Members

Faculty:  

Vishwesha Guttal, Associate Professor, CES, IISc. 

I am fascinated by almost all areas of basic sciences and in particular physics, ecology and evolution, but I try to limit myself to studying (a) collective animal behaviour (with a focus on evolutionary aspects and self-organized pattern formation), (b) self-organized spatial patterns in vegetation of semi-arid ecosystems (c) building simple yet “predictive” models of abrupt changes in complex dynamical systems. Prior to joining IISc, I was a postdoc in the group of Iain Couzin at Princeton University; and I did my PhD in Physics at The Ohio State University working with Prof. C Jayaprakash on theoretical ecology. My undergraduate education (Integrated MSc in Physics) was at IIT Kanpur.

Click here for a Curriculum Vitae.

During my graduate student days at Columbus, OH, I used volunteer for Association for India’s Development. Click here for Columbus chapter webpage.

Post-docs

Viraj Torsekar: I’m interested in how interspecies interactions shape the ecology and evolution of intraspecies interactions, and their consequences on the ecosystem. For my PhD with Rohini Balakrishnan at Indian Institute of Science, I investigated predator-prey interactions in the context of mate searching behaviour in the cricket-spider system. During my postdoctoral work with Dror Hawlena at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, I explored predation risk effects on population mating patterns and ecosystem effects of detritivores across an aridity gradient. In recent past, I have been interested in how individual behavioural decisions scale up to shape population patterns. I have largely explored these patterns and mechanisms using field experiments and am now interested in examining mechanisms underlying inter- and intraspecies interactions in schooling fish.

You can visit Viraj’s personal website https://torsekar.in/ and Google Scholar webpage. His twitter handle is @Torsay

Visiting Postdocs:

Aakanksha Rathore is a visiting post-doctoral researcher from Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, Konstanz, Germany. She obtained her PhD from our own lab (joingly with Kavita Isvaran) at CES. Akanksha’s PhD thesis was on collective behaviour of blackbuck herds, using field work, technology of drones, deep learning for image processes, and social network analyses to infer animal behaviour. Prior to that graduated from MNIT Jaipur with a B.tech in Information Technology. Subsequently, she worked as a software developer at SAP Labs for two years. Over the course of two years her inclination towards nature escalated to a point where it became inconceivable to work on anything else. So, she decided to break free and joined Nature Conservation Foundation in 2014.

You can check Akanksha’s thesis colloquium video here.  Or just see the thesis Synopsis!

You can check Akanksha’s publications here!

Vivek Hari Sridhar and Hemal Naik are two other visiting post-doctoral researchers from Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, Konstanz, Germany. They, along with Akanksha, are working on blackbuck lekking behaviour!

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PhD Students

Nitin Saxena (joint student with Kavita Isvaran): I am broadly interested in evolution and animal behaviour. I did my B.tech in Biotechnology from Jaipur National University. Soon after I joined as a project assistant in Dr. Vishwesha Guttal’s lab at CES in Jan 2014. Here I was trying to understand the pattern of evolution of collective movement in fish and birds across various taxa using phylogenetic approach. This built the basis for my current PhD work (started in Aug 2016) where I am looking into the evolution of migration in birds and interaction of different selection pressures in shaping the course of evolution. Among various other things that I love to try, I have found myself really engrossed with, is the idea of teaching and making learning a more fun and comprehensive experience. I would love to continue with my interests in the long run.

Shuaib: It was the BS-MS degree of IISER TVM that gave me a great exposure to different fields of science. I chose Biology as my major as my primary motivations was Evolutionary biology and Ecology. How humankind treats the natural resources in current world scenario and its effects on the existence of life on earth concerns me a lot. I strongly believe that various adversities faced in the modern world will be solved in future by the insights we will be acquiring from the studies related to nature and life. I am fascinated to continue my pursuit here at TEE Lab, being a part of it as a PhD student.

Tanveen Kaur Randhawa: I am a B.Tech. graduate in Biotechnology from IIT Roorkee. In 2015, I joined a biotech company, Thermofisher Scientific in Bangalore and worked for 10 months. Following that, I worked with Teach for India as a fellow (teacher) for 4 months. Post that, I took a break from work and was introduced to evolution and ecology through people working in the field, books and online resources. In 2017, I tried conducting a study on species-diversity of anurans in Bannerghatta National Park. I volunteered for a project on mating system in katydids under Rohini Balakrishnan. I am very fascinated about different facets of evolution and behaviour, and the history of life on Earth.

Vivek Jadhav: I graduated in 2020 from IISER Mohali with a masters in Physics. I am broadly interested in understanding collective behavior employing computational and theoretical methods. Previously, I have worked on developing game theoretical models to understand patterns in parental roles. For my Ph.D. work, I will be looking at the functional significance of collective motion.

Jahanvi Tiwari: I am fascinated by the idea of evolution and enjoy learning more about it. I did my BSc from Kumaon University, Nainital and Masters in Entomology from GB Pant University, Pantnagar. During my Masters thesis, I have worked on the biology, behaviour and ecofriendly management of wax moth. I have also worked on entomopathogenic fungus and bacteria under insect pathology and their utilization in sustainable agriculture. I have joined Dr. Vishwesha Guttal’s lab at IISc in July, 2022 as a Ph.D. student. Here, I will be broadly working on collective behaviour of fish schools and also maybe I can bring swarming insects to the lab. In my free time, I enjoy taking pictures of insects whenever I spot one.

Arshed Nabeel: I am broadly interested in collective phenomena, dynamical systems, and data-driven science. I obtained a Masters degree in Computer Science from IISc. Since then, I have dabbled in several interesting problem across fields, from social choice theory to neuroscience, from droplet microfluidics to collective animal behaviour. After a brief stint in the industry working as a deep learning engineer, I returned to academia in 2021, to study collective movement using data-driven approaches.

Outside work, you will often find me reading science fiction, sketching lonely robots, or obsessing over Formula 1.

Check Arshed’s Website: https://arshednabeel.wordpress.com

UG/Masters Students (2023-24)

Chandan Relekar — BS-MS student from IISc (physics). Most likely, will work on phase transitions in data-driven models of fish schools, jointly with Prof Sriram Ramaswamy at Physics Dept..  You can check out various cool animations of his project works here:  https://chanrt.github.io/

Prakhar Jaiswal is a BS-MS student from IISc (Biology Major) and working on empirically driven modelling of microbial systems, in collaboration with Samay Pande at MCBL IISc and Sandeep Krishna, NCBS.

Sudhanva is a BS-MS student from IISc (Physics Major). He will be working on analytical and computational models of stochastic eco-evolutionary systems.

Akanksha Singh  is a BS-MS student from IISER Mohali (Biology Major). She will be working on spatially-explicit computational models of lekking and female choice.

Juee Dhar is a BS-MS student from IISER Kolkata (Biology Major). She wil be working on experiments of mixed-species schooling in fish!

 Kingshuk Dutta is a BS-MS student from IISER Mohali (Math Major). He will be working on problems of cluster dynamics, from both real satellite datasets and simulations.

Pradyut Kumar is a student of BS Dual degree (ECE and Biology) from BITS Pilani. He will be working on image processing problems of fish schooling, in collaboration with Prof Sujith from IISER Bhopal.

Project Trainees: 

Ashish Eradath — a BS-MS student from IISER Behrampur (bio) — working on high resolution satellite imagery of semi-arid vegetation patterns. 

Akshay Sanjeev — a BS-MS student from IISER Kolkata (bio) — working on fish schooling experiments.