VISION

To promote and nurture excellence in the fundamental and applied sciences for the advancement of scientific (1928 - 2009) His Holiness Sri Vibudhesha Theertha Swamiji Founder Chairman Volume II knowledge and the benefit of mankind His Holiness Sri Vishwapriya Theertha Swamiji Chairman Issue 001

JANUARY to JUNE, 2011

POORNAPRAJNA
Institute of Scientific Research
NEWSLETTER
Editorial:
On the occasion of this second issue of the Newsletter, we are able to reflect with pleasure on a number of points in which, over the past year since the PhD program was begun, the institute has approached ever more the vision that motivated our founder HH Vibhudesha Teertha Swamiji to create the institute. Topmost among this is no doubt the vigor with which the twelve students who have been inducted into our PhD program have plunged into their work enthusiastically, some of whose achievements are recorded in this issue. Further, the academic year began with a workshop on advances in biological sciences, which helped bring together college lecturers and researchers from various places, on a single platform. We also have two new faculty appointments in Materials and Biological Sciences. Two summer schools, covering over 20 B.Sc students from our sister institute of Poornaprajna Science College, Udupi, were conducted, and-- as I am glad to report-- quite well received. It provided us with a nice window of opportunity to interact with the student community and share our interests as researchers. Based on the response evoked, we are sanguine that at least some of them would consider pursuing research as a career. We greatly profited from the visits from a number of eminent academic personalities, industrialists and other well-wishers, whose thoughtful suggestions have proved to be valuable to a fledgling research institute as ours. Many visitors have found our institute, small though it is, unique in its origin, structure and style of work. Many have appreciated the idea that an institute such as ours with a religio-spiritual base, is involved in secular, scientific research, since this base potentially provides the discipline and freedom of thought essential to do research in the sciences. Dr. R. Srikanth

From the Director's Desk

Dear all,
It is with great pleasure I present the second issue of our News Letter highlighting the various academic and research activities of the Institute. Currently, in PPISR, there are three divisions, Theoretical Sciences, Materials Science and Biological Sciences where research programmes of advanced nature are in progress. The research laboratories are now well equipped with the state of the art instruments to give every advantage to the students and faculty pursuing research here. In addition to pursuing research, PPISR has ambitious plans to outreach activities to develop innovative and imaginative platform for pedagogy aimed at school and college students and teachers. The mission of PPISR is to carry world class quality research involving multidisciplinary collaborations nationally and internationally and thus help graduate students reach their full potential by providing research guidance and technical skills required to live and work in a complex technological society. PPISR also aims to develop teaching material for core courses in Physics, Chemistry and Biology in order to strengthen the basic foundations of science in doctoral students. Our Institute had organized events like National Workshop in Biological Sciences, Summer Schools in Biology, Chemistry and Physics for Poornaprajna College students of Udupi. Seminars and invited lectures on various topics delivered by our faculty members have provided significant exchange of scientific knowledge among researchers across the country. The visits of National and International Scientists are resulting in new avenues of collaborations with leading global Institutes. Let me express my heartfelt thanks to all those who have Dr. Anand B Halgeri contributed their mite in bringing out of this News Letter. Director

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2
Events at Bidalur Campus

National Workshop on Advances in Biological Sciences

A National workshop on Advances in Biological Sciences was conducted under the aegis of Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru and Poornaprajna Institute of Scientific Research (PPISR) from January 20-22, 2011. Prof. A J Rao, IISc, Bengaluru was the convener and Prof. A B Halgeri was the coordinator. The scope of the workshop covered recent advances in cutting edge topics of Biological sciences. The objective of this workshop was to bring together scientists, teachers and young researchers in the same platform. The Workshop was inaugurated by Prof. G. Padmanaban, IISc and Prof. MRS Rao, President, JNCASR. Eminent professors from IISc and other prestigious institutions presented lectures on topics like Proteomics, Biomarkers in cancer research, Recombinant proteins, Stem Cells, Endophytic fungi, Vaccines, Genetic control of mosquitoes, Population control, Protein Structure etc.,

Foundation Stone Laid for the Biological Facility

Foundation stone for Biological Facility was laid by H H Sri th Vishwapriya Theertha Swamiji on January 28 , 2011. Biological/Insect facility is one of the important amenities needed for the advanced research in Biological Sciences to test the research findings before entering to clinical trials. While laying the foundation stone Swamiji blessed the gathering and said that founder Chairman's dream would come true by adding facilities to the existing ones and he also wished that this project be finished before Founder's day celebration. Dr. K Srihari, Hon. Secretary and Prof. N J Shetty, Hon. Professor of Biological Sciences and all staff, faculty and students of PPISR were present on the occasion.

