Research Fair exposes faculty, scholars to possible interdisciplinary work, 1 July

       IIT Mandi organized its first Research Fair on June 26th, 2013. It was a good platform where about 40 research scholars came together to showcase their in-depth work. The researchers gave oral presentations on their scholarly work with enthusiasm in front of faculty members and students. Later in the day, the participants explained their work in detail in a poster presentation.

       The fair got underway with inspiring speeches by the Dean (Academics) Prof. Ramesh Oruganti and the Deputy Director, Prof. Lalit Malhotra. On the occasion, Prof. Oruganti said, “A very good start has been made in organising a research conference based on student research at IIT Mandi. Now, this has to be taken forward in the coming years to make this into major research event.” Prof. Malhotra, Dean (SRIC) too lauded the efforts of the first batch of the research scholars who started everything from scratch and have managed to perform exceptionally well with their papers getting published in reputed international journals.

       In fact, the research fair was an occasion when researchers managed to come out of the cocoon of their own research and got to know about other scholars’ work. It gave them an opportunity to interact with one another and explore the possibility of interdisciplinary research. Dr. Tricha from IIT Mandi said, "The research fair was quite informative, now that I am aware of the research work in various fields progressing here at IIT Mandi, I could think of collaborating with the faculty and research scholars to work in the area of my expertise."

       Dr. Bindu, Associate Dean (Research), while delivering the vote of thanks, appreciated the quality work done by the research scholars in their respective fields and hoped that the next research fair would attract more participants. She thanked the students and the faculty organizing committee for organizing the first research fair.

       At the end of the day, the best oral presentation award was given to Himadri Chakraborti (Physics) and Runa Barik (Computer science) by the judges. The best poster presentation prize was shared by two scholars Tushar Kant Swain and Anna Varughese. The panel of judges consisted of Prof. SP Mahulikar, Dr. Tricha Anjali and Prof. Subrata Ray who spent considerable time asking probing questions, giving valuable advice to the researchers and judging the presentations.

Faculty members interact with research scholars during the research fair at IIT Mandi.