Indulging His Passion for Science

Interview with IdeaConnection Problem Solver Budhi Sagar Tiwari Budhi Sagar Tiwari earned his PhD at one of India’s premier higher education institutions, Banaras Hindu University. His work investigated the ability of cyanobacterium to survive extreme desiccation.

Later he took up a post doctoral research fellow position at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and studied programmed cell death. He currently heads up his own plant biology lab at the School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, having accepted an invitation from the government of India. His research interests include programmed cell death, plant biotechnology, oxidative stress and cyanobacteria.

Crop Yield Idea Rally

Budhi heard about IdeaConnection from his friends, took a look at the website, liked what he saw and decided to take part in an idea rally about crop yield, “I knew there would be debates and discussion going on and as science is my passion I wanted to indulge myself by taking part and contributing my own ideas,” he said.

The Crop Yield Idea Rally was sponsored by a global agribusiness and was a week-long brainstorm with a filtered group of experts who were tasked with coming up with ideas for increasing crop yield. Being a busy scientist Budhi logged into the rally whenever he could, “I got involved in interesting discussions with other scientists” he adds. And for one of his ideas – delaying senescence to increase crop yield – he was awarded a $1,000 prize.

That scientists from all over the globe were involved in this one project is something that made a deep impression on him, “It is a marvellous idea to put all the people throughout the globe interested in one field on one platform.”

Budhi says he has a deep and abiding passion for science and believes that this is essential for scientists no matter their field. One of his motivations is his intense curiosity about nature, “the miracle of nature” and what can be learned by how it is viewed.

Perception of Nature

He values the ability of individuals to see something in nature that others do not; pointing out by way of example that Newton was the only person who could feel that if an apple is falling from a tree to the ground it must be doing so because of a force acting on it.

It is stories like these that help to fuel his drive for a deeper understanding of the natural world.