Three persons from Assam who are pursuing their academic careers in Italy decided to stay back there amidst the COVID-19 crisis and are among the few Indians who did not return home when the Indian government made arrangements to bring them back from the country.

The three persons include Prabin Upadhaya of Tinsukia, Promit Choudhury of Silchar and Akash Deep Biswas of Tezpur.

Upadhaya is looking to pursue a post- doctoral research career decided to stay back in Italy.

He was recently awarded his PhD in neurosciences and imaging degree online on March 24, the day before India went for a 21-day nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus.

Apart from completing his PhD from the Gabriele d’Annunzio University, Upadhaya was awarded an additional title of PhD Europeaus with an ‘Excellent’ grade.

“When the flights to India were arranged, there was some work left for my PhD degree. So I decided to stay back till I finish,” said Upadhyaya.

Biswas, who is a PhD scholar of ScuolaNormaleSuperiore di Pisa and a computational biologist is currently undergoing a coronavirus related research in Italy.

“I had started working on the CoV-2 protease from mid February and wasn”t interested in leaving this country under any circumstances because of my work demands,” he said.

Choudhury, who is doing his masters at Politecnico Di Milano and is also working with a company decided to stay back to see how Italy combats the coronavirus crisis.

“I wanted to see how Italy being second best in the world in terms of healthcare facilities tackles the situation and adopts counter-solution measures,” he said.