Visit of Prof. Seetharama Acharya from USA

Professor Seetharama A Acharya from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, New York, USA visited PPISR on February 15, 2011 with an aim of collaboration on PEGylation Technology. PPISR arranged a meeting with him and his USA and Indian associates to discuss about the implementation of PEGylation technology at PPISR. Dr. Ananda presented overview of the institution and his areas of research
Continued.....

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on PEGylation and enquired his views on how to initiate collaboration with Prof. Acharya. Prof. Acharya in his presentation on EAF PEGylation Technology mentioned about his good old association with the members of PPISR management and wished to help this institute by doing research on PEGylation technology. His enthusiastic approach in establishing a technology centre at PPISR materialized in offering him Distinguished Visiting Professorship in biological Sciences of PPISR. He accepted this offer and agreed for initiating his research activities at PPISR.

Board of Trustees Meeting

The Board of Trustees meeting was held at Bidalur campus on nd March 02 , 2011 to discuss about the important issues regarding the amendments to the Trust Deed, Budget requirements of PPISR. recruitment of new faculties etc., in the presence of the Chairman. The meeting also had invitees such as Dr. V V Bhat, from ISRO Mr. Haridas, Statutory Auditor, Mr. Ashok Kumar, Hon. Treasurer of AMEC and the Director of PPISR, The meeting was mainly focused on the sources to increase the corpus fund. On this occasion, His Holiness Sri Vishwapriya Theertha Swamiji Chairman of AMEF released the first newsletter of PPISR .

Visit by Manipal University Team

A team from Manipal University, Manipal headed by Dr. Chandrashekhar Adiga visited PPISR on March 12th, 2011 for the renewal of the recognition of PPISR as a research centre for Theoretical Science, Material Science and Biological Science. One expert from each branch visited the center and verified the facilities. Along with Dr. Adiga, Prof. Thimmappa and Prof. Mohan Rao from Manipal University visited PPISR labs as subject experts. Expert committee visited different lab facilities and later Director presented about PPISR facilities and activities; in turn Dr. Adiga presented about Manipal University its Rules and Regulations, guidelines for registering and awarding PhD degree etc. Most of the honorary professors, adjunct professors, all members of PPISR and AMEF members were present in this meeting and discussed about the PhD centre recognition and guide recognitions.

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GTC Project Meeting

An industrial project sponsored by GTC technology, USA was initiated in Material Science department in Feb 2011. This project is based on the design and development of novel, eco-friendly solid catalyst for TM technology. For this project, a fully automated micro-reactor catalyst testing unit was procured and installed at the institute during first week of April. After 5 months of research work, the concerned scientists from GTC, USA, Sd-Chemie, Germany and SCIL visited PPISR from 22-25, June 2011, for the first face to face meeting to review the project. Dr. ZhongYi (GTC), Dr. Khler, Dr. Olivier (Sd-Chemie, Germany), Dr. Sabde (SCIL) and Dr. Prasad Rao (consultant to GTC) attended the 4 days meeting along with Dr. Halgeri and Dr. Shanbhag from PPISR. In addition to the research work, the matters related to filing patent and FTO were also discussed. The members in the meeting expressed their full satisfaction over the progress made during last 5 months.

GTC Project BSc Students Summer School forMeeting

Summer School (SS) for College students was conducted as an outreach activity for the first time in PPISR with an intention to inspire young minds to pursue research in basic sciences. It was decided to make a beginning in this activity, with some students from our sister institute, Poorna Prajna College Udupi. There were two batches of students one from Physics, Maths and chemistry background and another with Botany, Zoology and Chemistry background.

