ALLAHABAD UNIVERSITY (AU) has decided to establish an ultra-modern user facility having state-of-the-art machines and equipment. The move will open up avenues for new and advanced researches in the field of bio sciences as well as physical sciences at the varsity.
The initiative will also let varsity researchers, including both the students and the teachers, to carry out complicated experiments and studies with no barrier of department, centre or faculty in making use of the set-up.
The AU administration has earmarked Rs 5 crore from the recent Rs 40 crore non-plan grant sanctioned to it by the University Grants Commission (UGC) and has also formed a nine-member committee with four teachers and five external experts under the chairmanship of Dean (Science) Prof Hari Shankar to oversee and speed up this ambitious project.
"The plan is to have a user facility equipped with costly and advanced equipment at our disposal so that cutting edge researches become possible within the campus for the AU fraternity. Following the approval of the AU Vice-Chancellor Prof Rajen Harshe, the global open tenders for the equipment have already been published. The aim is to get the facility ready and functioning at all costs before the next academic session itself," said AU Physics department's Dr Avinash Chandra Pandey, who is closely associated with the project.
Dr Pandey said that the user facility would be equipped with equipment like transmission electron microscope (TEM) along with all its accessories, a sample preparation chamber for TEM and scanning electron microscopy, an atomic force microscope and a wavelength disperser besides a pulse Laser deposition system.
{{/usCountry}}Dr Pandey said that the user facility would be equipped with equipment like transmission electron microscope (TEM) along with all its accessories, a sample preparation chamber for TEM and scanning electron microscopy, an atomic force microscope and a wavelength disperser besides a pulse Laser deposition system.
{{/usCountry}}"The facility will be unique in the sense that anyone at AU will be able to use the equipment that will be available for his research work without any problem," he added.
Till now AU researchers had a tough time in undertaking and completing researches and experiments that required these equipment. Most in the varsity, brave enough to take up projects requiring these complex and sensitive gadgets, depended on their personal links at outside institutions like Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur and Delhi as well as Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore to carry out their researches.
Sources say that the waiting period to use these machines and equipment at IISc and IITs often stretches from six to eight weeks and the permission often comes along with specified time period much lesser than requested for.
Moreover, most labs and institutions demand a mention in the credit whenever the AU researches bear fruits. However, now these issues will be a thing of the past.