Vice-Chancellor Statement

Chandigarh February 4, 2023

Syndicate Meeting

4.02.2023

Vice-Chancellor Statement

With a deep sense of sorrow, I may inform the honorable members of this august house about the sad demise of

• Sh. Satya Pal Singh ji, respected father of Dr. R.S.Jhanji, Fellow & Syndic on January 1, 2023.
• Smt. Sunhari Devi ji, respected mother of Professor Ashok Kumar, Fellow on January 10, 2023.
• Sardarni Surinder Kaur Dua ji, respected mother of Dr. Harpreet Singh Dua, Fellow & Syndic on January 11, 2023.
• Professor Kulwant Gill ji, Former Chairperson, Department of Laws on January 22, 2023. We have been a witness to her generosity of heart and magnanimity of spirit recently when she had donated an amount of Rs. 54.14 lacs to our University, in the sacred memory of her younger brother S. Manjit Singh, for the construction of Lecture theatre in our prestigious Department of Laws. Such like exemplary philanthropic activities are always helpful for the growth of our university.

(To pay homage to the departed souls, two-minute silence may be observed)

1. I feel privileged and owe my sincere gratitude to Sh. Jagdeep Dhankhar ji, Hon’ble Vice President of India and Chancellor of our historic university for having reposed confidence in me for the discharge of the duties of the august office of the Vice Chancellor of Panjab University. Today is my first meeting of Syndicate after having assumed charge on January 16, 2023 as Vice Chancellor and I look forward to your valuable guidance & cooperation in the future endeavors of the university to make it a global player with your profound knowledge and rich experience.

2. I am pleased to inform that Professor Rajat Sandhir, Fellow has been awarded Mrs. Abida Mehdi award for outstanding contributions in the field of Neurosciences by the Indian Association of Biomedical Scientists for the year 2022. Prof. Sandhir has also received the INSA Teachers Award for the year 2022. Such awards work as motivation & inspiration for all faculty members.
3. Our University has won overall second position in men section and third position in women section during All India Inter University Karate championship held at Attal Bihari Vajpaye University, Raipur, Chattisgarh from January 17^thto January 23^rd, 2023.
4. Sh. Vikram Nayyar, Finance & Development Officer has been nominated on the Finance Committee of NIPER, SAS Nagar for a period of 3 years.
5. Dr. Kewal Krishan, Department of Anthropology has been ranked at 17^thposition worldwide amongst the highly cited scientists in the discipline of Legal and Forensic Medicine.
6. Heartiest felicitations to Sh. Anup Gupta, our alumnus, for having been elected as Mayor of Chandigarh. We are confident that he will pay special attention to his alma mater for the overall growth & development of Sector 14 & 25.
7. Heartiest felicitations to Dr. Rattan Singh Jaggi, our alumnus, and Professor Prakash Chandra Sood, former faculty from the Department of Physics for having been selected for the prestigious Padma Shri Award by the Government of India.
8.     I am pleased to share that:
9. a)   Professor G.R.Chaudhary of SAIF of our university has been sanctioned a grant of Rs. 5 crores to procure a new state of the art X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) by the DST, Government of India, New Delhi.
10. b) Dr. Prashant Jindal (Principal Investigator) and Dr. Mamta Juneja (Co-Investigator) from UIET, Panjab University, along with Nirmal Raj Gopinathan (Co-Investigator), PGIMER, Chandigarh have been sanctioned a research grant of Rs.37.95 Lacs from SERB, DST for a period of 3 years to design a state of art and cost effective human prosthetic arm.
11. c)  Dr. Prashant Jindal, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, University Institute of Engineering & Technology(UIET), Panjab University(PU), Chandigarh has been awarded with SERB-TARE fellowship-cum-research grant of 18.30 lacs- by the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India. His research work will deal with Designing fixture plates with different 3D printing materials for optimizing cranial implant thickness used in skull reconstruction. Dr. Jindal has already been a recipient of another prestigious Commonwealth Rutherford Fellowship and is also leading Design Innovation Centre project for medical devices at UIET.
12. d)  Anil Kumar, Assistant Professor, University Institute of Engineering & Technology, Panjab University has been awarded with SERB-TARE fellowship-cum-research grant of 18.30 lacs- by the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India. His project will deal with the development of cost-effective transition metal free approaches for the deoxygenation of over-oxygenated organic molecules to access value-added chemicals.

1. e)  Kashmir Singh, Professor, Department of Biotechnology, has received project funding of worth Rs 30 lacs under corporate social responsibility (CSR) from a company based at Ludhiana. The project is on establishing tissue culture technologies on medicinal plants.

I am confident that the faculty of our university, which possesses a prodigious talent and intellectual wealth would work concertedly for many more such projects in the future to take this historic university to global heights. It is likely that we might have missed some more information to be included here because of non-communication by concerned faculty.