Chemistry and Physics Held from May 29th to June 2nd, 2011. Prof. A. P. Bhat,
HOD of Physics department and Lecturer Ms. Suparna from Department of chemistry accompanied students. Prof. Mahendra, the Chairman, Dept of Chemistry, Bangalore University Inaugurated the Summer School. He gave a brief idea of the future prospects in academics and encouraged the students to take up a career in science. The physics-chemistry school consisted of various lectures given by PPISR faculty and doctoral students. In the physics schools some of the topics discussed ranged from quantum computation, quantum entanglement to astronomy to mesoscopic physics at the nanoscale. Some of the specific topics in the chemistry school were Introduction to Materials science, nanomaterials, catalysis, proton exchange membranes, polymeric membrane for separation application, Bio-mass etc. followed by physics practical sessions and also a visit to the Laboratories at RRI under the guidance of Dr. Srikanth. The chemistry laboratory practical sessions consisted of hands-on synthesis and characterization of various materials using the PPISR in-house instruments and also a demonstration of the Catalytic reactor. The Valedictory function was held on 2nd June. The Chief Guest, Dr. Anatharaju, Secretary, Vision Group of Science and Technology, Government of Karnataka gave an inspirational speech about Chemistry and Philosophy.

Chemistry and Biology Held from June 5th to 9th 2011 and inaugurated by Prof.
S V Hegde of UAS Bangalore. Some of the Biology lectures topics were Endophytic fungi from medicinal plants, Insulin pathways and control of disease, Pro biotic in

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human health, Genetic studies of insecticide resistance in mosquito vectors,etc., The students also had Hands on experience on microbial culture, growth, maintenance, microbial size measurements by micrometry, qualitative estimation of enzymes produced by endophytic fungi and isolation of endophytic fungi from medicinal plants and anti-microbial assay. The Chemistry lectures and practical sessions were followed. Mr.Suhaas gave an additional lecture on Liquid crystals and Dr. Raghu A. V. had given a talk on the application of polymers for drug delivery in this summer school. The Valedictory function was presided by Dr. Shyamsundar Joshi and Dr. Shantha Joshi, retired Professors from University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore. They gave a very interesting presentation on the growth and tremendous market value of the Simarouba plant. H H Sri Vishwapriya Theertha Swamiji blessed the gather and distributed certificates to the participants.

GTC Project Centre's Visit of Indo-French Meeting Director

Dr. Amudheswari, the Director of the Indo-French Centre (IFC), New Delhi along with her team comprising of Mr. Mural and Dr. Rao visited the campus on February 08, 2011. After an overview of research activities of PPISR presented to her group; she opined that Though she was biased to visit the campus, was very much impressed on visit in person to the campus and meeting the vibrant and enthusiastic team of dedicated researchers under the leadership of the Director Dr. A B Halgeri. She also discussed various kinds of possible collaborations that are encouraged by IFC and gave our faculty a brief idea of how to put in effective proposals for funds and make collaborations.

GTC Project Meeting Visit of Dr. Gururaja Karajagi

The famous Educationist and the Honorary Director of Poornaprajna Institute of Faculty Improvement, Bengaluru, Dr. Gururaja Karajagi, visited our Campus on the auspicious day of Akshaya Thriteeya May 6, 2011 in the presence of the Chairman H H Sri Vishwapriya Theertha Swamiji. The meeting which was attended by the faculty and students of PPISR began with a welcome address by the Director followed by the blessing of swamiji. Then Dr. Gururaja Karajagi addressed the gathering and shared his experiences on the importance of achieving a doctoral degree. He expressed his heartfelt gratitude to the founder chairman H H Sri Vibudhesha Theertha Swamiji's vision of retaining the talents within the country.

GTC Project Meeting Visit by Academy Team from SIT, Tumkur

A team of faculty from Siddaganga Institute of Technology Tumkur visited Bidalur Campus on an Academic Interaction Understanding with PPISR. Among the team were Dr. K.L. Shivabasappa, head of the department of chemical engineering Dr. Raghavendra Char Pavgada, Dr. Naveen Nagaraj who are faculty in the same department. The faculty members of PPISR presented an overview of PPISR and talks on their fields of research. After a visit to the laboratories, faculty from both institutes agreed upon some collaborative research. The SIT professors also invited the PPISR faculty to their institute.

