ICTS

AI is an increasingly integral part of doing research. This hands-on, very practical session will provide a brief overview of the capabilities, pitfalls, and ethical concerns with its use in Science.  We will cover four main domains: 1. data gathering and research summaries,
2. scientific writing, 3. graphs and statistics in science, and 4. coding. I will end with a sketch of major AI tools like Alpha Fold and agents, and give a glimpse of where the field may be going.

We will walk through a wide variety of "classroom problems", that focus on some theoretical concepts which are often missed in the standard pedagogy. They will also highlight some common skills and thinking processes needed in doing physics. The session will be interactive, and discussions will flow from the responses of the participants.

We will talk about large scale flows in the atmosphere, containing droplet or particulate matter, such as snow avalanches and pollutant dispersal. Being a late evening lecture, we'll not go into too much of the mathematics, but we'll try to appreciate why these problems are beautiful, hard and important.

 Why can’t we predict the behavior of a gas molecule the same way we track a planet? In this talk, we’ll explore why classical and quantum mechanics alone are not enough to explain the messy, complex world around us—and why we need statistical mechanics to bridge the gap between microscopic particles and macroscopic behavior. Along the way, we’ll look at stochastic processes as powerful tools for dealing with randomness and uncertainty in nature. We’ll also touch on big ideas like chaos, self-organization, networks, biological complexity, and even how diseases spread—all from a statistical perspective. This talk aims to give you a fresh way of looking at the world: not as a set of exact rules, but as a dynamic system full of patterns, surprises, and probabilities

Why do some materials conduct electricity, while others don’t? In this talk, we’ll begin with that simple question — and see how the answer takes us all the way to the cutting edge of modern physics. From metals and semiconductors to insulators, the key lies in how electrons are arranged in energy bands. But surprisingly, some materials conduct electricity only at their edges — thanks to their topological nature.

We’ll then explore how light — through time-periodic driving — can dynamically create such topological behavior, even in systems that are ordinary in equilibrium. These Floquet systems offer a new platform for engineering exotic quantum phases.

The talk will go over some crucial developments in astronomy over the last hundred years, such as the classification of stars, the distance scale of the universe, the abundance and production of the chemical elements, compact objects like neutron stars and black holes, and many more. Women astronomers had a crucial role in all of these examples

Pierre de Gennes received the Nobel prize in Physics in 1991 for ‘discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalised to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers’. Liquid crystals, polymers, foams, emulsions and suspensions are common examples of a class of matter called ‘soft materials’ – materials characterised by structural complexity and mechanical flexibility. In this talk, we will together try to decipher the intriguing flow and deformation properties of some very common soft materials that we encounter everyday - materials categorised  as colloidal suspensions (clay, smoke, fog, ink and milk), emulsions (mayonnaise, lotions and creams), liquid foams, pastes (tomato ketchup and toothpaste), granular media (a bag of rice or sand) and polymers. 

I will give a brief discussion of my journey as a scientist over the years, including how I got into the question of gender in physics. I will then end my lecture with a popular science level discussion of my current work.

Light microscopy and imaging is a powerful tool used by physicists to study the structure and dynamics of matter at the micron length scales. However, due to the high costs involved in the purchase and maintenance of high-resolution microscopes that make
such studies feasible, they are limited to well-funded research labs and institutions. In this context, the advent of open source 3d printed high resolution microscopes have been a game changer for researchers, educators and diagnostic labs. I will present here
one such open-source high resolution microscope designed by a group of scientists from the University of Bath and Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge . The open flexure microscope uses the compliance of plastic to produce a flexure translation stage, capable of sub-micron-scale motion over a range of 8 × 8 × 4 mm. For imaging, a high-performance mobile phone lens is reversed and focuses the magnified image on a raspberry pi CMOS sensor at a speed of up to 90Hz. At our university, we have modified the design of the microscope to build them with locally available hardware and electronics to bring down the cost to about ₹500 thus increasing the accessibility to educators and students. This microscope can be automated and controlled remotely and can also be adapted for polarizing, dark field and fluorescence microscopy. In this hands-on demonstration, the basic principles of imaging and microscopy will be reviewed. Students will work in small groups to assemble 3d printed parts to build a manually controlled open flexure microscope for bright field imaging. Some interesting problems in the area of Soft Condensed Matter physics that can be addressed by an undergraduate student using such a microscope will be discussed.

Waste touches every aspect of our lives, affecting the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the climate we depend upon. Yet, managing waste effectively remains one of India's most significant urban and environmental challenges. This talk will provide an overview of waste and resource management, illustrating the urgency of shifting from traditional disposal methods to more sustainable, circular approaches. By highlighting real-world examples and India's current efforts and struggles, we'll discuss how waste reflects societal systems’ inherent tendency towards entropy, chaos and disorder, and why addressing waste systematically is crucial to building resilient, equitable, and sustainable communities. Additionally, the session will share personal insights from navigating this complex field, aiming to inspire emerging women scientists to embrace interdisciplinary roles and lead change in environmental sustainability.