Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research
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| Type | Autonomous government institute (deemed university) |
|---|---|
| Established | 1989 |
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Academic staff
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~50 |
| Students | ~300 |
| Address | JNCASR, Jakkur, Bangalore-560 064, Bangalore, Karnataka, India |
| Website | www.jncasr.ac.in |
The Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) is a multidisciplinary research institute. It was established by the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India, to mark the birth centenary of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. It is located in Jakkur, Bangalore, India. Its mandate is to pursue and promote scientific research and training at the frontiers of science and engineering. At present Prof. M. R. S. Rao is the president of JNCASR and Prof. C. N. R. Rao is the honorary president and founder of the institute.
Researchers at the centre are divided into seven units: Chemistry and Physics of Materials, Engineering Mechanics, Evolutionary and Organismal Biology, Molecular biology and Genetics, New Chemistry, Theoretical Sciences, Educational Technology and Geodynamics. There are two off-campus units: Chemical Biology and Condensed Matter Theory.
JNCASR has a faculty-to-student ratio of about 1:4 and state-of-the-art experimental, computational and infrastructural facilities. It offers Ph.D. programmes, as well as an Integrated Ph.D. (post-bachelor's degree) programme in Materials Science. It is a "deemed university", i.e., it awards its own degrees.
Apart from training its own students through a wide spectrum of courses, JNCASR actively supports a range of education outreach activities. For example, every year the centre's Summer Research Fellowship programme hosts some of the very brightest undergraduates in the country; the Educational Technology Unit produces a range of teaching aids and educational material; the centre also organises and teaches short-term courses at universities across India; and promising young chemists and biologists are trained intensively as part of the programmes of Project-Oriented-Chemical-Education (POCE) and Project-Oriented-Biological-Education (POBE).
The small size of the institute (currently about 53 faculty members and ~300 students) has many advantages. It fosters interdisciplinary collaborations that might not have sprung up at larger institutions where researchers are segregated in far-flung labs.
Amongst the many such on-campus collaborations that have sprung up over the years: a fluid dynamicist has joined forces with a statistical mechanician to look at flow in nanochannels with an experimental physicist to study the freezing of laser-induced metal droplets when they impinge on a substrate; a theoretical molecular-dynamics study of the arrangement of water molecules around a protein has emerged from coffee-table discussions between a biochemist and physicist; and a many-body theorist is modelling the devices developed in the molecular electronics lab.
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