I was in the fourth year of an exciting and fulfilling PhD journey at IGIB, Delhi, and it was time to diversify my skill set. I, therefore, started exploring options for a challenging postdoc position. I managed to convince Prof. Bernhard Palsson at University of California San Diego to sponsor a visit to his research group to discuss my research plan and explore the available learning opportunities. I must admit I was very nervous about my upcoming interaction with his research group because I was trained as an experimental biologist while Prof. Palsson’s research focus is computational systems biology. However, Prof. Palsson and his group were extremely welcoming and encouraging. After a day-long interaction we agreed upon a few interesting projects and before I landed back in India, my offer letter found its way to my inbox.
My PhD supervisor and doctoral advisory committee members were extremely supportive which allowed me to complete my PhD requirements before the end of the fifth year. Well, then what! I married the love of my life, Manisha, and flew to Sunny San Diego. It was all going smooth till I attended the first lab meeting in my postdoc lab. Three back-to-back computational biology talks! My poor brain could not comprehend a thing. Second lab meeting was no different and so were many subsequent meetings. It was getting stressful and at one point I started thinking about changing the lab. As beautifully said by Aristotle Onassis “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” And here I stumbled upon a serendipitous discovery that finally appeared in Nature Microbiology. This provided me the much needed motivation and positivity to make the best use of the existing resources. Soon I realized that I was surrounded by some extremely talented computational biologist whose expertise can directly feed into my projects. This collaborative saga resulted in some interesting scientific findings leading to a series of high quality scientific publications.
On the personal front things were equally exciting. San Diego is an awesome city. If Firdaus would have visited the city, I can bet he would have said these lines for San Diego “Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast.” We made some great friends, visited many places. While everything was sailing smooth, there was something missing. Our families and the sense of belongingness! Also, we were very clear from the start that after spending a few years we would return back to India, if we find a suitable opportunity. Fortunately, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research welcomed us to this beautiful city Mumbai and offered me to set up a research group. So here came the end of five extremely satisfying, productive and fun filled years of my postdoc life. Oh.. did I mention that we welcomed our little champ, Ved, just a couple of months before our departure from the USA.
Let us see what the future holds for us!
Cover picture Credit: Aastha Vatsyayan
Amitesh Anand is a science enthusiast. He is leading a research group at TIFR, Mumbai, working in the field of microbial systems and synthetic biology. His interest is in understanding the interplay of microbial energetics and stress response pathways