Introduction

IIT-Mandi is the youngest IIT and has undertaken a major effort in developing strategies to tackle research in inter-disciplinary areas. The institute recognizes that this requires a combined effort by various scientists and engineers who have a strong base in complementary technical areas whose combined efforts would provide an atmosphere to generate novel ideas to tackle frontier problems in science and technology. Toward this goal, the first in-house symposium will be held on Saturday, 7th May 2011 at IIT-Mandi (Room 208) in which faculty members in various schools of the institute will review some research topics of current interest. It is not the intention of this symposium to discuss original work done by its faculty, but to organize a forum at which the faculty members would review exciting work done by some other world leaders and discuss these topics in order to stimulate thinking and discussions in such challenging research areas. The symposium will consist of six talks in the pre-lunch sessions on ‘metamaterials’ and another six in the post-lunch session on the ‘science, engineering and technology’ of solar energy’.