New Delhi: Biologist Chandrima Shaha will become the first woman to head the Indian National Science Academy (INSA). Shaha, 66, was previously the vice-president of INSA and the director of the National Institute of Immunology in Delhi.
Speaking to The Hindu and The Print, Shaha said during her tenure as president of the academy, she will prioritise communicating science “aggressively” and combat pseudoscience. She and the elected council of 30 members will take charge on January 1, 2020.
Before her turn as a biologist, Shaha was cricketer and also worked as a commentator for All India Radio. Cricket taught her the value of team work, she told the The Hindu.
Shaha’s research focused on understanding cell death pathways. Her laboratory has worked on finding the precise mechanisms of cell death and how this process is regulated by “diverse signalling pathways” in unicellular (Leishmania parasite) and multicellular (cancer cells) models. The Leishmania parasite can cause kala-azar. Understanding how these cells die can help kill treat the diseases they can cause.
“The aim is to provide a deeper understanding of cell death events that can help in the development of improved therapeutics for diseases associated with anomalous cell death,” her profile on the National Institute of Immunology website says.
Promoting science and tackling myths
Shaha told The Print that she wants to encourage “collaborations between scientists of different fields” to tackle issues through a multi-disciplinary approach.
To promote science, Shaha said she would like to conduct more outreach in local languages. She would like to “have scientists speak about their work, the process of science etc to wider audiences,” she told The Hindu. The president-elect, who completed her doctoral research in 1980 from the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, said that while government initiatives have “given a push towards innovations”, the “learning system is not designed to encourage research”.
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She said communicating science to a large audience will also help battle myths. “This is critical to address myth and misinformation. We have to educate people from the bottom-up,” she told The Hindu.
Recently, the Indian Science Congress has come under fire after prominent scientists have suggested that events mentioned in Indian mythological texts have scientific explanations. Several politicians have also made pseudo-scientific claims in the past.
Representation of women
When The Hindu quizzed her about the inadequate representation of women in the scientific field, Shaha opposed the idea of reservation for women. She said that there were not enough “good women candidates” for research fellowships in India’s science academies, and seemed to suggest that quotas would “dilute standards”.
“While there are several more young women scientists today who are good and deserving, we cannot dilute [academic and research] standards just to accommodate more women. India has several opportunities for women scientists perhaps more than several countries. However, we need to do better at assessing these programmes and evaluating their effectiveness and execution,” she told the newspaper.
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Nandita Jayaraj, the co-founder of science media platform The Life of Science, told The Wire that such ideas shield institutes from addressing the gender imbalance. “The idea that there is a shortage of excellent women candidates to choose from has shielded institutes from their gender balance responsibilities for far too long. Surely there are enough women in science in India today to warrant more representation than 10% women at higher levels, and I think Dr Shaha would agree with this,” she said.
Jayaraj also said that Shah is not the first person to repeat the ‘we cannot dilute academic standards to accommodate more minorities’ argument. “However, as someone in this position, as someone who has said that diversity is important for science, I am disappointed,” she told The Wire.