Category: Lectures

UoHTube

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Over the past year(s) we have had several  “Distinguished Lectures” at the University- namely special lectures by eminent scholars that we hope will address a range of issues that are of general interest. In reverse order, these have been

  • Veena Das, Politics of the Urban Poor. 11/1/13
  • Joseph Stiglitz, Macro Economics in crisis: An agenda for rejuvenating the discipline. 4/1/13
  • William Dalrymple, The Return of a King: Battle for Afghanistan (1839-43). 10/12/12
  • Michael Berry,  The maggot in the apple: peaceful coexistence of incompatible theories. 18/10/12
  • K Srinath Reddy, Public Health Needs An ‘All of Society’ Approach. 17/9/12
  • Vasudha Dalmia,  Nature, Science, and Civilization: Agyeya’s Anti-city Novel (1952). 30/8/12
  • Walter Russell Mead, America’s Sticky Power. 7/8/12
  • Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, Re-embracing Keynes Scholars, Admirers and Sceptics in the Aftermath of the Crisis.  9/3/12
  • Andrew Sheng,  The Seven Distortions of the Global Economy. 25/1/12
  • David Hume, Macrophage Colony-Stimulating Factor and the Control of Macrophage Differentiation. 10/1/12
  • Mriganka Sur, Brains, Minds and Machines. 6/1/12.
  • Herbert Gleiter, Can Poly/ Nano-glasses open the way to an age of Glassy Materials? 15/11/11
  • Barbara Harriss-White, Capitalism and Common Man. 11/11/11
  • David Shulman, A South Indian Concept of Nature: Notes from Telugu Kavya. 8/8/11
  • Girish S. Agarwal,  Quantum Interference between Independent Photons. 4/8/11
  • Yu Yongding, China’s Development Strategy over the Past Three Decades. 28/7/11
  • Palagummi Sainath,  The Media: Another Kind of Convergence. 20/7/11
  • V. S. Ramachandran, Neurology: from molecules to metaphor. 19/7/11

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In addition to these, there have been any number of lectures by equally distinguished persons- Rudy Marcus, Mahasweta Devi, Romila Thapar, M S Narasimhan… many others.

A new initiative to share this bounty with the public has led us to put several of these lectures onto YouTube. The most recent three of the above lectures, as well as the speech by Rudy Marcus are all on YouTube, and we have a photoblog as well! All courtesy our recent S N School graduates Gautami and Manikrishna. And the PRO, Ashish Jacob…

Enjoy, and please also let your friends know! The special lectures of the UoH are now available for all. Here are the links. Veena Das, Joseph Stiglitz, William Dalrymple, and Rudy Marcus. There will be more as time goes on… So mark the blog space, and you can always search for Untitled 3. Thats large!

Big Sur

Last week, Mriganka Sur, the  Paul E Newton Professor of Neuroscience and the Head, Dept of Brain and Cognitive Science at MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Cambridge, Mass. was in Hyderabad, and we were fortunate to have him deliver one of our Distinguished Lectures, on “Brains, Minds and Machines”. 

The talk was, in a word, electrifying. The Raman auditorium was overflowing (we really have to get larger auditoriums, and ones that are more well equipped audio-wise…) and many students were sitting in the aisles, many more were standing. But it was well worth it,  the talk itself was the star. It was delivered superbly. It was passionate. It was articulate. It had content that was easy enough for the non-specialist to appreciate, and there was enough  detail and material in it to make it quite clear even to specialists that one was listening to a master of the game.

Mriganka Sur FRS is amongst the most celebrated neuroscientists of the world today. He did his B.Tech. from IIT Kanpur, and subsequently moved to Vanderbilt University where he got his Ph D. In addition to being Head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, at MIT he is also Director of the Simons Initiative on Autism and Brain.

To have him visit the University- and so early in the year- was a special treat. I hope that it augurs well for our academic activities in 2012!