The first thing you notice about the campus of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, is its serene, if casual, ambience. On the third floor of the spanking New Biological Sciences building in Dr Vishwesha Guttal’s office a few PhD students, project assistants, short-term visiting researchers peer into their computers for so long that their eyes seem glued to the screens, lounge on sofas fiddling with laptops, and bang away on the keys. Shorts and uncombed hair—whatever is left