Ashoka International Summer Research Programme (AISRP)

Developing C. elegans model to investigate Pseudomonas aeruginosa pathogenesis

Faculty: Anup Padmanabhan, Assistant Professor of Biology, Ashoka University

Co-supervisor name: Tanushree Sinha

Department/Research Centre: Biology

Project Description: Pseudomonas infects a wide variety of hosts , ranging from plants to humans. How is a single pathogen able to infect wide variety of hosts ? Does it involve a shared mechanism or does the pathogen employ distinct methods to different hosts ? We will investigate these questions using the soil nematode, C. elegans as a model host. We will employ a wide variety genetics, biochemistry and cell biology techniques in this project.

Duration (in weeks): 10 weeks (15 June – 24 August)

Start date: 5/18/2026

End date: 7/31/2026

Level of Interns: Senior Undergraduates or Master’s Students

Max Number of interns accepted on this project: 2

Project type: Lab project

Technical skill/knowledge requisites: Commitment, hard working and Basic Lab etiquette

Communication and quantitative cognition in insects and fish

Faculty: Bittu K R, Associate Professor of Biology and Psychology, Ashoka University

Co-supervisor name: NONE

Department/Research Centre: Biology and Psychology

Project Description: Our lab works on various puzzles in animal communication, sensation and cognition, and the evolution and ecology of neural systems.
We work on 3 main projects in the lab:
We look at the structural and neurophysiological adaptations that enable cricket/bushcricket song: on the systems involved in song production and song perception, acoustic niche partitioning and masking, song localization, predator avoidance and eavesdropping.
Quantitative and mathematical cognition in zebrafish and dogs: How do our brains produce math? We investigate this question at a behavioural level in both zebrafish and dogs, with an aim to establish zebrafish as an attractive neural model system for this behaviour.
Neuroeconomics in zebrafish: We are interested in quantitative decision making between various “goods” of interest to zebrafish, as part of a collaborative project to set up a zebrafish model system for economic decision making. We can then work with collaborators to examine the neural basis of these behaviours using calcium imaging of the whole brain in awake, behaving fish.

Duration (in weeks): 6 weeks (July – August)

Start date: 07/01/2026

End date: 8/15/2026

Level of Interns: Senior Undergraduates or Master’s Students

Max Number of interns accepted on this project: 3

Project type: Combination of field & lab project

Technical skill/knowledge requisites: No, just enthusiasm for the field

Semantic Modeling of Indian Parliamentary Discourse

Faculty: Aalok Thakkar, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Ashoka University

Co-supervisor name: None

Department/Research Centre: Department of Computer Science

Project Description: Parliamentary debates are among the most consequential forms of political discourse in a democracy, shaping policy, ideology, and public reasoning. Yet, despite their historical and analytical value, the proceedings of the Indian Parliament largely remain as vast archives of unstructured text—difficult to search, analyse, or interpret systematically. This project aims to design a computational system that structures and analyses this discourse through multi-layered semantic modelling and logical provenance tracking. By integrating methods from Natural Language Processing (NLP), knowledge representation, and automated reasoning, the project will transform parliamentary text into a structured, explainable, and queryable resource for political and linguistic analysis.

The core methodology involves a multi-layered semantic categorisation of debate transcripts. Using transformer-based language models fine-tuned for Indian political language, the system will automatically tag speech segments. The categorisation schema includes: Policy Domain (e.g., economy, defence, agriculture); Stance Polarity (support, opposition, neutral); Speech Act (e.g., assertion, rebuttal, question); and Rhetorical Device, with a specific focus on identifying the use of poetry, literary allusions, and cultural metaphors. A further layer of analysis will classify the Content of Debate, distinguishing between procedural motions, legislative details, constituency concerns, and ideological rhetoric. This tagged data will populate a provenance knowledge graph, linking claims and tracking their evolution. The final deliverable is an interactive tool for researchers to query this structured corpus, enabling systematic analysis of how specific topics, rhetorical strategies, and arguments develop over time.

