Tata Institute of Fundamental Research is a public research institution in Hyderabad, India. Then Prime Minister of IndiaManmohan Singh laid the foundation stone for the institute on 19 October 2010. It has operated on a campus of near the Hyderabad Central University since moving in October 2017 from a temporary campus in Narsingi. The TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences is the first centre of TIFR Hyderabad. The faculty are young and dynamic, and drawn from all the three major branches of the natural sciences and engineering. Nearly a hundred graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and scientific staff already work here on research topics that are carefully chosen across the life sciences, chemistry, physics and materials sciences. Substantial experimental efforts have commenced using tools of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Laser Sciences, Condensed Matter Physics, Synthetic and Biological Chemistry, Cell and Developmental Biology. These experimental efforts are well complemented by wide-ranging theoretical approaches in both Physics and Chemistry. This well-rounded, multi-pronged approach has distinct merits – around the world there is increasing cognizance of the fact that some of the most interesting research in solving human problems is done at the frontiers of disciplines using tools from various streams to comprehensively address a scientific question. The department-less structure at TIFR Hyderabad allows scientists to truly understand, engage in and contribute to each other’s research in ways that cannot be possible in the best of other research institutes in the country. This truly presents a unique opportunity in the context of Indian science. At TIFR Hyderabad, outreach efforts are taken very seriously too, whether it is in organizing a series of popular talks by scientists who are leaders in their fields, called Sawaal-Jawaab, or in visits by school and college students. In the longer run, TIFR Hyderabad is envisioned to have nearly 250 faculty members working in different theme-driven centres covering all areas of the natural sciences, mathematics and computer science.
