The Hindu : New Delhi News : JNU explores emerging frontiers in the field of science

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JNU explores emerging frontiers in the field of science

Staff Reporter

‘Boundaries between science subjects have become fuzzy’
University plans to run one stratum of common courses

NEW DELHI: To promote inter-disciplinary research through maximum utilisation of its in-house talent, Jawaharlal Nehru University organised a science festival here over the weekend.

The two-day festival was held to commemorate National Science Day which is observed on February 28, the anniversary of Nobel laureate Prof. C. V. Raman’s discovery of the “Raman Effect”.

Attended by the faculty and students of the science schools on the campus, a number of topics were discussed including diverse areas like emerging technologies, chemistry in biology, dynamics of environmental processes; computational tools in science and health and disease.

Addressing newsmen on Friday, Sanjay Puri of the School of Physical Sciences, who coordinated the event, said: “We believe that boundaries between different subjects in science like chemistry and physics have become fuzzy now and the best work happens at the boundaries. Modern science lies at the interface of different streams.”

“The highlight of the festival was an open session to discuss promotion of inter-science-school collaboration both in teaching and research. This is JNU’s ambitious plan to have core courses run centrally through a common time-table which will be available to all students,” said Rajendra Prasad, a member of the School of Life Sciences faculty.

According to Prof. Puri, the University could run certain common courses in sciences from July this year. “There will be one stratum of common courses accessible to all students. There are two aspects to it -- specialisation in subjects like physics, chemistry, biology in the fourth semester and minimum or elementary courses in among others mathematics, statistics and basic biology in the first semester,” he explained.

Maintaining that this proposal was not something new, Prof. Prasad, who is also Rector-I, said the idea was to optimise resources.

“For instance, one particular course is being run in different schools. We could have the same being taught at one place, which will save on time. We believe that the research level must be cross disciplinary. We could also start an integrated Ph.D. in sciences,” he added.

At the festival, Prof. Prasad also formally introduced advanced instrumentation facility to the JNU community. Equipped with state-of-the-art experimental tools, AIF will have the best facilities available to any university or institute in the country, said Prof. Prasad.

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