inStem's Shanta Wadhwani Centre, in memory of Romesh Wadhwani's late mother, will benefit from generous funds from the Wadhwani Foundation (http://wadhwani-foundation.org) with the likelihood that demonstrated excellence by the centre in the coming five years will elicit continued support. Along with supporting excellence in science, the Wadhwani Foundation has major programs in college-level entrepreneurship, skills colleges, policy initiatives to accelerate economic growth in emerging economies and programmes to support the disabled.  Research at the Shanta Wadhwani Centre will be based in inStem's laboratories at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, TIFR, Bangalore and will focus on the mechanisms underlying stem-cell directed differentiation and cardiomyopathies. It will soon expand to include the neurosciences.

Success in cutting-edge science requires us to be nimble and flexible. The Wadhwani Foundation brings an invaluable icing to the generous cake of support from the Department of Biotechnology to inStem and from the Department of Atomic Energy to NCBS-TIFR. It allows us to put in place the best teams, including fellowships for group leaders, post-docs and students of any nationality to work in our campus, and for our students and postdocs to go elsewhere for collaborations. These fellowships will link NCBS and inStem researchers with their global collaborators working on the cell and molecular biology of cardiac and neural development, disease and regeneration.

In a chaotic world spinning towards an 'interesting' future, many are self-absorbed in deciphering ways to ensure that our personal endeavors and ambitions meet with success. Intellectual depth and scholarship can give way to Lemming-like dynamics where the herd decides the direction for our personal and institutional trajectories. Intellectual stampedes are certainly not required behaviour, yet few refuse to participate and fewer still strike new paths. There are a daring few who define new intellectual quests, and whose courage and leadership create a culture, the nurturing of which makes us all feel special. Today, we celebrate Obaid Siddiqi whose foresight, determination and quiet courage has transformed research in molecular biology in India at least twice and whose scientific successes span many fields of biology. While establishing institutional excellence and instilling an iconoclastic culture of independence and freethinking, these pioneering efforts have led to wide-appreciation, both of the beauty and value of Obaid's science and of his leadership in institution-building, as models to emulate.