Shillong, May 24: “ANUSANDHAN”, the envisioned flagship activity of North-Eastern Hill University was organized on 22nd May 2024 at Golden Jubilee Auditorium of the Shillong Campus where the scholars from 28 different departments of Shillong and Tura campus participated in the one day event.
Theinauguralprogramme was graced by Dr. A.K. Sarma, Director General, North East Centre for Technology Application and Reach (NECTAR) as the Chief Guest and Prof. D.K. Nayak, Vice-Chancellor (In-charge)of NEHU as the Chairman.
Prof .S.R. Joshi, Director, Research & Development Cell, NEHU along with Prof TimirTripath, Prof . Santosh Kumar, members of R & D Cell and faculties were present among the participating scholars.
The purpose of the programme was to sensitize fresh research scholars on how a research problem can be oriented towards start-up and entrepreneurship venture without going any extra mile. Prof. A.K Sharma enthused in scholars the very idea of exploring their respective expertise and how it can be worked out as utility product for society.
This can be done if one understands the requirement of the society and work in that direction to provide solutions to the needs. Prof. D. K Nayak lauded the efforts of R & D Cell for initiating such inspirational activity in the university which will assist in channelizing the interest and focus of the scholars in research oriented societal problems and development of solutions.
Prof. S.R. Joshi, highlighted on the responsibilities andthe role of R & D Cell in the university, stressed that researchshould not only aim at publishing papers and dissertation or thesis writing , rather it needs to find means to translate for its applications in one form or the other. He emphasized that ANUSANDHAN is an initial step in this direction which aims to assist scholars in finding mentors and facilities for incubating their ideas.
He expressed his gratefulness to the Honourable Vice-Chancellor, Prof. P.S. Shukla who took deep interest in starting the R & D Cell at NEHU Campus and organizing events which should benefit the students of the university.
Prof. TimirTripathi, the organizing Secretary of the event, expressed his gratitude on behalf of the R & D Cell of NEHU for an overwhelming response received from participants of the one day programmeand assured that the cell is working sincerely to meet its objectives.
Dr. A.K. Sharmain his talk in the first session brought out the relevance of Industry-academia interaction and highlighted on programs that NECTAR has floated to benefit students from North-East India.
He illustrated with examples the rich bioresources of the region and how scholars can target areas which may have relevance to agriculture technology, climate change, fibres, biofertilizer, enzymes, energy sector etc.
He said that one has to think uniquely to use resources available around us for which we need to understand the properties of those resources citing reference of 2500 tea gardens and about 43 varieties of bananas of north east India, and highlighted on the importance of quality assuring production technology to have quality control meeting the market demands.
The second session was conducted by Dr. Tania Paul Das, Manager at BIONEST Incubator Facility at Institute of Advanced Study in Science and Technology (IASST) Guwahatai.In her presentation, she stressed deep on the domain of Student Entrepreneurs.
She said that “innovation is invention and execution”. She explained theimportance of incubation centerinentrepreneurship, facilities and fund required to develop entrepreneurship. This was followed by intense interaction where the scholars got their queries clarified by the expert.
The last session consisted of a Panel Discussion led by the experts and university students selected from East Zone to participate at the International Level ANVESHAN-2023 at University of Mumbai.
The students spoke very high of their experiences and exposure they had by way of an opportunity to participate in ANVESHAN 2023 and appealed to the scholars present in the programme not to underestimate the value and relevance of research undertaken by each on them.
Prof. S.R.Joshi in his interaction emphasized that challenges and problems are always there but creating space and niche in such circumstances gives larger satisfaction and valued output.
Prof TimirTripathi from Department of Zoology, Prof Santosh Kumar from Department of Mathematics, Dr. ShrutiShuklaform Department of Nanotechnology presented their views on research and deliverables which created an atmosphere of intense discussion in the session.
The programme ended with summing up by Prof. S.R. Joshi who presented to the participants the mandate, role and planned activities of the R & D cell of NEHU which were based on the suggestions made by the participating scholars.
