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Apr 30, 2024

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Getting to know, up close, with Prof. Vini Gautam, the greater glories of the journey foraying into a multidisciplinary field — majorly lying along the broad themes of neurobiology, physics, optoelectronics, prosthetics, bionic vision, and device engineering— of how shaping a scientific career first hand is a pursuit worth rejoicing each step of. Dr. Gautam has been through various stints of exploring different fields in her research career wherein after completing her PhD from the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, she went on to the Australian National University as a postdoctoral research fellow. She held the position of an Assistant Professor at the University of Melbourne before moving to the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru as an Assistant Professor, where she currently leads her own lab at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering. We talk about the wonders of a career in research and the promise of the discovery of elemental truths that it brings along, but not without the nurturing challenges that inspire the very core of a human spirit. And more about what lies in store for such a beautiful vision!

Leading a research lab that works at the riveting juncture between physics, device physics, electronics engineering, and neurobiology at CeNSE— Dr. Vini Gautam works on interesting ideas like mimicking neural pathways synthetically, which can actually stimulate and replace nerve signals in living organisms! Currently a faculty member of the CeNSE, Indian Institute of Science, she has held professorships and research positions at the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University, in the past, and joined her current position in 2022. She pursued her bachelors from Delhi University, and then moved to JNCASR Bengaluru for her Masters and subsequently her Ph.D. Her work stands out in a way that combines many fields and is truly inter-disciplinary in nature.