The Department of Basic Sciences and Humanities (BSH) at SiliconTech collaborated with the Orissa Physical Society (OPS) to organize the 5th National Seminar on Functional Materials for Emerging Technology (FMET 2023) and the 39th Annual Convention of Orissa Physical Society in our campus from 11 to 12 February 2023.
The chief guest of OPS-FMET 2023 event, Prof. Karuna Kar Nanda, Director, Institute of Physics (IOP) spoke on the importance of materials in our day-to-day life and explained the importance of physics in all spheres of science in his inaugural address. The inaugural ceremony was attended by Prof. Rita Paikaray, President, OPS, Prof. Dilip Kumar Mishra, Secretary, OPS, Dr. Saroj Kanta Misra, our Director, Dr. Jaideep Talukdar, our Principal and Dr. Jayashree Das, Dean, Research and Convener of the OPS-FMET 2023 meet.
In the inaugural ceremony, OPS felicitated its senior Physics teachers of Odisha from the M.Sc. graduating batch of 1973 and presented the OPS Young Scientist Awards for the year 2021 and 2022 to Dr. Atal Bihari Swain and Dr. Arvind Khuntia for their exemplary work in experimental research. Dr. Bihari is currently working as a post-doctoral scholar in the Department of Physics, University of Konstanz, Germany. Dr. Khuntiais pursuing his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from The Henryk Niewodniczański, Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakow, Poland.
Two memorial lectures organized by OPS in the memory of Prof. B. B. Deo and Prof. S. N. Behera were also delivered on 11 February 2023. Prof. S. D. Mahanti from Michigan State University, USA delivered the ‘Prof. B. B. Deo Memorial Lecture’ and Prof. Purusottam Jena from Virginia Commonwealth University, USA delivered the ‘Prof. S. N. Behera Memorial Lecture.’
The FMET seminar comprising of four invited talks by experts from India and abroad was conducted on 12 February 2023. Prof. Sashi Satpathy, University of Missouri, USA, Prof. Manoranjan Kar, IIT Patna, Prof. Shikha Varma, Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar and Prof. Subhankar Bedanta, NISER. Bhubaneswar were the speakers. The subject experts focused on the recent developments on materials science and technology in their talks. The participants also presented their research work in the form of oral and poster presentation.
A total of six oral presentations and twenty-eight poster presentations were made in the event. To encourage the young researchers, the best oral presentation award was given to Pravanjan Mallick, and the best poster award was given to Siva Sankar Rakapa in the valedictory function.
A total of 325 participants attended the event out of which around 125 were external participants. The event concluded with the formal vote of thanks presented by Prof. Dilip Kumar Mishra, Secretary, OPS.
