The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai held the eighth edition of its annual public event ‘Science at the Sabha’ on 9th February 2025 at the Music Academy, Chennai. This year, it was attended by close to 600 members of the general public who heard talks from four eminent scientists across Indian institutes on topics from ecology to mathematics. The four-course offering gave the audience a taste of research ranging from the challenges of nest relocation in ants, a deceptively simple open problem in number theory, the two sides of Artificial Intelligence, and disordered systems from man-made to natural materials.
The flagship event hosted by IMSc has been an annual affair since 2016 except for a two-year pause during the pandemic. The format was conceived by former faculty members Gautam Menon (now at Ashoka University) and KN Raghavan (retired from IMSc and now at Krea University) as an occasion where the public could catch glimpses of the science done in Indian institutions. “In other countries, there are specific days dedicated to science where people can walk in at events,” Raghavan says. “There is no dearth of science institutions in Chennai but we don’t know what they do,” he adds, highlighting the lack of public science events in India. The venue of Music Academy, a cultural landmark where most editions of Science at the Sabha have taken place, was also a conscious choice. “We didn’t want it to be in a scientific institution,” he says. “It was a deliberate decision for scientists to come out of their shells.”
Annagiri Sumana from IISER Kolkata gave a talk on ‘Challenges of relocation: Case study of ants’. (Photo: IMSc Media)
This year, the event opened with a talk by Annagiri Sumana, a Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata. She spoke about the difficulties of moving house with family, bag and baggage. But in ants, which are among the most diverse and abundant animals inhabiting Earth for over a hundred million years. She described her group’s research studying the challenges of nest relocation in the ant species, Diacamma indicum. “We have individual records of all of the ants in the nest,” Sumana said, about marking each ant in a colony to observe its behaviour to answer research questions. She walked the audience through her team's various experiments and explained their findings. They found that leader ants accompany other members of a colony to a new nest site by guiding each individual using physical contact. The adult ants easily carry the young ones with them as they relocate, solve problems cooperatively and the leaders efficiently navigate to find a new nest site in an unknown terrain.
UK Anandavardhanan from IIT Bombay presented ‘A gentle invitation to number theory’. (Photo: IMSc Media)
This was followed by a talk by UK Anandavardhanan, a Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. He illustrated the enigma of open problems in mathematics that are easy to state but difficult to prove using the congruent number problem. He led the audience through natural numbers (counting numbers), rational numbers (fraction of two natural numbers) and right-angled triangles. An enthusiastic audience prompted him with answers along the way. He defined a congruent number as one that can be expressed as the area of a right-angled triangle whose sides have rational numbers as their lengths. The problem has to do with identifying numbers that are congruent and those that are not. He gave us glimpses of the different ways in which mathematicians have approached the problem, often building on the audience’s collective intuition for patterns. “Taking a problem and putting it into a new perspective can present new insights,” he said, discussing one possible route to solving this centuries-old problem. “There has been great progress towards the problem, but we are far from fully solving it,” he said.
Richa Singh from IIT Jodhpur spoke about ‘Shadows and Light: The thrilling odyssey of trusted AI’. (Photo: IMSc Media)
The third installment at the event was by Richa Singh, a Professor at IIT Jodhpur. She presented case studies highlighting the positive and negative aspects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) drawing from her lab’s research. She spoke about face-recognition models developed by her research group that helped identify over a hundred victims of the Balasore train accident. She also gave examples of algorithms developed by her lab that have helped law enforcement solve cases. Speaking about the negative side of AI, she pointed out that concerns usually arise when AI tools are used with malintent or when the technology is inaccurate. She gave examples of how deepfakes can be used to victimise people or spread misinformation and how biases in data used to train AI models can lead to poor performance. “It is important to understand nuances of cultural, geographic and demographic sensitivities,” she stressed.
Pinaki Chaudhuri from IMSc Chennai presented a talk titled ‘In a disordered world’. (Photo: IMSc Media)Pinaki Chaudhuri, a faculty member at IMSc Chennai, spoke about disordered systems and their properties, drawing examples from familiar materials and phenomena. He started by pointing out how we think of solids, liquids and gases as lying along a spectrum of ordered to disordered matter. However, some solids, such as glass, can have a disordered structure of molecular arrangement that gives rise to unique properties. These structures arise due to interactions between particles and the energetic costs of their rearrangements, which are studied using computer models. Pinaki discussed the mechanical properties of fracture and flow in disordered solids such as metallic glass, ketchup and tar. “It can help us identify weak spots, predict the precursors of structural failure and even prevent failure,” he said. Zooming out, he discussed how phenomena such as avalanches, cellular traffic and even crowd behaviour in a music concert can be studied through the lens of disordered systems.
A poster series on ‘IMSc Research Snapshots 2024’ was displayed outside the Music Academy auditorium. (Photo: IMSc Media)
Apart from the talks, a poster series showcasing new research from IMSc across the disciplines of maths, computer science, physics and biology caught public attention in this year’s Science at the Sabha. These posters and additional resources can be accessed here. In previous years, some of the themes for the poster series included ‘Indian Women in Science’ and ‘Science, Education and Public Service in Chennai’ and ‘Climate Change’.
Close to 600 people from the general public attended Science at the Sabha 2025. (Photo: IMSc Media)
“Each year, the event is attended by hundreds of people. In the past, we have had eminent Indian scientists from a range of fields from astronomy to molecular biology talk about current scientific advances,” says Varuni Prabhakar, from the IMSc Outreach office. “Questions from the audience, especially children, in the earlier editions, have displayed great levels of curiosity and wonder for science,” says her colleague Manikandan Sambasivam. Even this year, the audience posed many interesting questions which were answered by the speakers: How can one come up with a conjecture in mathematics? Why do ants steal young ones from their neighbouring colonies? What about the environmental costs of running AI models? How can packing problems help us design auditorium seating for optimal occupation and evacuation?
Speakers and the event moderator during the question and answer session. (Photo: IMSc Media)
Answering an audience question, the expertise of various speakers blended together when discussing how studying ant behaviour has given us ideas about drone formations and swarms, and how it is a rich source of several computer algorithms.
“It all comes together,” said Meena Mahajan, an IMSc faculty anchoring the event, about the deep connections between the various disciplines.
