We may even be able to use high-end laboratory facilities in other labs over NKN where the time is booked and the experiments are executed remotely.

Mohali,,

Prof N Sathyamurthy, Director IISER Mohali, in his welcome address, updated the gathering about the spectacular progress made by IISER Mohali in the first five years since the institute was established in August 2007. The 1Gbps cyberway enabled by the NKN will be the fastest currently available  link where researchers can collaborate and work on problems which require large data sharing in realtime. We may even be able to use high-end laboratory facilities in other labs over NKN where the time is booked and the experiments are executed remotely. The E-classroom will be used to run courses across institutions. The E-classroom and the NKN facility will put IISER Mohali on the map of cyber education, and help it move forward in its agenda of Science Education and Research.  Dr Chidambaram in his lecture titled “The need to work on difficult problems” stressed on how it is essential for groups of researchers to collaborate and work on difficult problems in crucial areas of health, medicine and agriculture, which will benefit society as a whole. All these problems can only be solved if groups of researchers from geographically diverse regions can come together and work on a consolidated E-platform. NKN provides this platform and it is upto the community to use it to solve
non-trivial problems.

IISER Mohali, situated on a 125 acre campus in the Knowledge City in Sector 81 Mohali, is one of five national institutes
set up in 2007 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India.  Prof N Sathyamurthy Director IISER Mohali, updated the gathering about the rapid progress made by the institute in science research and education in the first five years since its inception.  The major focus at IISER Mohali is to create a world class scientific institution with an intellectually alive atmosphere of research.  The first phase of construction is nearly over and the institute is now fully residential with student, staff and faculty housing, library, academic building, lecture hall complex, shopping complex and health centre.  The first batch of students from the 5-year Integrated MS program graduated in 2012 and the first convocation was held in July 2012.  The academic programs at
IISER Mohali include the 5-year MS program, PhD program in basic sciences and Integrated PhD program.  The institute
also has provision for a number of post-doctoral fellowships.  Research infrastructure available at IISER includes a high-performance cluster computing facility and a sophisticated instrumentation centre housing a high-field NMR research facility, single crystal and powder X-ray diffractometer facility, Laser Raman and AFM facility, Femtosecond laser facility, confocal imaging setup,
drosophila fly lab and an atmospheric chemistry facility with a PTR-MS setup.  Faculty at IISER Mohali have garnered several awards and honors including Ramanujam fellowships, Ramalingaswami fellowships, DBT Innovative biotechnologist awards, Wellcome DBT fellowships, J C Bose Fellowships and INSA and IAS fellows.  With its research infrastructure and faculty strength, IISER Mohali is uniquely poised to take on a leadership role in science and technology research and science education in the region. The E-classroom set up under the aegis of the NKN is one step in this direction, whereby IISER Mohali and other regional institutions can work together and share knowledge via this ultrafast cyberway.

The National Knowledge Network (NKN) is a state-of-the-art multi-gigabit pan-India network that provides a high-speed broadband network backbone connecting several educational and research institutions across the country.  The NKN was set up after consultations between the office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and the National Knowledge Commission.  The NKN will enable the dissemination of knowledge in various key areas and seed research and development activities that are multidisciplinary, collaborative and require substantial computing power. Key knowledge-sharing areas include health, education, science and technology, bioinformatics, agriculture and governance. The NKN comprises an ultra-high
speed CORE along with a distribution layer at appropriate speeds.  Participating institutions will connect to the NKN via channel speeds of 1 Gbps or higher.  NKN is the nodal centre for a large number of participating institutions such as national research labs(CSIR,DAE,DRDO,ISRO,ICAR) and educational institutions, as well as serves as a hub for EDUSAT, National internet exchange points, connections to global networks such as TEiN3, MPLS clouds, broad band clouds and national data centres and state networks. Currently, over 850 institutions are connected on the NKN, including all the five IISERs at Mohali, Kolkata, Pune,
Bhopal and Thiruvananthapuram.

Dr R Chidambaram who inaugurated the NKN facility and the E-classroom, is currently the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and Head NKN. He is a well-known nuclear scientist and metallurgist, currently serving as the  principal scientific adviser to the Government of India.  Dr Chidambaram has served as the director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and has been long associated with the Indian nuclear programme. He received his PhD in nuclear magnetic resonance in 1962 from IISc Bangalore (and was conferred with the Martin Forster Medal for best doctoral thesis) and later a Dsc in metallurgy and material science from IISc Bangalore.  He later joined BARC and has received a number of awards and honours, including the Padma Shri and Padma Vibushan.