Chemical Ecology and NCBS
With this rich historical backdrop, we now stand at the crossroads of a new era: the information age. The plethora of newly available information capabilities provides an unprecedented opportunity to unite the chemical, ecological, evolutionary and behavioral underpinnings of experimental biology and chemical ecology. We are thus presented with a grand challenge to train a new type of scientist who can fuse ecological, analytical, and computational approaches seamlessly. Given the opportunities provided by the information revolution and the ecological and experimental methods of chemical ecology, we can now train a new generation of scientists adept at mining the plethora of available information and communications technologies as well as intimate with traditional analytical and ecological approaches.
NCBS has a tradition of strength in biochemistry, biophysics and behavioral neuroscience. More recently, NCBS has built strengths in organismal biology, ecology and evolution. Chemical ecology is a natural interface between these strengths. This realization has led to the creation of a new focus in Chemical Ecology at NCBS. Such multidisciplinary biological research could leverage the remarkable biodiversity of India with recently developed analytical methodologies that have been installed at NCBS and other partner institutes.