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GTC Project Meeting Current Research Activities in PPISR Theoretical Sciences GTC Project Meeting
1. Lectures delivered on Quantum Spin Chain System at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, ISI JNCASR and RRI by Dr. Sujit Sarkar 2. Poster by Omkar Srikrishna and Srinatha Narayanaswamy at ICQOQC-2011, March 24th-26th, 2011 held at JIIT, Noida, India 3. Two invited lectures on Quantum Information Theory by Dr. Srikanth on April 23, 2011 at NIE-IT, Mysore 4. Dr. Sujit Sarkar attended International Workshop/School on Topological Insulator and Topological Quantum Computation at IISc, Bangalore The activity over the past six months in the Theoretical Sciences Division had been in studying quantum secret sharing protocols in noisy channel situations; deriving the operator sum representation of the squeezed generalized amplitude damping channel via the Choi matrix formalism; the thermal entanglement in a twoqubit system under an inhomogeneous gate voltage and quantum phase transitions and geometric phase in many-body systems. Number of publications/acceptances in peerreviewed international journals over the last 6 months: 4

Materials Sciences

GTC Project Meeting

2. Poster by Swetha S. M. and two oral presentations by Mr. Vijay and Ms. Swetha B. V. in a national conference entitled Social relevance of chemical science 2011 held at the Department of chemistry, Kuvempu University, Shankaraghatta,Shimoga, on 26th and 27th of March 2011. 3. Swetha S.M. participated in a workshop entitled' XRD and XRF :Advances in Industrial Applications' on 25th June 2011 at IISC 4. Dr. Raghu A. V. participated in the National Conference on Nanoscience and Engineering (NanoSEC 2011) organized by the Indian Ceramic Society, Bangalore Chapter, held at IISc Bangalore, on June 23-24, 2011 5. Srinidhi M. Participated the Materials Engineering TEM and SEM demonstration workshop on Feb. 2011.

The research developments in the past six months in the materials science Division comprise of: the progress of the industry sponsored project, where the catalysts recipe was optimized and tested in the newly installed fully automated microreactor catalyst testing unit(CTU); Initial catalyst screening for conversion of bioglycerol into glycerol carbonate where some catalysts showed good activity and selectivity; Preparation of nanomaterials of the photoluminescent materials which are at present being characterized by DSC,SEM etc.; Preparation of Bi-based layered photocatalysts using hydrothermal methods. Number of publications/book reviews in the last six months:2 1. Swetha. S.M. and Swetha B. V, participated in the conference entitled Luminescence of nanomaterials held on 27th January 2011 organized by Department of chemistry, MSRIT, Bangalore.

Biological Sciences
A couple of areas that the Biological Science division researchers are working on are Endophytic fungi from Medicinal plants and genetic control of mosquitoes. Hundreds of endophytic fungi from medicinal plants are isolated and many of these fungi show promising results with respect to the compounds which we are interested. We have also obtained encouraging results with respect ot controlling of mosquitoes from different geographical areas. Number of Publications in the last six months: 1 Dr. Raghavednra Prahalada Rao form National Cancer Institute, Fredereck,USA visited PPISR on April 15th 2011 and shared his research experience on Ceramide signaling Pathway-roles beyond apoptosis and cell signaling

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Achievements
1. Dr. Nalini's project titled Design and development of nanocrystalline layered bismuth compounds for photocatalytic degradation of dyes and organic pollutants in the visible region was recommended for support under the DST scheme for Fast Track Proposals for Young Scientist on January 1st 2011. 2.. Mr. Omkar Srikrishna's presentation, "What is free will?" was short-listed in the 6th All India Students 'Conference on 'Science and Spiritual Quest' (AISSQ-2011) held during 12--14 March 2011. 3. Swetha. B.V. presented a talk on Utilization of chemicals from biorefinery: Conversion of bioglycerol to glycerol carbonate by solid base catalyst which was selected as a First best oral presentation award and handed over a certificate with a momentum at National conference on social relevance of chemical sciences, International year of chemistry-2011, 26-27 March, 2011, at Kuvempu University, Shankargatta, Shimoga 4. A paper on "Quantumness of noisy quantum walks: A comparison between measurement-induced disturbance and quantum discord" by Balaji Rao, R. Srikanth, C. M. Chandrashekar and Subhashish Banerjee was Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. A (Brief Reports) 5. Dr. R. Srikanth, was invited for a talk on The World is not hard enough at the International Conference of Quantum Optics and Quantum Computation (ICQOQC) 2011, Mar 2426, 2011, held at Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, India. 6. Dr. Sujit Sarkar has received an invitation to submit a research papers in 'Nature Journal

Central Instrument Facility (CIF) at PPISR

The Central Instrument Facility (CIF) at PPISR has several instruments that are necessary for general analysis like Spectrometers and some specific for Materials Science users such as X-ray diffractometer, Conductivity Bridge, Gas Chromatograph etc., are available. 1. X-Ray Diffractometer (Bruker) 2. F T I R Spectrophotometer (Bruker) 3. Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (PE) 4. UV Vis Spectrophotometer (Perkin Elmer) 5. Impendence Analyzer (Hewlett Packard) These instruments are available for use mainly by the scientists and the research students at PPISR and our collaborators. This facility are also extended to other interested external organizations, especially users from academic/industrial institutions for a nominal charges. The following may be contacted for furher details:
Dr. Nalini. G. Sundaram
Testing Facility In charge Email: [email protected]

