How Abhijeet Bayani Discovered His True Calling
Abhijeet is a conservation biologist, educator and a science writer having more than 15 years of experience in biological research especially in antelope and deer behavior, wildlife conservation and citizen science. He classifies himself as a field biologist and has conducted research in various habitats in western, central and southern India. Abhijeet’s research has substantially contributed to the changes in the crop damage compensation methods. Abhijeet is also a member of IUCN SSC Deer Specialist Group. Apart from this major academic inclination, he is interested in spider taxonomy, herpetology and ornithology. He is a subject editor of Pensoft journals and Biodiversity Atlas-India. He received his PhD from IISER, Pune and currently works as Science Writer with Journal of Visualized Experiments. In free time, he plays Tabla, paints abstract and Gond art and does photography.
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Career Story
My career story didn’t initiate in the school, it started pretty late, in fact, after my UG years!From the beginning, I was taught to think that ‘get a quick degree and a quick job, no matter whether you like it’. I was so ‘brain-washed’ to take microbiology, supposedly it had a great scope in the ‘industries’. Many told me to finish BSc with good grades and said “…the jobs are there for you!” And you know what, I did start with microbiology in RYK college, Nashik. As an undergraduate student, I was even told by most of the people that “Yeah! You know what, all jobs are rather the same! No matter which one you go for”.According to me, UG years were supposed to be exploratory years. But I was, to an extent, discouraged to defy the flow. I eventually found myself uncomfortable in the controlled and confined environment of laboratories and I left microbiology. I was fascinated by the species diversity found around, especially spiders from the time I had watched the first movie on Spiderman in 2002-03. I wrote numerous notes on their identification, behavior, life history and natural history in my free time throughout my UG years. I needed more time to go on field, so I went for Zoology by the second year of BSc and continued that until my MSc.
During my undergraduate years, I was equally interested in spider, bird and amphibian taxonomy; animal behavior; ecology; wildlife conservation; molecular crystallography; and neurobiology. As there was no way I could learn all that at the same time, I decided to take up summer and winter projects in each of these fields. I worked with leading scientists in those respective fields and got a glimpse of all. In the end I understood that I liked research in natural history and conservation biology, but I liked only the idea of research in the rest of the fields. By the end of MSc, I was determined to go for conservation biology.
I got a chance to work on Asiatic Lion Reintroduction Project immediately after my MSc in Zoology. Later, I worked with Prof. Milind Watve for my PhD and at the same time got many insights from leading conservation biologists particularly from R. Sukumar, Mewa Singh, and Charudutta Mishra.
I must say that my PhD wasn’t just a subject and skill training. There was a time that my research was called ‘Not Science At All’ and I was suggested to change it entirely! I rather took motivation from this and improved up on my science and the related skills. My PhD offered me ample time and good training to think on asking good questions and putting good hypotheses for research, the philosophy of doing good science, communicating science effectively, and thoughtful analysis of the data or even the situations.
“I strongly recommend to all to try to put yourself beyond your comfort zone. You may find a better way to do some interesting trans-disciplinary science.””
During my PhD, I conversed with various types of people having different levels of education or training. I even debated on numerous topics with the superstitious ones and the ones who are extremely academically inclined! I tried to understand their opinions, interests or even approach to live life. And through such debates and discussions I realized that I was also interested in teaching and communicating science. In other words, I realized that there were many other ways to pursue research in conservation biology apart from doing it in the typical way.Later, I chose to teach, rather than be a postdoc, to undergraduate students at Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. I worked with Prof. Raghavendra Gadagkar substantially learnt his approach to research, teaching and science communication. I also kept in touch with some of my earlier research teams who were conducting research in central India and southern Western Ghats. I also started Citizen Science with Prof. Krushnamegh Kunte. And now I work with Journal of Visualized Experiments as a Science Writer where I am able to use my teaching and research experience to write scientific pieces in statistics and biology explained in pretty engaging and unique animation.In a nutshell, I suggest that you use the UG years to see what your innate interests are, as the borrowed interests will not take you long on the career journey. If planning to go into academia or scientific research, first identify whether you like the research or just the idea of research. This is important because there is quite a difference between actually conducting research (that has all types of ups and downs) and getting fascinated by research ideas that may not be doable. Our imagination about a specific research topic and its reality may differ substantially and this can lead to frustration. In my case, I like the idea of research in understanding how certain genes play a role in some behaviors in animals, nonetheless, I would rather conduct field studies to understand the animal behavior of my favorite species, which I did during my PhD!
I strongly recommend to all to try to put yourself beyond your comfort zone. You may find a better way to do some interesting trans-disciplinary science. Also, there may be multiple interests that one may have, pursue them simultaneously, but attempt to amalgamate those interests in a unique way. (For instance, I currently illustrate human-wildlife conflict through Gond and abstract painting, study the natural history depictions on archaeological monuments, linking Tabla to Darwinian Evolution, and use photography for citizen science and outreach).
Edited by: Anjali Mahilkar
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