The Institute of Mathematical Sciences

In Search of Language X

Peggy Mohan was born in Trinidad, West Indies. She studied linguistics at the University of the West Indies, and completed her PhD in linguistics from the University of Michigan in 1978. She has taught linguistics at Howard University, Washington D.C., Jawaharlal Nehru University and Ashoka University, and mass communications at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She is the author of Wanderers, Kings, Merchants, (Penguin Random House 2021) which won the Mathrubhumi Book of the Year Award. Her latest book is Father Tongue, Motherland (Penguin Random House 2025). She lives in New Delhi.

Ceramics: a conversation between art and science

Evgenia Gladkaya was born in 1976 to a family of artists in St. Petersburg. Inspired by her parents who were ceramic artists, she graduated from the Academy of Art and Design in St. Petersburg. She is a sculptor, painter and theatre artist who has been teaching ceramic arts and painting over several decades. Her work has won several awards and is a part of museum collections in Russia. She first came to India twenty years ago fascinated by its art forms and for the past six years has been living and working in Auroville.

Who Needs the Past ? Rethinking Muziris, ancient India's gateway to the world

Professor P. J. Cherian is the Director of the PAMA Institute for the Advancement of Transdisciplinary Archaeological Sciences at the Pattanam Archaeological site in Ernakulam district, Kerala. He served as the State Editor of the Kerala Gazetteers Department (1999–2001) and was the founding Director of the Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) Professor Cherian has led the Pattanam excavations from 2006 to 2023. He has participated in archaeological studies and excavations in four continents and transformed the Pattanam excavations into a major international research project. See this link of his publications related to Pattanam Archaeological Research. Currently, in addition to continuing excavation and exploration activities, he is involved in the projects “Little Heavens are Possible,” aiming to transform Pattanam into a World Heritage site, and the establishment of the Museum of Sangam Age Culture at PAMA’s Aluva premises.

The AI+AI Project: Using Artificial Intelligence to help Decode the Ancient Indus Script

Omar Khan is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Columbia and Stanford Universities. He is based at San Francisco where he recently retired as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Common Sense Media which he helped start in 2004. He is well known in the community of scholars and enthusiasts interested in the Indus Valley Civilization for establishing and developing the website Harappa.com from 1995. He also collects and researches early photography and ephemera of the subcontinent and is author of two books, Paper Jewels Postcards from the Raj (Mapin/Alkazi, 2018) and From Kashmir to Kabul The Photographs ofJohn Burke and William Baker 1860-1900 (Mapin/Prestel, 2002).

Manifesting Love for Wildlife through Photography

Reluctant city dwellers, Ananth and Diana find peace amid nature. Perpetually bitten by the “jungle” bug, they thrive on exploring the various facets of wildlife through photography. The long hours that they have spent tracking and capturing animals has led them to appreciate and understand the natural world and its influence on humans. In this talk, they will share their experience of watching animals, their mannerisms and quirks at close quarters through the lens of a camera.

Board-gaming for Leisure, Education, and Research

Jyothi Krishnan has held various roles — programmer, bridge engineer, research mathematician, and school teacher. While doing her PhD, she discovered modern board games. Recognising their potential to contextualise mathematical concepts, she created a unique job at an alternative school in Bangalore, where she spent four years playing games with children. Now at IIT Gandhinagar, she combines her love for games and mathematics, designing and analysing games.

The Magic of Numbers - Finding numerals on ancient temples

Trained in Sanskrit and Archaeology, Himanshu Prabha Ray is Research Fellow, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, Oxford and series editor, Routledge Archaeology and Religion in South Asia. She earlier taught at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University and was the first Chairperson of the National Monuments Authority, Government of India.

Why all the foreign words? Questioning the plurilingual in the making of poems.

Fióna Bolger is a poet and creative facilitator. She lived in Chennai for 8 years but is now back in Dublin. She has published two collections, A Compound of Words (Yoda Press, Delhi) and Love in the Original Language (Salmon Poetry, Ireland). She is interested in plurilingual poetry and its possibilities.

Ways of the Virus

Dr. Chitra Pattabiraman is a virologist/molecular biologist who uses genomic tools (sequencing) to identify pathogens. She obtained her Int-PhD in Life Sciences from NCBS, TIFR Bengaluru. Dr. Pattabiraman has been awarded the SERB-Royal Society Newton International Fellowship and the India Alliance Early Career Fellowship for postdoctoral work on brain infections. She now consults with multiple organizations on projects related to infectious diseases, emerging infections and public health in India.

Photography - A language of perspective, process and purpose

Shuchi Kapoor is a documentary photojournalist from India and is the Co-Founder of the Chennai Photo Biennale Foundation - an initiative that facilitates learning and promotion of photography as practice and an art form. Shuchi works at the intersections of visual storytelling as a medium of critical inquiry and is deeply curious about regimes of representation and visual cultures. She is a Dart Asia-Pac Fellow and was awarded the fellowship on Trauma & Journalism (2015). Her work has been published in national and international publications. While her origins are from Gujarat & Delhi, she is now based in Chennai, where she shapes community engagement, inclusivity initiatives, education programs, and partnerships at the Chennai Photo Biennale Foundation and the CPB Learning Lab. Follow her on @girlinthegalli and @chennaiphotobiennale @cpblearninglab.

Living in Science - Scholar or Scribe

Shubashree Desikan is an Associate Editor with IIT Madras Shaastra magazine. She is also on the editorial board of Confluence, an online space for ideas supported by Indian Academy of Sciences Bangalore. She has spent a decade as a science journalist with the Hindu. She is an IMSc alum with PhD in condensed matter theory.