechanism by wall stress and elevated temperature;
which cohesin represses the expression interestingly temperature sensitivity - Anoushka Dasgupta
KERNEL | ISSUE 1, 2021 | Pg 6
Photo courtesy: Attreyee Ghosh
ROCKING THE WORLD
OF SCIENCE
ATTREYEE GHOSH AND HER TEAM DIG DEEP TO UNRAVEL THE SECRETS OF THE GROUND BENEATH OUR FEET
When Carole King sang, “I feel the earth taking place inside Earth and how they causing the dip in the geoid surface,” she
move under my feet,” she didn’t mean it affect what we see on the surface. Using explains.
in a literal sense. But she was right: the satellite and field data, she and her team
planet’s interior is dynamic. Yet, we seem build numerical models to understand Yet another surface phenomenon, one
to know little about what is happening these processes. This area of research is that all of us are familiar with, are
deep inside – even as we explore other known as computational geodynamics. earthquakes, which have also attracted
faraway planets and stars – although we “I am very interested in how the deep the attention of Attreyee’s lab. About
are occasionally reminded of its intense interior talks to the surface,” she says. nine out of 10 earthquakes occur at the
activity whenever an earthquake or a boundaries of tectonic plates, the rigid
tsunami strikes. One such surface feature that scientists blocks of the outermost part of Earth
have observed is the uneven face of Earth. called the lithosphere. But sometimes,
Attreyee Ghosh, Associate Professor at the The bumpiness results from the effects anomalous earthquakes happen in
Centre for Earth Sciences (CEaS) at IISc, of gravity stemming from the unevenly the middle of the plate, far away from
agrees. “We still know very little about the distributed mass deep within Earth’s plate boundaries. An example of such
structure of Earth,” she says. Besides its interior. If there were no tides or currents, an intraplate earthquake was the
inaccessibility, the reason why we are so all the water in the oceans would settle on devastating Gujarat earthquake of 2001.
ignorant about the interior of our planet, this uneven surface giving Earth a peculiar Attreyee’s work has shown that stresses
according to her, is that it is “freaking shape that geophysicists call the “geoid”. originating at plate boundaries can travel
complicated.” It has multiple layers, both An example of such an irregularity is through the plate interior and trigger
liquid and solid, and each layer consists seen just south of the subcontinent in the such quakes.
of several different minerals and rocks. Indian Ocean where the ocean surface
“Each [layer] has different properties,” drops by over 100 m. Using satellite Attreyee’s investigations, as well as
she says, and each of them is subjected data, which record small fluctuations in those of others in her field, will help
to multiple forces. It is therefore not the gravity field, Attreyee’s group has us better understand the structure of
surprising that Earth Sciences encompass discovered the cause of this “geoid low”, Earth’s interior. Besides generating more
not just geology but also physics, which has in the past been a subject of realistic 3D models of the ground beneath
chemistry and biology. much speculation. “There is a lot of low- our feet, it will also aid seismologists in
density hot material in the mantle [layer their quest for what she refers to as the
Attreyee’s research interest lies in of rocks between the core and Earth’s “holy grail of geophysics”: prediction
understanding the physical processes crust], and this low-density structure is of earthquakes. These models will
KERNEL | ISSUE 1, 2021 | Pg 7
Observed geoid anomaly on Earth showing the big “hole” in the northern Indian Ocean; scale in metres (Image courtesy: European Space Agency)
also be of tremendous help to design role in shaping her own career, reminisces challenging. “You cannot just think about
policies related to how we manage Attreyee. “I got interested in the subject a single project, you have to think about
disasters, including safety regulations for after reading the book. At that age, I found multiple students engaged in various
construction and evacuating people. it really fascinating. I knew I wanted to do different projects. Along with this comes
science, but I didn’t exactly know which administrative roles, and finding ways to
Attreyee has come a long way in her career to choose. That book helped me fund your research,” she says. However,
career as an earth scientist. But she to channel my interest in this field [Earth over the years, she has eased into the role
may not have ventured into the world Sciences].” and looks forward to an exciting future
of rocks had it not been for a gift she – one in which she wants to continue to
received from her father when she Attreyee did her PhD in geophysics from explore the relationship between deep and
was still in school. It was a book titled Stony Brook University in the USA and her shallow forces in the interior of Earth and
Antarctica, written by Sudipta Sengupta, postdoctoral research from the University how they shape the surface. She is also
a geologist and former professor at of Southern California and Stony Brook grateful for the support that she received at
Jadavpur University, and one of the first University before she moved to CEaS as an early age to pursue this path, and hopes
Indian women to go on a voyage to the Assistant Professor in 2012. The transition that she can find ways to inspire more
icy continent. Reading about Sudipta’s from postdoctoral studies where she young girls to take up science.
experiences in the South Pole and how focussed mainly on her own research
she became a geologist played a crucial to running her own lab at IISc has been - Gouri Patil
Attreyee Ghosh’s students displaying exhibits at IISc’s Open Day (Photo: IISc Photography Club)
Office of Communications (OoC) EDITORIAL TEAM DESIGN
Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Deepika S TheFool.in
Karthik Ramaswamy
Bengaluru - 560012
Ranjini Raghunath (Coordinator)
kernel.ooc@iisc.ac.in | office.ooc@iisc.ac.in Samira Agnihotri
Vaishalli Chandra
KERNEL | ISSUE 1, 2021 | Pg 8
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