PU Faculty bags 1.21 Crore Grant under Indo-US 21st Century Knowledge Initiative

Chandigarh, July 11, 2016: Panjab University (PU) faculty members Dr. Ganga Ram Chaudhary and Dr. Rajeev Kumar have bagged the prestigious 1.21 crore grant under the “Indo-US 21st Century Knowledge Initiative”. The PU team would conduct the research be conducted in
partnership with the Florida Polytechnic University (FPU), Lakeland, Florida, USA.
Dr. Ganga Ram Chaudhary and Dr. Rajeev Kumar are working as Associate Professor, PU
Department of Chemistry and Assistant Professor at PU Department of Environment Studies respectively. Dr. Jaspreet S. Dhau from FPU would be leading the research collaboration from the USA side.
The Indo-U.S. 21st Century Knowledge Initiative awards are awarded by United States- India Educational Foundation (USIEF) and University Grants Commission, Government of India through an open competition. The award was announced by the U.S. and Indian governments and the Knowledge Initiative is aimed to strengthen collaboration and build partnerships between American and Indian institutions of higher education.
Four awards have been made this year, which includes University of Kashmir, Mangalore University, Karnataka and National Institute of Technology, Karnataka.
They would also partner with USA partner institutions.
The PU-FPU research team would research on the project of “Indo-US Partnership on Green Chemistry/Engineering and Technologies Education, Research and Outreach for Sustainable Development”. The students/Faculty from both the groups P.U. Chandigarh, India and FPU, USA would be visiting regularly for three years under this exchange programmes.
The project is aimed to address the global challenges in the emerging area of Green Chemistry and Technologies. It would facilitate the development of an international educational curriculum and exchange of expertise research and outreach activities between the two countries. The main objectives are to develop Green Technologies based on Green Chemistry Principles, which include renewable energy generation, energy storage technologies, fully additive manufacturing technologies and water purification using nanotechnology.
The implementation of “Green Chemistry Principles” and the development of “Green technologies” are paramount to the endeavour to ensure sustainable development of the human race. The major research emphasises would be to develop technology in the various areas like Development of fully additive manufacturing process for the fabrication of Flexible Circuit; Thermochemical energy storage materials for Solar Thermal Storage in Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants; Development of Visible Light Photo catalysts for Air/Water Detoxification and Disinfection; and Development of Semiconducting sonocatalysts and Photocatalysts for ultrafast and effective treatment of organic pollutants from wastewater.