Evidence, Endurance and Ethics: The three E-s of an academic career in 21st century
Prof. Anupam Sengupta, RKMV 1999
The Praktani Adda session by Prof. Anupam Sengupta was an eye-opener for research enthusiasts willing to have a promising career in the academic domain. The 28th session focused on identifying the three guiding Es of research: Evidence, Endurance and Ethics.
The three E-s would provide relevant pointers to the younger generation and scientists of tomorrow, who dare to leave their comfort zone, and for the rest of us in the Adda, a reflection of our personal and professional journeys so far.
Prof. Anupam Sengupta is an ATTRACT Fellow and Professor of Biological Physics at the University of Luxembourg. He heads the Physics of Living Matter Group, a cross-disciplinary team of scientists working on emergent functionalities in biological systems. Research in the Sengupta Lab spans soft and living matter physics, microfluidics, optics and microbiology.
Prof. Anupam holds B.Tech and M.Tech degrees (Dual Degree) in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay, India, and a Ph.D. in Physics for his thesis on Liquid Crystal Microfluidics, carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self Organization, Goettingen, Germany (2013).
His doctoral work is a recipient of the Glenn H. Brown Prize from the International Liquid Crystal Society (2014), the Springer Thesis Award and the Berliner-Ungewitter Prize (both in 2013). As a postdoc at MIT (Cambridge, USA) and ETH Zurich (Switzerland), Anupam switched fields to integrate engineering and physics to study biological systems.
He held a Human Frontiers Cross-Disciplinary Fellowship (2014-2017) awarded by the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization. He was selected as one of the six “promising young scientists for the future” by Nature during the 65th Lindau Meeting for Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany.
Currently, Anupam is a member of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Luxembourg and, among other roles, serves as the Director of the Physics Studies of the University of Luxembourg.
During the Praktani Adda session, Prof. Anupam attempted to present his understanding of what a rewarding academic career could look like and how we - in particular, the younger generation - could prepare to secure a research career with international visibility.
