PUNE:When 80-year old Dr N H Wadia, director of Jaslok hospital and research centre, Mumbai, decided to join hands with several scientists in their 60s and 70s five years ago it was with a purpose. To take new knowledge to students. To encourage research blended learning.

What’s more there is no examination tension here. And so the Moving Academy of Medicine and Biomedicine was set up. The Who’s who in the world of science figures in the list of members that ranges from Dr Anita Borges, Head, surgical pathology, Raheja hospital, Mumbai, Dr S P Tripathy, former Director-General of Indian Council of Medical Research and Dr P N Tandon, Padmvibhushan and former President of the Indian National Science Academy among others.

Its brief is to encourage research. So it conducts mobile workshops in the remotest corners of the country to talk about nanotechnology and mapping of the human genome. But it is the consistent efforts of Dr M G Deo, Padmashree and former Director of Cancer Research Institute, Mumbai and Dr Sudha Gangal, immunologist and former director of the research society of the B J Wadia Children hospital that the moving academy has bloomed. In fact it is a moment of pride for the academy who is hosting a unique ‘Science Congress’ in Pune.

‘‘This is for the first time that a national conference of medical students research is being held,’’says an excited Deo who is the Vice-President of the Academy.

Says Wadia who is well known world over for first clinically describing the ‘hereditary cerebellar ataxia’, a balance disorder, ‘‘there is a gap between what is taught and what is known which in turn affects research.’’ This gap has to be bridged if India has to emerge as a global player in the field. The situation is so alarming in India that more than 80 per cent of medical colleges do no even apply for research grants, says Wadia.

So the only solution feel these scientists is in evolving novel highly cost effective strategies for speedy dissemination of new knowledge to the youth and simultaneously creating in them a research culture. Mobile workshops are held in respective colleges, conducted free of cost for students who also get gratis reading material.

The Academy has also set up a ‘eukaryote biotechnology training laboratory’ with basic equipment and sophisticated gadgets like a fluorescent microscope, thermal cylcer, vertical and horizontal gel and paper electrophoresis specially for students who get an opportunity to perform experiments. With a modest capital of Rs 13,000, over the last four years, the academy’s various programmes have received Rs 13 million in grants from several national and international agencies including ICMR, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Department of Atomic Energy, Indo-French Centre for Promotion of Advance Research and Sir Dorabji Tata Trust among others.

So what drives these scientists who could well lead a peaceful retired life rather than traveling from Simla to Coimbatore? It is important to motivate youngsters. We need to start early, you see, says the octogenarian Wadia. Ideally research should commence at age 25 so that the best output is at age 40,’’ insists Wadia.

Deo however is a bundle of energy as he attends calls, monitors sessions, coordinates dinner sessions of students with `happening’ professors and today is happy that the number of medical students getting studentships for short term medical research from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has been increasing. The number of scholarships went up to 500 and 700 in 2005 and 2006 respectively.

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