RENOWNED PHYSICIST Professor SK Joshi feels the rapid rapid development in mesoscopic and disordered materials over the last decade will have a positive impact on future technologies, particularly those involving nano-scale materials.
Delivering the inaugural address at the five-day International Workshop on ‘Physics of Mesoscopic and Disordered Materials’ (MESODIS) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-K) here today, Prof Joshi said there were several topics which were in focus and research would lead to development of new devices, new technologies and new standards. He said some of the topics for in-depth study could be nano-materials, nano-technology disordered alloys, for new materials, superconductivity nano-structured photonic band gap materials and simulation methods.
Workshop chief coordinator and professor in Department of Physics, IIT-K, R Prasad, said the aim of the workshop was to review the recent progress in understanding these materials, to facilitate the exchange of new ideas and to explore emerging directions both in the basic Physics and applications to technology. The focus of the workshop would be electronic and magnetic properties of nano-materials but almost all the new areas of research would be discussed at the workshop. He said since the photonic materials have caused a revolution and opened up enormous potential, applications for future photonic devices and communication technologies would attract the attention of the participants at the workshop.
New concepts in biometrics
{{/usCountry}}New concepts in biometrics
{{/usCountry}}NOTED professor and scientist in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-K), Dr Phalguni Gupta, says scientists at the Institute have developed certain new concepts in the field of biometrics. Dr Gupta said biometrics was a futuristic technology and would play a very important role in the global order due to its wide application in the banking sector, airport security, physical access, forensic laboratories and land records. He said biometrics would help identify and verify people with greater exactness.
He said biometrics means ‘life measurement’ but the term was usually associated with the use of unique physiological characteristics to identify an individual.
However, biometrics identification has eventually a much broader relevance, as computer interface becomes more natural. He said a number of biometric traits were developed and used to authenticate the person’s identity by using special characteristics of the person which included his face, iris, fingerprint, signature etc.