From the scratch

“When I went for a research internship at the University of Delhi during my Bachelor’s, I wasn’t quite aware of the concept of research. But my supervisor there gave me full freedom to think about the problem statement and come up with my independent thought process. That shaped my interest in scientific research and attracted me towards pursuing it as a career.

I started my PhD with lab-rotations as a rule during which I came to know about an advisor who was working on a multidisciplinary project. Even though the project was fascinating, he was relatively new in the institute and his laboratory was not completely set up. Considering the speed of how things move in our country and the laboratory not having the tools and techniques already established which we needed for our experiments, I was in a strong dilemma. However, I never wanted to be restricted to one field in the future and thus, the multidisciplinary nature of the project made me take a risk and I ended up joining the laboratory. In retrospect, that was the best decision and the best time to join that laboratory. We got to build everything from scratch and I wouldn’t exchange that experience for anything.

I was my advisor’s first PhD student and the only one to join the department that year. So I didn’t have any batchmates I could talk to or discuss things with. I either had to figure out things on my own or consult my boss…