Duration (in weeks): 10 weeks (15 June – 24 August)

Start date: 5/01/2026

End date: 8/31/2026

Level of Interns: Senior Undergraduates or Master’s Students

Max Number of interns accepted on this project: 3

Project type: Lab Project

Technical skill/knowledge requisites: Python Programming, Basic ML

AI for sustainability

Faculty: Meghna Agarwala, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Ashoka University

Co-supervisor name: Shikhar Srivastava

Department/Research Centre: Environmental Studies

Project Description: AI/ML allows faster processing of data, imagery, acoustics from various sources, thus expediting our ability to identify, quantify, differentiate and understand. In this project, students with pre-existing skills in data analysis–whether statistics or ML–will use these skills to answer important questions related with environmental history, forest use and well-being, and develop products for aiding conservation such as early warning systems and other detectors. Please look at my website for more details.

Duration (in weeks): 10 weeks (June – August)

Start date: 5/15/2026

End date: 7/14/2026

Level of Interns: Senior Undergraduates or Master’s Students

Max Number of interns accepted on this project: 3

Project type: Lab project

Technical skill/knowledge requisites: AI/ML, statistics

The Critic as Artist: An Autoethnography of World Literature

Faculty: Saikat Majumdar, Head of the Department of English, Professor of English and Creative Writing, Ashoka University

Co-supervisor name: NONE

Department/Research Centre: English & Creative Writing

Project Description: I’m looking to appoint an editorial/research assistant for my forthcoming book, “The Critic as Artist: An Autoethnography of World Literature” (New York: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2027). BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK: “The Critic as Artist: An Autoethnography of World Literature” looks at the natural entanglements of intellectual analysis and imaginative creation through the fused sensibility of what is sometimes called creative criticism. While acknowledging canonical western practices in this field, such as by the English and the German Romantic poets and philosophers, and practitioners such Matthew Arnold and T.S. Eliot, it seeks to shift the primary focus of this entanglement to questions of embattled and marginal identities, which also shapes its activist form. Key here are the radically imaginative criticisms of Kamau Braithwaite on language, nation and poetic voice in the Caribbean, language and power in sub-Saharan Africa by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, experimentation, autoethnography, teaching, and activism in the works of Alice Walker and Trinh T. Minh-Ha, ancient performative and communal traditions in the critical essays and A.K. Ramanujan, and marginal aesthetic and literary traditions in the work of Zadie Smith, Amit Chaudhuri and Hoshang Merchant. These thinkers are preoccupied with themes that cannot be neither exclusively theorized, nor exclusively embodied: tradition, materiality, voice, form and performance, teaching and community, culture, literacy and orality, place and home – realities where the transparency of the referential argument conflicts with the unexpected polemics of sensory life.

Duration (in weeks): 8-10 weeks (June -August with flexible dates)

Start date: 6/6/2026

End date: 8/6/2026

Level of Interns: Senior Undergraduates or Master’s Students

Max Number of interns accepted on this project: 2

Project type: Online

Technical skill/knowledge requisites: Should be an advanced student of literature, senior undergraduate, Masters, or Ph.D. Background in creative writing welcome but not essential.

Geostatistical Modeling for Enhanced Rock Weathering

Faculty: Aalok Thakkar, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Ashoka University

Co-supervisor name: None

Department/Research Centre: Department of Computer Science

Project Description: This project develops a computational and statistical framework to rigorously quantify the carbon sequestration potential of Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW). ERW is a negative-emissions technology that involves applying crushed silicate minerals to soils, but its efficacy is highly dependent on spatially variable factors like soil chemistry, hydrology, and mineralogy. The core challenge is to move from point-based field measurements to robust, landscape-scale predictions with mathematically sound uncertainty quantification. Our approach centres on constructing spatially explicit models that provide formal guarantees on prediction confidence and derive lower bounds on carbon removal estimates, which are critical for the credibility of carbon markets.

The methodological foundation employs hierarchical Bayesian models, primarily Gaussian Process (GP) regression, to create probabilistic surfaces of key ERW variables. This provides a formal guarantee: for any given region, we can compute a high-probability confidence interval for the carbon drawdown rate, enabling stakeholders to make decisions based on worst-case scenarios (lower bounds) rather than optimistic averages. A critical component of ensuring these guarantees is optimal spatial sampling. Data collection for ERW is expensive, making the efficiency of measurement campaigns paramount. We frame this as an optimal experimental design problem.

The final deliverable is a decision-support system that outputs maps of predicted carbon sequestration with statistical certainty. This framework provides the necessary computational rigour to underpin verification in carbon markets, offering defensible, conservative estimates of ERW efficacy that are essential for risk assessment, policy-making, and scalable deployment.

