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Reflections for the Year 2024 New year greetings. Let us wish ourselves a productive and peaceful 2025. Future historians may remember the year 2024 for several social, economic, and political changes/upheavals, real or perceived, of this year. In Science, among many others, we had an exciting announcement of a complete wiring map (connectome) of an adult brain of Drosophila and a worrying news of further increase in global average temperature, moving above 1.5 degrees celsius (Bengaluru had its impact both ways. Extremely hot and dry pre-summer days and incessant rains during post-monsoon days). While the former will help push the frontiers of brain science (across all model organisms and humans) further, the latter should motivate us to take up “climate change biology” to discover fundamental mechanisms of adaptation to fast fast-changing environments at cellular, organismal, population and ecosystem levels. Long-term ecological monitoring is key, and I am happy that NCBS faculty and students are scaling up their work in this area. What started as a fun interaction with ChatGPT in 2023, we are now in a full-blown AI world. All our IT and computational tools are upgraded, helping us do our research more effectively and perhaps taking us to newer avenues, although sometimes AI is irritatingly overbearing in giving free suggestions. Nevertheless, the integration of AI tools in research is bound to accelerate scientific discoveries. Several opportunities and grants have come to the NCBS community to integrate AI tools in our research. I hope to have some breakthroughs from NCBS (and other places globally) across scales of biology - origin of life, cellular organisation and physiology, neuroscience, ecology, etc. At NCBS, we welcomed two new faculty this year (Abhilasha Joshi and Meghna Krishnadas), several new staff and students. While the number of publications from NCBS is yet to reach pre-COVID times, quality is well maintained. This year, we saw many accomplished scientists taking over the academic leadership positions of the Centre. This year too, our faculty have received major peer recognitions. Uma Ramakrishnan was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (and so was Vijay Chandru, a visiting scientist at NCBS). This year, 4 of our faculty were elected National Science Academies (Deepa Agashe, Sanjay Sane, Sandeep Krishna and Shivaprasad); Madan Rao and Sowdhamini were recognised and awarded by the Karnataka State Council for Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka. Throughout the year NCBS was buzzing with activities from our Archives, Science communication, popularisation, educational outreach teams. We were also more visible in the city through several training and awareness workshops that we organised on AMR, environmental surveillance for human and animal pathogens, and through joint activities with NIMHANS, Science Gallery Bengaluru, Visweswarayya Science and Technology Museum etc. While greeting all@NCBS for the new year, let me take this opportunity to thank all our scientific, technical and administrative staff for their wonderful support and help. As we move from 2024 to 2025, I am confident that our accounts and finance staff will smoothly sail us from CNA (the Scheduled Commercial Bank-led fund flow system) to TSA (Treasury Single Account@RBI-led fund flow system). They, as always, know how to adapt and to help us adapt. LS Shashidhara |