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Education & Academics |
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Compiled by Rauf Ali BITSians Running Wild BITSians have been known to pursue
alternate careers. Movies,
music, art, journalism, politics, social work. But nothing is quite as
unusual as the career that a handful of BITSians have taken up, working
in forests with monkeys, crocodiles, elephants, tigers and more. What is
common to each of them is the passion for their work, and the
fulfillment of their careers. These are their stories.
Rauf
Ali & The Liontailed Macaque
(72S04425) A spur of the moment
decision took me to the BITSAA concert in First, about myself.
I grew up in a family of zoologists, but never considered it a
career. Joined BITS in the
unassigned category, in those rare years when the experiment was tried.
Found a couple of Ph.D. types who were induced to come out of the closet
and go bird watching, usually in the thorn forests outside the campus. In
my second year, I decided I didn’t want to be an engineer, and all this
molecular bio stuff was boring. Luckily B.Sc. was offered for the last
time…. I started working on the
highly endangered liontailed macaque in an area now known as the
Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (as a Bombaywala let loose in rural
Tamil Nadu for the first time, you can imagine the problem with these
words!). I also did some work on bonnet monkeys at the same time and found
I had so much info on them that it made sense to write up my Ph.D.
dissertation on them. Which I did at I then made the mistake of
coming back to Most recently I’ve spent
the last couple of years in the Rauf
Ali
Jayashree
Ratnam & The Crocodiles A dreary PS2 in a grey New
Delhi, a couple of hikes in the Garhwal Himalayas and a trip to Corbett
National park, and I had the epiphany of my life: being a computer
scientist was clearly not for me. I returned home to Chennai to reexamine
my choices, and decided to work towards joining the Master’s program at
the Salim Ali School of Ecology in In what followed, I
graduated with a master’s under Rauf’s aegis, trained as a behavioral
ecologist. It was my good
fortune to wander the forests of southern In a truly strange series of
coincidences, I ended up studying decision-making behavior in bonnet
macaques in the Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve in southern As of the current moment, I
am a research scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Labs of Colorado
State University. I now study
patterns of herbivory and the morpho-physiological adaptations of trees in
the semi-arid and arid savannas of Jayashree
Ratnam
Mahesh Sankaran & The Tigers I boarded the bus for that
all too familiar trip from Pilani to ISBT for the last time in 1988.
M.Sc.(Tech) Computer Science is what the degree said.
I signed on the first dotted line proffered my way and plunged
headlong into the fiefdom of corporate overlords.(And also the world of
sleazy bars in Pondy where I got to know him and Jayu well-RA)
Two years and as many manic bosses later (most didn’t like being
called fools to their faces, a disease all of us seem to have picked
up-RA), I was through with the corporate world.
A hop across the pond found me in the cotton-pickin' South,
pursuing a Master's degree in Wildlife Sciences at For my dissertation, I
worked at the Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve in south Mahesh
Sankaran, Madhu Rao & Logging I had always wanted to be an
ecologist and as a keen outdoor person wanted to ensure I chose a career
where I spent most of my time in the wild. I completed the Bio.Sciences
degree at BITS as a start. I dropped computer science as a dual degree
much to everyone's horror. I was always quite keen to follow something
other than the usual professions and wildlife, nature and the like have
been a long-time favourite. So, I guess I am fortunate to be actually
making a living out of doing something I really enjoy and believe in. I
initially did a MS in Conservation Biology at Madhu Rao Arun Venkatraman & Elephants
What do wasps, Asiatic wild dogs and elephants have in common? Nothing
at all, apart from the wacky spectacle of a Wonky working on all these
diverse taxa through a series of events that were actually quite
connected. I was one of few
BITSIANs who steadfastly refused to do a dual degree, despite considerable
family and peer pressure, preferring to pass out with a M.Sc. Bio. degree.
Armed with superficial wisdom in everything from circuit theory to the
dynamics of social change (I perfected cracking make-ups there!) and
unable to compete with curricula trained Molecular Biologists, I opted to
do a Ph.D at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, As
wild dogs or dholes are possibly the most social mammal known within the
country and offered immense challenges in their study and conservation, I
promptly declined all post-doc offers abroad and aided by a grant from the
government began working on these elusive animals for the next four years
in the Mudumalai Sanctuary , Tamil Nadu . So far this has been
scientifically the most rewarding and exciting period of my life. At the
end of this, family needs did prevail and I had to move back to The
halcyon days in Arun
Venkataraman arunvenkataraman@citesmike.org
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