Duration (in weeks): 10 weeks (15 June – 24 August)

Start date: 5/01/2026

End date: 8/31/2026

Level of Interns: Senior Undergraduates or Master’s Students

Max Number of interns accepted on this project: 3

Project type: Lab Project

Technical skill/knowledge requisites: Statistics, Programming

RNA dynamics inside biological condensates

Faculty: Sandeep Ameta, Assistant Professor of Biology, Ashoka University

Co-supervisor name: NONE

Department/Research Centre: Biology

Project Description: Liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) is a fundamental process integral to biological systems. Owing to their spontaneous formation, LLPS droplets have also been envisioned as model protocells that drive pre-cellular evolution by supporting several biomolecular functions crucial to the emergence of life on the early Earth. Despite these crucial roles, the internal dynamics of the microenvironment of LLPS droplets remain poorly understood, and we lack mechanistic details on how the internal packing of these phase-separated droplets drives the dynamics of the encapsulated molecules. The LLPS droplets, in addition to being densely packed, are very heterogeneous inside. There is evidence of the formation of a dynamic polymer meshwork or percolated network, resulting in different behaviours of interacting and encapsulated biomolecules compared with a well-mixed, diluted solution due to diffusion-limited and volume-exclusion effects. One way to elucidate dynamics is to apply FCS- and FCCS-based methods to measure the dynamics of the encapsulated macromolecule within these droplets at unprecedented resolution. Employing biochemical and biophysical approaches, our lab aims to develop a quantitative understanding of the parameters governing the dynamics of functional RNAs in the complex environment of LLPS at high spatiotemporal resolution.
Interested students will select one of the protein condensate systems in the lab and elucidate the dynamics of RNA-protein interactions within the LLPS environment.

Duration (in weeks): 8-10 weeks (June -August with flexible dates)

Start date: 7/1/2026

End date: 8/31/2026

Level of Interns: Senior Undergraduates or Master’s Students

Max Number of interns accepted on this project: 1

Project type: Lab project

Technical skill/knowledge requisites: Interest in Biophysics

Why (only) Some Cities Thrive

Faculty: Priyam Verma, Assistant Professor of Economics, Ashoka University

Co-supervisor name: Abhishek Rai

Department/Research Centre: Department of Economics

Project Description: As India continues to urbanize, an increasing share of national economic growth will be generated by its cities. The pace at which individual cities grow depends critically on their ability to produce goods and services for markets beyond the local economy. Cities with strong tradable sectors can tap into external demand, allowing firms to scale up and benefit from economies of scale, learning-by-doing, and agglomeration effects. Following the emerging urban economics literature, we refer to such cities as production cities. In contrast, consumption cities are dominated by non-tradable activities—such as retail, healthcare, education, and construction—and are therefore constrained by local purchasing power, limiting their long-run growth potential.

In India, tradable activity remains highly concentrated in a small number of large metropolitan areas, while most tier-2 and tier-3 cities continue to rely heavily on locally oriented consumption sectors. Understanding why only a subset of Indian cities has evolved into production cities requires examining two interrelated mechanisms. First, the internal spatial organization of economic activity within cities—including commuting infrastructure, land-use regulations, and the spatial proximity and interaction between formal and informal firms—shapes productivity and labor market access. Second, transport connectivity across cities determines access to external markets and intermediate inputs, influencing firms’ incentives to specialize in tradable production. The interaction between these intra-city frictions and inter-city market access ultimately determines whether a city becomes a production hub or remains a consumption center.

This project seeks to explain the uneven emergence of tradable specialization across Indian cities by jointly quantifying the roles of internal urban frictions and external connectivity. The analysis is organized around three core questions. First, how do within-city spatial patterns of firms and residents differ between production and consumption cities? Second, are differences in tradable specialization driven more by internal constraints—such as commuting costs and land-use restrictions—or by external factors related to market access and trade costs? Third, how does a city’s internal geography shape access to economic opportunities, particularly for women seeking formal-sector employment?

Duration (in weeks): 8-10 weeks (June -August with flexible dates)

Start date: 5/1/2026

End date: 6/30/2026

Level of Interns: Master’s Students

Max Number of interns accepted on this project: 2

Project type: Lab project

Technical skill/knowledge requisites: QGIS, MATLAB or Python