Despite their rising number in higher education in science, women’s participation at higher levels of science in tenured research positions has shown little increase in India. Against this backdrop, the appointment of energy researcher Nallathamby Kalaiselvi as the first woman Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is a historic event.
Apart from heading the country’s largest research organisation, she will also hold the charge of the Secretary, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, in the Government.
The 80-year-old research council that has 38 laboratories under its umbrella is no stranger to the world of science. With her appointment at the top level in the CSIR, Kalaiselvi has certainly shattered the proverbial glass ceiling. Incidentally, she has risen through the ranks in CSIR and had become the first woman scientist to head the Central Electrochemical Research Institute (CSIR-CECRI) in February 2019.
Internationally known for her work in the field of lithium ion batteries, Kalaiselvi has made key contributions to the National Mission for Electric Mobility and has more than 125 research papers and six patents to her credit.
Her research work of more than 25 years is primarily focused on electrochemical power systems and in particular, development of electrode material, and electrochemical evaluation of in-house prepared electrode materials for their suitability in energy storage device assembly.
Hailing from Ambasamudhram, a small town in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu, Kalaiselvi was raised almost like a boy by her teacher-father. She did her schooling in a Tamil-medium, which, she said, helped her grasp the concepts of science in college. Kalaiselvi studied entirely at Government schools and colleges in Tamil Nadu.
She did not have a background in electrochemistry when she joined CECRI as a junior scientist in 1997. She was an organic chemist and had taught the subject for about three years at a private college after completing her PhD from Annamalai University in Chidambaram.
She received some big independent projects, and used the Raman fellowship to go and study at the University of Texas. Incidentally, her daughter, an engineering graduate, is now pursuing PhD from the same university.
“She is a very powerful public speaker, in both Tamil and English. And she likes to speak extempore… about science and other things as well,” says S Sathiyanarayanan, Chief Scientist at CECRI and a long-time associate and collaborator of Kalaiselvi.
Sathiyanarayanan, who described her as “friendly and amiable” but a demanding boss, said Kalaiselvi was very passionate about technology and its applications to solve real-world problems. According to him, she doesn’t like it when a technology developed by a research group or a laboratory remains unutilised because it couldn’t be scaled up or made marketable.
“As the director of CECRI, she made a lot of efforts to upgrade the semideveloped technologies, so that they matured and were accepted by the industry. I think that would be something that she might push as head of CSIR as well,” Sathiyanarayanan adds.
According to her other colleagues, Kalaiselvi often laments about the fact that basic sciences are losing out on talent to engineering. “We must be able to attract the best talents to basic sciences,” she says. “But for that we have to provide opportunities for research, facilitate hassle-free funding, and develop the right atmosphere,” she has often said.
From a ranker to the top position in India’s largest institution devoted to scientific research, Kalaiselvi’s is an inspiring story. Women constitute over one-third of the total science graduate and post-graduate degree holders, but comprise only 15-20 per cent of the tenured faculty across research institutions and universities in India. However, it would be belittling her contribution to India’s scientific and industrial development to view her achievement only from the prism of gender parity.
It was under her stewardship that the CSIR-CECRI and Godi India recently entered into a public-private partnership through a MoA, to operate and maintain advanced lithium-ion cells manufacturing facility in Taramani.
As Kalaiselvi put it, this was a glorious example of the marriage of scientific research and industry in the field of energy storage. Now that she heads the CSIR, many more cases of harnessing Indian science for the development of the country will be witnessed.
