Visit of Mr. Ganesh, founder of IISER Pune and Tirupati
On 20th January 2023, Nathalie Carrasco and Philippe Maître, respectively President and Vice-President in charge of Research Strategy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) Paris-Saclay, received Professor Krishna Ganesh, Director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Tirupati.
A strategic partner...
IISER Tirupati is part of an IISER network comprising 6 other institutes: Berhampur, Bhopal, Kolkata, Mohali, Pune, and Thiruvananthapuram. It has a strong strategic alliance with the French Ecoles Normales Supérieures (Lyon, Paris, Paris-Saclay and Rennes) since 2017. These institutions are very similar to the ENS in size, intensity of research activities, cutting edge education, research dealing with challenging societal issues, as well as their high degree of inter-disciplinary synergy, and their strong ties to national research organisations.
... with a promising future
Following a joint presentation of the two institutions, discussions covered current projects, such as the BIOSANTEXC projectBIOSANTEXC project, which won the call for projects from the Franco-Indian Campus for health sciences (disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches) and in which the ENS and IISER networks are both involved. The project is in the process of being implemented and will make possible the development of blended training and internship mobility at Master's and PhD levels, as well as teaching and research mobility through the organisation of scientific workshops.
Mr Ganesh, founder of the first IISER in Pune, was then invited to visit the Biology and Applied Pharmacology Laboratory (LBPA) – Laboratoire de Biologie et de Pharmacologie Appliquée) where he discussed nucleic acids and peptides with its director Eric Deprez, CNRS researcher Brahim Heddi, and Biosantexc scientific coordinator and director of the biology Teaching and Research Department (DER – Département d’Enseignement et de Recherche) Gérald Peyroche. The visit continued at the Supramolecular and Macromolecular Photophysics and Photochemistry Laboratory (PPSM) – Photophysique et Photochimie Supramoléculaires et Macromoléculaires) where researchers Gilles Clavier, Isabelle Leray, and Joanne Xie had the opportunity to present their work on photoactive molecules.
From left to right: Krishna Ganesh, Gérald Peyroche, Eric Deprez and Brahim Heddi
Joanne Xie, Krishna Ganesh, Gilles Clavier and Isabelle Leray
This visit helped to identify several avenues of collaboration of common interest.