[28/02, 20:39] : Celebration of Institute Open Day – National Science Day on 28 Feb 2024 at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata
The Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata (IISER Kolkata) is celebrating Institute Open Day on the occasion of National Science Day at Mohanpur campus Kalyani, on 28 February 2024 from 11.00AM—5.00 PM. Laboratory visits at the institute’s departments and insight into cutting edge research facilities, interactions with young researchers, students and professors, exhibition, models, displays, popular talks by professors and research students and poster presentations will be the highlight of the programme.
A Press Meet with the Director has been scheduled between 12:00 noon – 1:00 p.m.
Prof. P. Balaram, former Director, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, will attend as the Chief Guest and will inaugurate the documentary film, at R N Tagore Auditorium IISER Kolkata.
“Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray : The Chemist, The Humanist” and deliver a popular Science Talk titled “The Origins of Life: The Evolution of Biochemistry and the Birth of Biology”.
About IISER Kolkata
IISER Kolkata, presently under the Ministry of Education, is one of the seven IISERs established by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, whose mandate is to impart education and training in the basic sciences and foster cutting-edge research. IISER Kolkata began functioning in the year 2006, with a financial outlay of about Rs. 1000 Crore – one of the largest investment in a science institute after IIT Kharagpur in the state of West Bengal.
In the seventeen years since its inception in 2006, IISER Kolkata, an Institute of national importance has grown by leaps and bounds, and is presently identified as one of the premier institutions of research and teaching in the country. The IISER Kolkata family has 129 faculty members, distributed in seven academic departments, a few INSPIRE fellows, visiting, adjunct and honorary faculty members of great distinction being supported by a dedicated team of 92 administrative staff members. Our combined student strength increases every year, and presently we boast of a total student strength of 1751. These are distributed between 1055 BS-MS, 118 Integrated-PhD (IPhD), 55 Master’s Programme and 519 Doctoral students. This number also includes some International students from SAARC and African countries.
Our significant and continuous progress as an institute of higher education is borne out by our position in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings in 2023. We have been ranked second among IISERs and in the top 6.7% of universities worldwide. Our national rank is 32 and our international rank is 1370. According to the Web of Science database, our H-index is 108 and the average citations received by each of our publications stand at 23. Our institute has received more than 1,08,000 citations for our total publications. According to Nature Index, IISER Kolkata stood at 13 in the country in the Academic Sector. Our NIRF ranking in 2023 is 43.
Our graduating students are now placed in the best Universities around the world and within India, including Cambridge, Oxford, Cornell, Göttingen, Ecole Normal Superiere, the Max Planck Institutes, Yale, Harvard, the Indian Institute of Science, NCBS, IIM, other IISERs, IITs, etc. Students from IISER Kolkata have won prestigious international honors such as the Rhodes and Clarendon Scholarships, Fulbright Scholarships, Alexander von Humboldt and Marie Curie Fellowships for PhD research. A large number of our students have excelled in the national CSIR-UGC exams, some winning the Prime Minister’s Research Fellows (PMRF) and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Fellowship. A faculty member from IISER Kolkata has received the National Awards to Teachers 2023 from the Hon’ble President of India and many faculty have won international recognition and national honours such as the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, Swarnajayanti Fellowship, J. C. Bose Fellowship, Bronze Medals of the Chemical Research Society of India, Dr. Nasipuri Memorial Lecture Award, INSA medal for young scientists 2022, INSA Teacher Award 2022 for their research, and have been elected as Fellows of various national and international Science Academies.
Our Faculty members have also been selected for many prestigious committees and editorial boards around the globe such as panel for the assessment of the GATI program of the DST, “Expert Committee on Material Science & Technology and Biotechnology, Government of West Bengal”, Task-Force Committee of the Empowerment and Equity Opportunities for Excellence in Science of the SERB, Editorial board of Precambrian Research Journal, Inter-ministerial/Expert Committee for Quantum Technologies constituted by Govt. of India, Fellow of National Academy of Sciences (NASI) 2022 and Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy.
During the financial year 2022-2023, our faculty members obtained funding amounting to around Rs. 10767.84 lakhs including Rs. 1922.76 lakhs in new research projects. Of these, there were 2 Consultancy Projects worth around Rs 25.69 lakhs, 6 Fellowship Projects of close to Rs.356.29 lakhs, with the rest being extramural grants worth around Rs 1540.78 lakhs. Our faculty members have attracted funding from almost all prominent national funding agencies including SERB, DST, DBT, CSIR, MOE-STARS, SPARC, and have also obtained support from international sources including IAEA, CEFIPRA, EXXON MOBILE, KHALIFA UNIVERSITY, KING ABDULLAH UNIVERSITY, etc. and participated in the Namaste + Project that aims to promote student and staff mobility. Our Research Scholars have also received several international awards, grants and fellowships. The Research Innovation and Scientific Entrepreneurship (RISE) Foundation IISER – set up on the IISER Kolkata campus – will act as a nodal hub to enhance innovation and other start-up facilities across different platforms. Continuing our initiative to create a common platform for our researchers to interact and share their expertise, we have already signed and are in the process of signing several agreements/MOUs with prominent Academic Institutes both in India and abroad.
We, at IISER Kolkata, are attempting our very best to utilize all our resources – both human and infrastructural, and our abilities, to extend the boundaries of knowledge creation with passion and with a spirit true to the scientific endeavour, method, and ethics.
N.B.: Approximately 40 schools and 10 colleges with an average of 25 students per school and college and over 1000 total footfall.
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