10 June : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to lay the foundation of the new campus of the prestigious National Institute for Science Education and Research (NISER) near Bhubaneswar next month.
Though the exact date is yet to be finalised, the foundation stone for our own campus is likely to be laid by the Prime Minister by the second week of July," NISER director T K Chandrasekhar told reporters.
The premier institute is likely to move to its own campus, to be constructed at a cost of Rs 400 crore on 300 acres, at Jatni by 2013, he said.Once the new campus is ready, NISER would have around 1,000 undergraduate and 700 PhD students besides 250 faculty members and 500 staff, Chandrasekhar said.
Schools of earth and planetary sciences and computer sciences are proposed to be introduced in the new campus.At present functioning from the campus of Institute of Physics since its inception by the department of Atomic Energy, NISER is all set to launch PhD programmes from December this year.
Thereafter, an integrated PhD programme is expected to begin from August next year at the premier institution of basic science education where first batch of students were admitted in September, 2008.
While introducing PhD programme, NISER would take in 15 students in the departments of Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics and Biology, Chandrasekhar said.
"The aim is to engage them in very high quality research and produce talented scientists in the country," he said.
The institute is gradually increasing its student intake with 40 admitted to the integrated MSc programme in basic sciences in the first three years.
The intake would be increased to 80 in the next two years and by 2013 it would further go up to 200 in each stream, the director said, adding that more and more students were now showing keen interest in basic sciences.
In order to spread awareness about NISER among students, the institute is organising programmes in different schools and colleges.
Plans are afoot to start a national combined entrance examination for NISER at Pune, Bhopal, Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram and Mohali on the lines of IITs.