Areas of Interest to BRNS

BRNS provides funds primarily for the research projects on DAE programmes. For promoting excellence in Science and Technology in the country on any novel area of DAEs interest, BRNS grants research projects to young scientists under Young Scientist Research Projects (YSRP) scheme. BRNS also makes special call on the subjects requiring urgent attention. It is mandatory to have a collaborator from Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), termed as Principal Collaborator (PC), for the research project proposals submitted on the DAE programmes except for YSRP. Based on nature of work, role of Principal Investigator (PI) and Principal Collaborator (PC) and budget requirement, these research projects are classified as follows.

1. 1. Relevant Research Projects (RRPs): These research projects to be conceptualised essentially by the Principal Investigator (PI) from the university/institute/ National Labs and will have a partner i.e. Principal Collaborator (PC) from one of the DAE research centre. Project proposals and the names of PCs should be submitted with prior approval of DAE units. The submission under this category is open throughout the year. Subject areas of DAE interest where PIs may contribute are listed in form of key words across each of the nine BRNS committees on DAE Programmes (CDPs). To formulate research project based on any of the areas listed, interested project investigator (PI) can interact with the Principal Collaborator (PC) from DAE. Full project proposal may please be prepared as per the guidelines given in the Project Proposal Application (PPA) and submit on BRNS website.

2. 2. Collaborative & Co-ordinated Research Projects (CRPs): This scheme is meant for DAE activities in which participation of a single or multiple institutes outside DAE will be of significant benefit in accelerating the pace of development within the department. Initially brief proposals will be invited from Principal Coordinators (PCs) for such projects, who will be from a DAE unit. The projects under CRP will be driven by PCs from DAE Research Centres. PCs will not only be responsible for linking the sub-projects but will also have substantial scientific & technical contributions in delivering the proposed CRP objectives. A CRP project proposal shall have few sub-projects with complementary activities which will be co-ordinated by a PC (or a small group of PCs and co-PCs) with the aim of fulfilling the overall objectives and deliverables of that CRP within the sanctioned cost and time. Each sub-project, to be submitted by PIs from participating institutions, should have its defined objectives and deliverables and will be evaluated separately by BRNS committees. The linkages between different sub-projects and their connectivity in relation to achieving the overall objective will also be examined by CDPs. Duration of a CRP should not exceed 5 years and that of each sub project of a CRP should not be more than 3 years.

3. 3. BRNS will display the list of CRPs on website with due date of submission for inviting PIs from academia outside DAE unit having mutual interest to submit the project proposals, on the subject defined in CRP with consultation with DAE collaborator who proposed the concerned CRP.

4. 4. Mega Research Projects (MRP): Collaborative Mega Research Project proposals should be jointly submitted by Principal Investigator (PI) and Principal Collaborator (PC) from a DAE institution. Mega Project Proposals generally will be considered and processed as MoUs. These research proposals need to be processed first in DAE institutions as per the standard practice of creating MoUs and then placed to BRNS.

5. 5. Young Scientist Research Project (YSRP): The YSRPs are intended for providing the research support to the young promising scientists in the initial period of their career. The selection of YSRPs is done by two stages of the assessment i.e., shortlisting of the project by the different BRNS committees, and final selection by a YSRP committee. A maximum of 20 such projects are given in a year with a maximum budget limit Rs. 35 Lakh. At present, submissions are open throughout the year.  Age limit of YSRP applicant is 35 years at the time of submission of the project on BRNS website. YSRP projects should be on new emerging subjects of the Science and Technology, preferably subjects related to DAE programmes.

6. 6. Researchers across India who are interested in submitting collaborative research project proposal to BRNS, may choose one of the schemes mentioned above.

Some of the specific subject areas of interest to BRNS are:

1. 1. Advance Reactor Technology, Small Modular Reactors (SMR), Molten Salt Breeder Reactor (MSBR) Research, High Temperature Reactor Research, Utilization of Research Reactors, Reactor Heat Utilizations, Passive Safety Systems, Valves & Devices for Advance Reactors.
2. 2. Hydrogen Generation and Storage, Membrane Science & Associated Technologies.
3. 3. Nuclear Agriculture - Radiation based mutation breeding approaches for genetic improvement & protection of crops.
4. 4. Nuclear facilities/Beam lines for Research Applications such as Neutron Scattering, Neutron Activation Analysis, Radiotracer Studies, Radiopharmaceuticals, Archaeology / Forensic studies, Synchrotron Radiation Utilization, Applications of Radiation Technologies in Industries.
5. 5. Recovery of wealth (chemicals & radioisotopes) from waste out of Nuclear Facilities.
6. 6. Lasers in Bio-Medical Applications, Bio-Photonics: Photo-biomodulation, Light based point of care devices, Diagnostic Instrumentation/Applicators based on Radioactive Source-Camera, Gamma knife, Dosimeter/Detectors, Localized dose delivery, Medical Radiation Physics.
7. 7. Food Preservations by radiation / processing of bio-wastes/ e-waste / Chemical using ionizing radiations.
8. 8. New materials for radiation shielding, radiation resistant paints/grease, strategic applications. Structural Materials, Materials for Geo-repository, Advances in Characterization of Materials, Radiation damage, Processing and reprocessing of Materials, Degradation of Materials, Performance of materials under extreme conditions, Nano-carbon application in strategic area, Nuclear, Defence and Space applications of Rare Earths based Materials.
9. 9. Advanced Sensors – Quantum, Fibre Optics; Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence; Cyber Security, Quantum Computing.
10. 10. Mineral exploration (AMD), characterization of ore minerals, finger printing of ore genesis rare earth elements & beach sand minerals, application of AI & ML in mineral exploration, recovery of valuable minerals from seawater and brine, Radioactivity in Environment.
11. 11. Indigenization of materials and technologies for nuclear applications.
12. 12. Deployment of technologies developed by DAE for Societal benefits.

