Interdisciplinarity as a Superpower

Sumedha Sumedha has been a reader at the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER) in Bhubaneswar, India since 2010. She has also been a Simons Associate in the ICTP’s Quantitative Life Sciences section since 2020, thus benefitting from the possibility to visit the Centre regularly. Having moved many times in her career, working with different research groups, across three different continents, she has often had to take on new research lines – which has been both a challenge and an interesting feature of her unique path, made possible by her background in statistical physics. “In my field, we are spoiled with choices,” she explains, and over the years she has enjoyed applying her knowledge to explore the connections between different research domains, ranging from biophysics to high energy and particle physics.

Sumedha studied physics in her home city of Delhi, India, after which she decided to embark in a PhD and was accepted at the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in Mumbai. With a passion for interdisciplinarity, she immediately felt at home when she first visited ICTP, at the end of her PhD. “When I arrived at ICTP, I was impressed by the number of physicists working on a large variety of topics and gathered in the same place,” she explains.

What I like the most about my research field, is that it allows one to work on very diverse research areas.

After her PhD, Sumedha developed important experience as a postdoctoral researcher, both in Europe - first at Université Paris-Saclay, France, then at the Institute for Scientific Interchange in Turin, Italy - and in the United States, at Brandeis University, before accepting a position at NISER and moving back to her home country.“By the time I finished one year of postdoc at Brandeis University in 2010, both my husband and I received a job offer from the same institute in India. We always knew that we wanted to go back and once we were offered the job, we moved to India very quickly. I've been at NISER since,” she recounts.

However, moving with her partner to yet a new place and starting a family came with challenges and for some time it was difficult for Sumedha to be fully immersed in her work. She didn’t give up and soon she was able to find new lines of research that her background in statistical mechanics helped her develop: “What I like the most about my research field, is that it allows one to work on very diverse research areas, so I decided to take up new challenges by looking into disordered systems and collaborating with colleagues in high energy physics,” she says.

I realized that spending some time at ICTP could have a big impact on my work and I saw how much I was missing.

It is at that point in her life that she decided to visit ICTP again. “A background in statistical physics provides me with a variety of techniques that I can apply to different fields, but that isn’t enough to make meaningful contributions. One also needs to understand what the open problems are, and that becomes easier when one can attend conferences and interact directly with researchers who have been in the field for longer,” Sumedha explains, adding: “During a short visit to ICTP in 2019 I had the distinct impression that spending some time at ICTP had a big impact on my work. I realized how much I was missing.”

This experience motivated Sumedha to apply for a Simons Associateship. Because of the pandemic, her first Simons Associate visit was postponed to 2023. “I was there from 10 May to 20 June, and during that time two very high-profile conferences took place. One was in biophysics and the other was in data science, two very promising research areas in which statistical mechanics can make important contributions,” she says.

The Simons Associateship has been a boost for my confidence and it has encouraged me to continue my work.

During that visit, Sumedha also had the opportunity to present her work to the ICTP community, receiving positive feedback and expressions of interest. “Being surrounded by so many people enthusiastic about science and willing to share their knowledge has been a boost for my confidence and it has encouraged me to continue my work. I’m looking forward to my next two visits and to the progress I will make in my research thanks to them,” she comments.

Coming from India, Sumedha believes that the Centre has had an important impact on science in her country. “ICTP is a very cherished place in the memories of very many Indian scientists, whose growth as researchers was fostered by the Centre. We share the distinct feeling that ICTP has opened up important opportunities for us,” she concludes.