in india for good maybe not says kumar who would have been a farmer if he hadnt chosen the scientific path has he thought about returning to the us yes he lets on i may go back after my retirement science has no retirement ageshilpi gupta assistant professor electrical engineering iitkanpur when shilpi gupta left for the us in 2008 after doing her btech in engineering physics from iitdelhi she was clear that she was going there only for higher studies she joined the university of maryland for an ms and phd in electrical engineering in july 2014 gupta moved back to india under the ramanujan fellowship and is currently an assistant professor in electrical engineering at iitkanpur she works in the field of nanophotonics to study how light interacts with matter and how to make chipscale devices for application in optical communication and sensing the ramanujan fellowship is targeted at global talent in scientific and engineering who are keen to take up scientific research positions in institutions and universities in the country i never debated coming back to india the ramanujan fellowship is an excellent initiative to provide startup flexible funds to scientists who wish to return having a constant inflow of funds for the first five years which are the most important formative years for an experimental lab was the main incentive for me to apply for this fellowship she says gupta is at home at iitkanpur the best thing about working in india is the satisfaction of being able to contribute in however small way towards education in india the pool of researchers and scientists in india is still very small relative to the size of our young populationlipi thukral computational biologist institute of genomics integrative biology one of lipi thukrals favourite quotes is by american televangelist robert schuller let your hopes not your hurts shape your future the context is her hope for an improvement in the status of science in india my past years of scientific investigation suggest that one can do great science in india as long as we do not relegate it to second place says thukral who has been working as a computational biologist at the csir institute of genomics integrative biology igib delhi since 2012 thukral has just finished a shortterm deputation to a laboratory in germany she had done her phd there from the university of heidelberg in 2011 followed by a short postdoctoral at the university of southampton uk she came back to india in 2012 under the inspire faculty award her research area explores interdisciplinary sciences to study how proteins interact with lipids fat in our body getting the independent fellowship she feels was the main incentive behind her return to india however she is candid enough to not rule out the possibility of going bac not immediately but at some point in time perhaps although the current science scenario is far better than it used to be there exist certain problems the biggest