BRNS FUNDED MEGA PROJECTS / FACILITIES

1. 1. National Facility for Atom Probe Tomography (NFAPT) has been setup at IIT Madras, is partly funded by BRNS to improve the quality of materials research & development in the country with the help of atomic scale characterization in 3-dimensions.

Nodal Person: Dr. K.G. Pradeep, NFAPT, IIT Madras, Email : kgprad [at] iitm [dot] ac [dot] in; Web: www.nfapt.iitmac.in

2. 2. National Aerosol Facility (NAF) at IIT-Kanpur to cater the needs of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) Safety Research. The facility will also be useful for aerosol researchers within the country and for carrying out intercomparison and benchmarking experiments with international collaborators.

Nodal Person: Dr. Sachchida Nand Tripathi; email: snt[at]iitk[dot]ac[dot]in

3. 3. Centre for Computational Engineering and Science (CCES) has been setup at Computational Mechanics Lab, Civil Engineering Department, IIT Bombay with a major thrust to provide robust quality software solutions, advanced computational and visualization tools necessary for sustained development of academic programmes at IIT-B & HBNI and Indian Nuclear Energy Programme. This centre is open to students / researchers of IIT-B, HBNI and DAE.

Nodal Persons: Prof. Yogesh M Desai Email: desai[at] civil [dot] iitb [dot] ac [dot] in; Prof. Sauvik Banerjee Email: sauvik[at] civil [dot] iitb [dot] ac [dot] in;  Web: http://www.cces.iitb.ac.in

4. 4. National Facility for Texture and Orientation Imaging Microscopy (OIM) established at IIT-Bombay with partial financial support from BRNS. It has X-ray Texture/Stress, SEM (thermionic)-OIM, Dual Beam FEG SEM-OIM systems open to all the users.

Nodal Person: Prof. I. Samajdar, email: samajdar[at]iitb[dot]ac[dot]in

5. 5. National Facility for Analytical Electron Microscopy (NFAEM) at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore has material characterization by TEM, Focused Ion BEAM, E-Beam Lithography, ESEM etc. The Centre also has excellent capabilities for in situ high temperature microscopy with a MEMS based holder for rapid heating where temperature accuracy is within one degree centigrade. This is in addition to more conventional high precision double stage heating holder and cryo-holder that the centre possesses. The centre has also obtained a 3D tomography holder and currently efforts are being made to make it available on a routine basis.

Nodal Person:  Prof. K. Chattopadhyay; email: kamanio[at]materials[dot]iisc[dot]ernet[dot]in

6. 6. Development of microwave substrates for solid state amplifiers at Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET), Thrissur. Ultra-low loss microwave substrates fabricated for high end microwave circuit applications such as high power solid state amplifiers, patch antennas, missile guidance, mobile base stations etc. 

Nodal Person: Dr. R. Ratheesh email: ratheeshr[at]yahoo[dot]com

7. 7. Centre for Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) at IIT Madras: Some of the techniques developed are: Ultrasonic Guided Wave techniques for the inspection of complex Welding joints, phased array system for hexcan weld inspection; ultrasonic C-scan system etc.

Nodal Person: Dr. K. Balasubramanian, email: balas[at]iitm[dot]ac[dot]in

8. 8. Radio Ecology Centre (REC) at Guru Jambheshwar University of Science & Technology (GJUST), Hisar. The centre is equipped with all state-of-the-art instruments for chemical & radiochemical analysis of environmental samples.

Nodal Person:Dr. V.K. Garg; email: vinodkgarg[at]yahoo[dot]com

9. 9. Marine / Aquatic Radioecology at Centre for Fisheries Education (CIFE), Mumbai. The Centre is equipped with state-of-the-art instruments, namely, HPGe, Liquid Scintillation Counter, Ion Chromatograph and Voltametry, Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer, Low beta gas flow counting system, Laser Fluorimeter, UV Visible Spectrophotometer, Well-type NaI (Tl) Detector based gamma spectrometry system.

Nodal Person: Dr. S.K. Chakraborty; email: skchakraborty[at]cife[dot]edu[dot]in

10. 10. Programme in Autonomous Robotics at IIT-Delhi. Lab based test set-ups and improvised firmware of one exo-skeleton manipulator developed.

