Anup B. Prakash has been awarded this year's K. Ullas Karanth - J. Paul Getty fellowship. George Schaller, one of the world's preeminent field biologists and Vice President of Panthera (http://www.panthera.org/?splash=off ), presented the trophy and certificate to him on 22^nd November 2011. Schaller was at NCBS to give a talk about his five decades of work in ecology and conservation.

With basic scientific help from NCBS's Navneet Rai and Mukund Thattai, a team of students guided by Yashas Shetty from the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology at Bangalore have done it yet again: an award at the famed International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States of America.

 Ashtavaidya Ayurveda is a unique medical tradition prevalent in Kerala. It is thought to be an amalgamation of text-based Ayurvedic practices and regional folk medical practices of the south Indian state. Scholars Annamma Spudich and Indudharan Menon had interviewed the last remaining practitioners of the tradition as part of the "Living History of Indian Scientific Traditions" archive initiated by NCBS.

Now, the Science and Society programme at NCBS presents "A Scientific Approach to Traditional Medicine" - a dramatic exploration of Ayurveda and Ashtavaidya medicine. The play will be presented by the students of NCBS and is directed by Jeff Teare, co-director, TheatreScience (UK).

"Just the workshop on Wikipedia editing," I told myself at the start of the conference. It would come in handy to start and edit NCBS wikipages, part of my work at the NCBS News team. "And maybe just the first plenary talk too". At the end of the three-day Student Conference on Conservation Science (SCCS), I realised I had attended almost every session: plenaries, student talks, workshops, poster rounds and discussions. What had made it so engaging?

The Max Planck-NCBS Center on Lipid Research was opened on 22nd September 2011. The Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) and NCBS signed an MoU to facilitate collaboration on lipid studies and cell signaling in general.

Scientists, for the first time ever, are asking the Indian public what they should be studying. What, according to the public, are the most important questions to ask about the natural world - the plants, animals, habitats and the people that interact with them? There are a multitude of threats that these systems face in India and the public's opinion is imperative. This has prompted fifteen scientists across seven organisations to come up with a nationwide internet survey: The Horizon Scanning India. This simple two-stage questionnaire aims to pinpoint priority areas of future research that Indians think are necessary to protect biodiversity, ecosystems and natural assets across India.

Everyone's excited about the upcoming workshop on popular science writing that you're going to be conducting at NCBS, the very first of its kind here. Do tell us more about it.

Anil: We're organizing a short, ten days-long course on popular science writing here at NCBS, starting on the 24th of August. We've just announced the course and are taking in applications now. This time it's open to only students and staff in NCBS, and to a few outsiders who have been active contributors to NCBS News. In future workshops we will consider applications from outside NCBS as well.

Encouraging networks of volunteers to participate in research projects serves two purposes: to do research that is not possible otherwise, and to engage the larger community in the process of science. Citizen science programs have taken these ideas to new heights by partnering with the general public to contribute through their computers, brain power or observations. These contributions are used to explore for extra-terrestrial life, understand protein folding and collect ecological data. In some countries, massive datasets of high quality have resulted from the efforts of volunteers who make the time to contribute to these projects. In India, organized citizen science is now picking up steam.

After spending a year-long sabbatical at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, and just before heading back to Marseille, Thomas Lecuit recently gave his final talk to a packed audience at NCBS. It was full of surprises as the live natural performance of his children occurred in concert with their father's talk, on "Tissue Dynamics".

Here, Thomas Lecuit shares his thoughts about his life-time spent uncovering the secrets of tissue morphogenesis.

Samrat Mondol, a PhD student in Uma Ramakrishnan's lab was recently chosen for the prestigious Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral and Professional Research Fellowship. This will fund his visit the University of Washington for the next nine months.  Samrat will be provided with a scholarship, stipend and air travel to conduct research, audit courses and gain experience from the research milieu at the University.