ESOP Scholarship: Abheepsa Nanda wants to understand the world through microbes

How did you choose to do a Master’s in Environmental Sciences at D-USYS?
I did a four-year Bachelor’s in Biology at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, which was kind of a segue into my current major, ecology and evolution. In my third year of my Bachelor’s, I was applying for projects abroad for my thesis, and a lot of the projects and professors that I was interested in were in this department. I did end up going to MIT and working with Prof Jeff Gore’s Lab on microbial communities and their resource-diversity relationships. A lot of people in that lab recommended professors from ETH Zurich. A bunch of people had graduated from here and were in the same lab and they were so excited when they talked about ETH so that kind of encouraged me to apply here. And then coming here I was very excited that a lot of professors here work on microbial biology and infectious diseases.

The Environmental Sciences programme also has a compulsory internship. My Bachelor’s programme was very academic research oriented, so I never had that kind of exposure to what kind of opportunities might exist in industry or outside of that academic setting. Here I can take courses in evolutionary medicine and also corporate sustainability and resource and environmental economics to look more into the applied side.

What made you pursue a major in ecology and evolution?
I chose ecology and evolution because that would mean I could continue doing microbial ecology although coming into my Master’s I am a bit more open minded. What attracted me towards microbial ecology is how these smaller-scale, more experimentally tractable microbial systems could sometimes follow the same basic ecological principles as the macro world. Working with them in the lab is like recreating a little biome that you're the god of and tinkering around with it, and it's a little easier and more controlled than working in the field. At the same time, these systems can still be so incredibly complex, show different behaviours in nature than in the lab and we still don't fully understand them, even though they're important in so many aspects ─ from regulating human health in the gut microbiome to the regulating biogeochemical cycles via soil and other natural microbiomes. I also appreciate a combination of experimental, theoretical and computational approach to research and microbial ecology (well, all of ecology really) is such a rich field for it.

What does it mean to you to have received the ESOP scholarship?
Applying to the scholarship here was a big thing, because Master’s generally aren’t funded, so I definitely needed that funding to come to this place. It was conditional on whether I would get the scholarship. I wrote the research proposal, I was really excited about it, I applied and it worked out. Now because of the scholarship I don’t need to pay tuition and I get a monthly stipend of CHF 2.000.─ to cover my living costs.

What plans do you have for the future?
Right now, even the courses I am doing are quite research focused so I think I would like to do a PhD. But that also depends on how my internship experience goes. I have done research in the past and even after coming here I feel validated with that feeling of enjoying talking to other people about research and doing research myself and reading scientific papers. I think I would enjoy doing a PhD.