ROLE OF THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH CELL (MDR)

The Multidisciplinary Research Cell fosters the overall R&D growth of the University. It facilitates interaction with external agencies, both national and international. It also promotes and manages University-Industry interaction, and all externally funded research and development projects.

MDR undertakes complete financial management, and recruitment of research scientists and engineers to work on funded projects. It also handles activities related to intellectual property protection / management and technology transfer.

Activities it supports

•  Project support to scientists in challenging areas in various disciplines
•  Unit and core group around outstanding scientists
•  Training programmes involving young scientists
•  Research Student Fellowships
•  Research chairs in the key areas of S&T
•  Setting up of Research support facilities
•  Organisation of Summer/Winter Schools
•  Women's scientist scheme
•  Entrepreneurship Development Cell
•  Publications & Archives Cell
•  International Relations, MoU & IPRs Cell
•  Center for Continuing Education
•  Center for Sponsored Research
•  Center for Consultancy Research/Projects
•  Liaison & Relationship Mgmt. Cell
•  Help & Facilitation Desk
•  Record Keeping Cell

The mandate of research supported by the research cell includes increased and expanded knowledge in basic research, excellence in science & engineering, innovation and promotion of selected areas, encouragement for industrial partnership in projects under engineering and technology, training of manpower for future requirement and encouragement to young scientists and students.

The research cell has the broad mission of promoting and challenging new areas of science & engineering with focus on basic research in all disciplines. It also encourages involvement of academic and research institutions to undertake research in identified areas. It also acts as a mechanism for inter agency coordination with other S&T agencies for better management of R&D funding through joint/ complimentary funding in major projects. This is so since other S&T agencies fund R&D in their specialised areas such as agriculture (ICAR), health (ICMR), defence (DRDO), space (DoS), atomic energy (DAE), non-conventional energy (MNES) etc.

MDR Cell

Research Schools is to encourage Young Scientists to take up challenging research and development activities. Program Advisory Committee is promoting the program in disciplines like Life, Chemical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.


Its functions

MDR Cell funds R&D projects in identified challenging areas to scientists in academic, research institutions including medical colleges and universities, national research laboratories, engineering colleges and engineering research institutes, etc.

Activities may be classified under the following disciplines:

•  Physical Science
•  Chemical Science
•  Life Science
•  Earth & Atmospheric Science
•  Engineering Science
•  Mathematical Science

Within MDR, we need to identify specific areas of research known as the thrust areas through the mechanism of organising a series of national workshops in most of the above disciplines. The Programme Advisory Committees of the MDR will have to deliberate on updating these thrust areas and identifying new challenging areas for support in the 21st century. Few examples of the broad areas identified by the MDR are Molecular Biophysics, habitat fragmentation biology, chronobiology, plant animal relationships, small permanent magnet machines, smart sensors, optical communication, use of hydrogen as fuel, watershed management, high precision manufacturing, design of VLSI circuits, sensors integrated robotics system, synthesis and structure, organometallic and cluster chemistry, physical chemistry based phenomenon like ultra fast reaction dynamics, corrosion etc., quantum optics and basic laser physics, non-linear optics, physics of biological systems, evolution of India crust, study of earthquake processes, climate observation and modeling, severe weather system, stochastic process modeling, combinatorial optimisation, game theory, etc.

These areas will be published as Vision Documents for R&D and will be available on request.

MDR funding provides sophisticated equipment, instruments and facilities as part of R&D activities/programmes. Training to brilliant young scientists through fellowships, workshops, summer/ winter schools in few selected areas and students fellowships .