Professor Shanti Pappu, Adjunct Professor, Archeology and History, SIAS has recently co-authored two articles.
Grinding stones from the neolithic “Ashmound” site of Budihal, India has been published in ScienceDirect. And proceeds of a conference in What Is the Acheulean? in Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews35 (2026).
Dr Sumitra Ranganathan, Associate Professor, Musics, SIAS participated in a 2-hour roundtable at the British Forum of Ethnomusicology Annual Conference on 9 April 2026. Titled ‘Entangling Past and Present: Connecting India’s Hidden Musical Histories to Ethnomusicology Today’, the five member hybrid roundtable featured work on neglected or erased fragments of North India’s musical story ranging from historically marginalised Muslim hereditary artisans, tawa’if performers and their ability to navigate multiple spaces, counter-narratives of Dhrupad music in regional courts, the neglected history of the Qawwal Bacche and its links to khayal, and the hidden figure of the cross-dressed male dancer in North India. The panel engaged questions of how digital methods can connect past with present, how today’s oral histories can be reconciled with past accounts, and crucially, the value of entangled, plural and ‘messy’ histories to counter ongoing marginalisation, intolerance, and majoritarian domination.
Trisha Putturaya, SIAS alum, has co-authored an article titled From Diversity to Monotony: Ecological Communities Are Homogenising with Professor Guha Dharmarajan, Professor, Biological Sciences, SIAS. The article has been published in Mongabay.
Dr Sambaiah Gundimeda, Associate Professor, Politics, SIAS has authored an essay in Frontline titled Ambedkar wouldn’t alter a comma. Will you?”
This essay examines how freedom of speech is tested not by outright prohibition, but by conditional invitations and institutional pressures. Using B.R. Ambedkar’s refusal to alter his ‘Annihilation of Caste’ speech for the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal in 1936 as a central example, it highlights the distinction between permission and autonomy. The piece argues that contemporary democracies face similar challenges, where defamation suits, regulatory actions, and institutional anxieties subtly narrow acceptable discourse. Ambedkar’s unwavering stance against censorship, even at the cost of exclusion, serves as a powerful lesson in intellectual courage and the preservation of expressive autonomy in an increasingly curated public sphere.
Dr Srajana Kaikini, Assistant Professor, Philosophy, SIAS’ recent poems Sonajhuri, A Little Thing, At a Protest, Jamun Pop ( ಸೋನಾಜ್ಹುರಿ, ಒಂದು ಸಣ್ಣ ಸಂಗತಿ, ಪ್ರತಿಭಟನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ, ನೇರಳೆ ಪಾಪ್ ) translated from English to Kannada by poet Prathibha Nandakumar, have been published by Kannada Prabha in their Yugadi Visheshanka (Yugadi Special Issue 2026).These are part of her forthcoming anthology of poems.
Dr Srajana’s translation of ‘Assembly Line: A Poet’s Reflection’ by Jayant Kaikini , from Kannada to English, is part of the anthology Unmechanical: Ritwik Ghatak in 50 Fragments edited by Shamya Dasgupta, commemorating Ritwik Ghatak’s cinematic legacy, published by Westland Books.
She is also the Associate Editor for the Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene – Pluriversal Perspectives project, edited by Nathanaël Wallenhorst and Christoph Wulf, being published by Springer-Nature in the ‘Major Reference Work’ series.
Professor TR Govindarajan, Visiting Professor, Physics, SIAS has penned an article on the fast breeder reactor in The Federal titled India’s PFBR reaches criticality: Milestone after years of delays and questions.
From Bhabha’s three-stage vision to delays, global experience, and questions over timing and approval, the article is a deep dive India’s Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) milestone.
Dr Rakesh Sengupta, Assistant Professor, Psychology, SIAS’ latest paper titled Bio-Inspired Variance Control: Decoupling Signaling Mode from Power Constraints in Neuromorphic Systems has been published and presented at the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Interdisciplinary Approaches in Technology and Management for Social Innovation (IATMSI) in Gwalior.
The paper tackles the problem statement on how as smart devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) grow, they consume massive amounts of power, and Current AI systems struggle to balance high performance with energy efficiency. The research for this study draws inspiration from how the human cerebral cortex operates, this paper introduces a new mathematical model called “Homeostatic Variance Control. By mimicking the brain’s natural mechanisms, we demonstrated a way for systems to seamlessly transition into highly sparse, energy-efficient states without altering their baseline power budget. This provides a rigorous new framework for designing sustainable, low-power AI for the future of cyber-physical systems.
Abstract
Advanced intelligent systems and IoT networks face a critical trade-off between signaling flexibility and power efficiency. Traditional rate-coding schemes often require shifting the mean activity to transmit information, incurring high energy costs that threaten system stability. Drawing inspiration from the Log-Normal firing regimes of the cerebral cortex, we propose a novel coding mechanism: Homeostatic Variance Control. We mathematically demonstrate that by modulating the variance of input noise (a proxy for neuromorphic gain), a system can dramatically shift its modal (most frequent) operating point toward sparsity while pinning its median resource consumption to a fixed homeostatic setpoint. We validate this mechanism using a Linear-Nonlinear-Poisson (LNP) simulation, showing that it enables a seamless transition between dense and sparse coding regimes without altering the baseline power budget. This bioinspired architecture offers a rigorous framework for designing resilient, energy-efficient Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) for resource-constrained cyber-physical applications.
A book chapter titled, Who is the vyomanaut? Understanding India’s human face in the new space race, penned by Sayantan Datta, Assistant Professor of Practice, Krew-CWP has been published in an ebook by The Hindu, titled India and the Second Space Race.
In this chapter, Sayantan reports on the upcoming launch of Gaganyaan, India’s first crewed space mission. Drawing upon the history of the cold war and the space race, Sayantan shows how the Gaganyaan mission is driven more by political symbolism instead of pure science. In doing so, Sayantan also shows how the mission’s aim of establishing an Indian identity in the stars is evidence for national prestige being still linked to a human presence in orbit.
About the Book
India and the Second Space Age is intended as an accessible guide through India’s ascent in the second Space Age. India is currently moving from a state-led monopoly towards a hybrid ecosystem. As the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) turns into a research-and-development unit, it will hand over the mantle of operational manufacturing and launch services to a burgeoning private sector, a shift that promises to unlock immense commercial value but also exposes the nation to unprecedented legal and diplomatic challenges. As India pursues human spaceflight and lunar mining, it must also reconcile its newfound desire for strategic prestige with the ethical demands of planetary protection. This collection provides a rigorous examination of these intersections. By analysing the structural, legal, and strategic choices currently reshaping the sector, this book serves as an essential record of how a nation, once celebrated for its “shoestring” successes, prepares to lead in an era where space is the latest frontier of global power.
Professor S Sivakumar, Dean – Research and Professor, Physics, SIAS has co-authored an article titled ‘Cloning’ hurdle skirted to make perfect copy of quantum state, published in The Hindu.
Article Blurb
The no-cloning theorem is a quantum physics rule that prohibits a user from perfectly duplicating unknown quantum states; researchers have now reported a way around it that could pave the way for technologies like quantum cloud storage, where data can be recovered even if servers fail.
Dr Sushant Raut, Assistant Professor of Physics, SIAS delivered the Tamil Nadu Science Forum’s 101st Popular Science Lecture. The session titled ‘Three quarks walk into a baryon: The new particle Xi_cc+ at LHC’ was held on 4 April 2026.
The talk was on the Xi_cc+ particle that was recently discovered at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, and was held at Anna Centenary Library, Chennai, attended by people across age groups who were interested in learning about new developments in particle physics.
