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.

... contd.