Ant affairs

“More than money, you need curiosity to do good science: that was the motto of our laboratory. My PhD primarily focused on behavioral aspects of an ant species that steals the young from other colonies of the same species, and while doing so, has the ability to run as fast as a cheetah. Automated tracking of the movement of these ants required expensive software which we did not feel the need to buy. Instead, we divided the arena into grids to track their movements manually, and it worked perfectly fine!

I did not however envision myself doing a PhD when I was growing up. We have a small family-run business started by my grandfather and I did not get the adequate academic exposure early in life to see research as a career option. To date, although my parents are supportive of my choice, they don’t understand the concept of PhD as such. They still ask me questions like when my exam is or when I am going to the classes.

After school, I enrolled myself into Bachelor’s in Microbiology because it was a new and upcoming field and had good job prospects in the future. However, I later realized that the course curriculum was quite restrictive and did not delve into other areas of biology, especially ecology and evolution. Luckily, I got the opportunity to explore further during my integrated MS-PhD program at IISER Kolkata. Initially, I joined a biochemistry laboratory for my Master’s dissertation, but…