Kaapi with Kuriosity


Kaapi with Kuriosity is a monthly public lecture series organised by the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS-TIFR), in collaboration with the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium and other educational institutions in Bengaluru.

The aim of the talks in this series is to stimulate the curiosity of the public towards the myriad aspects of science. The setting for these talks will be informal with a lot of scope for open discussions. The scientific background assumed will not be beyond the school level. As such, they are easily accessible to school/college students, families and working professionals interested in science.

Contact: outreach @ icts . res . in

Register to get updates on all ICTS outreach activities

Give us feedback on this program

Past Talks
Why Strings?
Rajesh Gopakumar (International Centre for Theoretical Sciences-TIFR, Bengaluru)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Sunday, 28 September 2025
Mini Auditorium, U R Rao Bhavana, Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bangalore
Abstract: String theory is the leading theoretical framework for describing a quantum theory of the gravitational force. In this talk, I will try to motivate, from a somewhat different perspective, why string theory is a natural framework to describe nature. This goes back to the works of Maxwell...more
The Mathematics of Soap Bubbles
Franz Pedit (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Sunday, 24 August 2025
Mini Auditorium, U R Rao Bhavana, Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bangalore
Abstract: If you blow a soap bubble it is perfectly round. That this has to be the case was understood mathematically about 80 years ago by the German mathematician Heinz Hopf. The question then arose whether there exist "soap bubbles" of Medu Vada type? This problem was solved about 40 years ago...more
How to Read a Genome
Michael Desai (Harvard University, Cambridge, USA)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Sunday, 27 July 2025
Mini Auditorium, U R Rao Bhavana, Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bangalore
Abstract: It has now become cheap and easy to sequence genomes – we can sequence a microbe almost for free, or a human for a few hundred dollars. But what do these genomes say? We know that they contain the information necessary to make us who we are, but we don’t yet understand exactly how. I will...more
What's in your DNA? Tales from the human genome
Shweta Ramdas (Centre for Brain Research, IISc campus, Bangalore)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Sunday, 22 June 2025
Mini Auditorium, U R Rao Bhavana, Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium
Abstract: The term DNA has become a part of our cultural vocabulary, but what can it actually tell us? In this talk, we will travel through the world of human genetics, learning about what DNA can tell us about the history of our species, human evolution, and our predispositions to diseases. We...more
Coding Theory: Error-Resilience via Judicious Redundancy
Venkatesan Guruswami (University of California, Berkeley)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Saturday, 10 May 2025
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium
Abstract: When we communicate or store large volumes of data, that information is inevitably subject to errors introduced by various forms of noise and interference. Yet, remarkably, we routinely take seamless and reliable digital communication for granted, a foundation without which modern society...more
Three Puzzles from the First Billion Years
Girish Kulkarni (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Sunday, 13 April 2025
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium
Abstract: Cosmology is the study of the Universe as a whole—its birth, its evolution, and its large-scale structure. In many ways, cosmology is like a form of archaeology: instead of digging into the Earth, we dig into the deep sky. Every photon that reaches us carries a whisper from the past, and...more
Curation as Misinformation
Cailin O’Connor (University of California, Irvine) and James Owen Weatherall (University of California, Irvine)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Saturday, 22 March 2025
Livestream via the ICTS YouTube channel
Abstract: Everyday we see information about the world - but all this information is filtered, shaped, and curated through a myriad of processes. Journalists decide what is interesting or important enough to report on. Industry propagandists and politicians try to influence our understandings of the...more
A History of Time
Spenta R. Wadia (ICTS-TIFR, Bengaluru)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Sunday, 23 February 2025
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium
Abstract: This talk will provide a brief overview of the history of the concept of "time," tracing its evolution from antiquity to the present day. We will explore how revolutions in physics have influenced and reshaped our understanding of time, examining the shift from Newtonian physics to...more
Quantum Mechanics: The Wild World of Atoms
Klaus Mølmer (Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Saturday, 25 January 2025
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium
Abstract: With the discovery of quantum mechanics in the 1920’es, scientists obtained a quantitative and precise description of all known microscopic phenomena from nuclear matter to molecules and solids. The formulas of quantum mechanics deal with waves instead of particles, and they make strange...more
Numbers: Are They Normal?
Malabika Pramanik (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Thursday, 19 December 2024
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium
Abstract: They say the only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well. What about numbers? Which ones are normal, and how well do we know them? The notion of normality of a number is related to the occurrence of different digits in that number. Roughly speaking, a normal number is one in...more

Pages