DST-FIST LAB

The Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, under the scheme " Fund for Improvement of S & T Infrastructure in Higher Educational Institutions" (DST-FIST) sanctioned an amount of Rs.1 crore to Stella Maris College in 2015 at Level'0'. The scheme is intended to augment the Teaching and Research facilities through acquisition of Equipment, Software, Books, Networking, Computational facilities and maintenance of equipment.

The College set up DST-FIST Lab which was inaugurated on 11th AUG, 2017, by Dr. B Chandrasekaran, Director, CSIR - CLRI, Chennai. Dr. Mary N.L, DST-FIST Coordinator gave an overview of the facilities of the lab during the inauguration.

The Lab now houses sophisticated equipment which include Solid UV-Vis Spectrophotometer, ATR - FT-IR Spectrophotometer, HPLC, Gel-Doc Molecular Imager, Electrochemical Workstation, Microwave synthesis system, Sonicator, Orbital shaking Incubator and two software: Schrodinger and MATLAB R2016b . These facilities are available to students, research scholars and faculty of Stella Maris College and other Colleges and Universities to ignite a scientific curiosity in the minds of future scientists.

An e-learning and networking facility has been set up to enable online education and knowledge transfer. The fund aided the development of library facilities through procurement of books which enhances quality teaching and research.

The development of infrastructure strengthened the research capabilities and has resulted in an increase in the number of publications and paper presentations. There were 43 publications in Scopus indexed, Web of Science, UGC Care listed and Peer reviewed journals by the faculty and research scholars from the departments of Mathematics, Chemistry, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics. About 71 papers were presented at the International/National conferences.

Conferences, Workshops, Certificate courses, have been conducted to expand the knowledge on recent scientific topics. Over this period (2016-2021) 681 P.G. students had access to the infrastructure facilities for their practical classes and projects. Faculty and research scholars from our college uses the sophisticated lab extensively. During this period, 5 Ph.D. scholars from Mathematics and 2 from Chemistry completed their doctoral programme. Currently there are 36 Ph.D. scholars from the science departments are utilising the infrastructure for the conduct of their research work. Faculty, research scholars and students from other institutions are also encouraged to use the lab.

The Infrastructure created by the DST-FIST 2015 grant will be a long-standing resource for Stella Maris College and the larger community in the years to come. The scheme has enriched the experience of students, research scholars and faculty in our college and other colleges, networking among researchers and equipped them for professions in their field.