Photograph by Spencer WellsOne of the competitions at the Indian Institute of Technology TechFest.
Posted by Spencer Wells.
January 26, 2009. I'm writing this from Mumbai, still known to the locals as Bombay, where I had been invited to give a lecture on the Genographic Project at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) during their annual TechFest. This is the largest science and technology gathering in Asia, attracting an estimated 40-50,000 people over the course of its three-day, jam-packed event schedule. Organized entirely by students, it attracts participants from around the country, including six other Asian nations this year.
Photograph by Spencer WellsThe Vertical Limit competition at the ITT TechFest.
One of the highlights of the festival is its many competitions, where students put their knowledge and skills to the test in front of huge crowds. In the Enduro Challenge, our first stop, I saw radio-controlled robots the size of a laptop negotiate steep climbs, falls, tightly fenced tracks, and even a lap around a floating buoy in the IIT pool. The fastest one wins, and it's easier said than done, believe me. Feeling my inner geek asserting itself, I asked Nikhil what was next. We headed over to the Vertical Limit, where small robots are asked to climb a vertical metal wall with the aid of magnets on their undersides. Pretty cool, but the best was yet to come: the MicroMouse competition. Here the goal was not simply to negotiate a maze with a small wheeled robot about the size of a shoe, but to build a device with infrared sensors and a computer 'brain' that was capable of finding its own way, learning the maze itself through trial and error, and then re-tracing the correct route as quickly as possible. While many of the early competitors failed to get very far, by the time of the finals in the early afternoon, the competition was heating up like the weather outside. The winning mouse was built by a serious young Sri Lankan man, who jettisoned his shoes during the race to get more comfortable. His mouse not only managed to find the shortest route through a complicated maze, it ran through it in a winning time of just over 20 seconds. Impressive.
Photograph by Spencer WellsThe MicroMouse competition at the IIT TechFest.
My talk was delivered in the Convocation Hall, the largest lecture hall on campus. Sweating in the unseasonably warm temperatures, I told the audience about the genetic evidence for our recent African origin and what we were discovering about migration patterns over the past 50,000 years. I was inundated by questions at the end, ranging from the genetic effects of atomic blasts (as far as we can tell these have had no effect on the rate at which new markers appear) to the migratory connections between southern India and Australia. The best question came last, though, when someone asked about the broader relevance of what we are doing in the Genographic Project. I explained that to me, at least, the answer was twofold. First, as a scientist I think that understanding who we are and where we come from, before the genetic signposts are lost in today's melting pot, is a worthy goal on its own and also helps to point to where we are going. I suggested that if we ever encountered intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, one of the first questions we would probably be asked is 'what do you know about your history?' It would be a shame if we could only shrug our shoulders and point out the salient features on a PlayStation 2. Perhaps more importantly, I said, the underlying social message of our work is how closely connected we all are - part of an extended human family that has been diverging from one another for no more than a couple of thousand generations. Given the ethnic strife in the world today, I hoped this would have some relevance to people beyond the world of science. It seemed to strike a chord with this audience.
Afterwards Nikhil and I hurried off to the SciTech finals. SciTech is a national quiz competition in India that attracts around 500 teams each year, each one a pair of students, competing to answer questions on science and technology. While the earlier rounds had been conducted online and in writing, the final was all Bollywood glitz: a crowd of thousands, an amazing video and light show, pounding Indian dance music and a famous host named Barry O'Brien who kept everyone entertained in between the questions - think Who Wants to be a Millionaire meets WIRED. After 90 minutes covering topics as wide-ranging as the electron orbital structure of the elements to the thematic connection between pictures of a marauding horn-helmeted man, a beagle and a large minivan (they're all scientific expeditions: the Viking spacecraft, Darwin's Beagle voyage, and the Voyager spacecraft), the winners were announced: a team from IIT Bombay that included the only young woman in the finals.
Photograph by Spencer WellsThe cornerstone of the Indian Institute of Technology.
After the cheering subsided, Barry asked everyone to take out their cell phones, turn on the lights, and sing along with the song that started to play. It was written by the artist A.R. Rahman, who most recently arranged the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, and it was a tribute to Mother India - appropriate as the next day was Republic Day, the Indian equivalent of the 4th of July. Barry talked between verses about the importance of giving something back to India, of working together, and of healing the wounds from the terrorist attacks that had killed 164 people just a few miles from where we were sitting two months before. It was quite moving, and I felt like I had been invited to take part in a family gathering with friends who had been through a recent tragedy. His emphasis on connections, echoing the answer I had given earlier about the broader relevance of the Genographic Project, felt tangible in the middle of thousands of swaying students jammed into the outdoor stadium. As the music ended, people stood up and slowly shuffled out of the stadium into the dark night, humming the tune and smiling. It was the perfect ending to my short visit to Bombay. Namaste.*
* Namaste (pronounced namas-tay) is a respectful Sanskrit greeting and goodbye used in India that means 'I bow to the divinity in you.'