Mrs.Latha Srinivasan
Administrative In charge Email: [email protected]

New Instruments Added

1. POWDER x-RAY DIFFRACTOMETER
The D2 PHASER table top X-ray Powder Diffractometer from Bruker is equipped with a ceramic sealed X-ray tube (Cu Kalpha source) and Ni filter and is ideal for qualitative, quantitative and structure analysis of polycrystalline samples. It is also outfitted with the LYNXEYE(TM) 1-D Solid State Fast Detector to collect high quality data in the range 3-90 degrees in 2Theta with unprecedented speed and 150 times faster than a conventional detector system. The X-ray diffraction data can be collected for organic, inorganic, polymer and other solid samples. This is one of the most important characterization tools for a Materials Scientist and is some times also used for identification of crystalline biological samples such as hydoxyapetite etc.

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2. CATALYST TESTING UNIT (CTU)

Fully automated micro reactor catalyst testing unit is a mini pilotplant which can be used to test the catalysts for wide range of reactions including alkylation, acylation, disproportionation, isomerization, cracking etc of petrochemicals and fine chemicals to value added products. In this unit, reaction can be carried out on fixed bed, down flow reactor under pressure with two independent reactant feeds with a carrier gas flow. The equipment contains highly sophisticated components such as mass flow controllers high pressure feed pumps, SS reactor, furnace, weigh scales and wet gas meter which function with high accuracy. The operation of the unit is fully controlled by computer software. CTU was manufactured and supplied by Texol Engineering, Pune. It was purchased for the industrial project sponsored by GTC, USA.

New appointments @ PPISR

Dr. Udupi A Ramagopal is appointed as Asst. Professor in Biological Science. He has worked as a faculty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, USA. He is currently working on structural aspects of co-stimulatory molecules of immunological synapse. He has gained extensive experience in the area of synchrotron based macromolecular crystallography (particularly methodology of phasing) and its applications to various aspects of Biology, including routine structural genomics. As a graduate student at the IISc, Bengaluru, he has worked in the areas of de novo design of non-natural amino acid containing peptides. He has authored/co-authored around 30 publications. Recently he has been awarded the Prof. Ramalingaswamy Fellowship by the Govt. of India, for his outstanding research. Dr. A V Raghu is appointed as Asst. Professor in Material Science. He has obtained his Ph.D in polymer science under the guidance of Prof. T M Aminabhavi. Previously he had worked at the R & D Fuel Cell division of Reliance Industries Limited, Mumbai, on the development of membranes for fuel cell applications.He was interacting with NCL project for the development of membrane electrode assembly for fuel cell applications and had developed polyurethanes nanocomposite membranes for industrial applications. He has published 25 research articles in peer reviewed national / international journals in a span of eight years. Dr. Bhargavi is appointed as Visiting Asst. Professor in the Theoretical Physics Division.

Visitors & their views about PPISR

Mr. Ernst Kohler
Sud Chemie, Germany

We enjoyed the great hospitality of PPIR and look forward to continuing our excellent cooperation
Dr. Zhongyi Ding
G T C Technology, Houston, State of Texas, USA.

Natural Coverage with plants a blessing from heaven

Dr. S. Ananth Raj
Executive Secretary, VGST DST , Govt. of Karnataka

Beautiful serene atmosphere to do research. Labs are immaculate. Good work in surface chemistry, Bio-sciences and physics section. I wish bright future to all researchers
Mr. Olivier Larlus
Sud Chemie, Germany

Hope institute will grow as fast and as high as the tree!! thank you to all the nice team for welcoming us.
Dr. C.S. Adiga:
Deputy registrar-Academics (Tech) Manipal university Manipal 576104

Beautiful and charming campus clean environment. Best for studies.

Dr. Seetaram Acharya:
Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY 10461

Remarkable Place with unique opportunity waiting to be harvested

Mr. Jagadish Chandra .H.S:
Inspector of Excise, Hoskote sub-division.

'Wonderful a research institute which is truly Indian and has high capacity to lead India in her scientific research. Good luck PPISR