Nodal Person: Prof. Santanu Chaudhury; email: santanuc[at]ee[dot]iitd[dot]ernet[dot]in

11. 11. Facility to fabricate Nd-doped meta-Phosphate laser glass at CGCRI, Kolkata. Glass slabs up of (240×130×75) cubic mm and (240×130×100) cubic mm can be prepared routinely.

Nodal Person: Director CGCRI director[at]cgcri[dot]res[dot]in

12. 12. Laser Facility for Medical and Technological Applications at Anna University, Chennai

Nodal Person:Dr. S Ganesan ,email: sganesan[at]annauniv[dot]edu

13. 13. Facility for fabrication of small size Nd, Yb and Er Laser Glass Rods at S. V. University, Tirupati

Nodal Person: Prof. C K Jayasankar; email: ckjaya[at]yahoo[dot]com

14. 14. Left-Handed Maxwell Systems (LHM) at SAMEER, Kolkata Circuital meta-material as a selective band pass filter (BPF) for different required frequency bands have been prepared.

Nodal Person: Mr. ArijitMajumder, arijit[dot]majumder[at]gmail[dot]com

15. 15. Advanced welding research facility for study and characterization of weldability of difficult-to-weld materials at IIT Kharagpur. An electron beam welding (80kV, 12 kW) facility can be used to study EB assisted surface engineering and develop an in depth understanding of EB welding process for similar, dis-similar materials.

Nodal Person: Dr.Gour Gopal Roy, email: ggroy[at]metal[dot]iitkgp[dot]ernet[dot]in

16. 16. Advanced Seismic Testing Laboratory (ASTAR) at Structural Engineering Research Centre (SERC), Chennai. Seismic analysis & vibration monitoring of components, sub-assemblies & civil structures using the large-capacity shake table can be carried out at this centre.

Nodal Person: Dr. N. Gopalakrishnan; email: ng[at]serc[dot]res[dot]in

17. 17. Isotope Hydrology Laboratory at Himalayan Environmental Studies & Conservation Organization (HESCO) at Dehradun. The laboratory is equipped with isotope ratio mass spectrometer, Perkin Elmer 1220 Quantulus Liquid Scintillation Counter, LGR Liquid-Water Isotope Analyser, Dionex Ion Chromatography system to cater R&D on isotope hydrological investigations namely on topics like Identification of source and origin of groundwater recharge, identification of recharge area of springs particularly in mountainous region, Surface water-groundwater and aquifer- aquifer interconnections, Estimation of residence time of groundwater etc.

Nodal Person: Dr. A. Joshi, email: dranilpjoshi[at]gmail[dot]com

18. 18. National Centre for Free Radical Research (NCFRR) at University of Pune. It is a 7 MeV linear electron accelerator (LINAC) dedicated to carry out radiation chemical studies by pulse radiolysis technique.

Nodal Person: Prof. AvinashKumbhar, email: askum[at]chem[dot]unipune[dot]ac[dot]in

19. 19. Microtron facility at Mangalore University.  An Electron Accelerator (eight MeV, 50mA) operating in pulsed mode facilitates researches in the field of radiation dosimetry, irradiation effects on semiconductor materials, in the field of life sciences and basic sciences using high energy electrons and bremsstrahlung photons.

Nodal Person: Dr S Ganesh, email: ganeshsanjeev[at]rediffmail[dot]com

20. 20. Centre for Application of Radioisotopes and radiation technology (CARRT), University Science Instrumentation, Mangalore University, Karnataka 574199. The Centre is equipped with High and low dose Gamma Irradiators (GC-5000 and LDI-2000), Radioisotope Labelling Lab, Radioimmunoassay & Immuno radiometric Assay Lab (RIA/IRMA), Hybridoma Lab, Radioiodination Lab, Instrumentation/Counting Lab (Radio TLC Scanner, TLD Reader, Liquid Scintillation System, RIA Counting System, Temperature Controlled UV-Vis Spectrophotometer.

Nodal Person: Prof. Somashekarappa Hiriyur Mallaiah, carrtmu[at]gmail[dot]com

21. 21. Software Development: General purpose CFD solver over a hybrid unstructured grid ANUPRAVAH.

Nodal Person: Prof. Vinayak Eswaran, IIT Hyderabad, email: eswar[at]iith[dot]ac[dot]in

Nodal Person: Dr. Amaresh Dalal, IIT Guwahati, email: amaresh[at]iitg[dot]ernet[dot]in

22. 22. Centre for Formal Design and Verification of Software-CFDVS, at IIT, Bombay. Under this programme, customized algorithms are being generated for rigorous verification of software routines, applicable for safety-critical systems.

Nodal Person: Dr. S. Chakraborty, email: supratik[at]cse[dot]iitb[dot]ac[dot]in

23. 23. Nuclear Data Physics Centre of India (NDPCI) is a virtual centre setup in the year 2010 to create technical awareness among the extended scientific community of DAE about the importance of Reactor Physics modelling & calculations for the optimum operation of the nuclear reactors.

Nodal Person: Dr. Alok Saxena ; email: aloks[at]barc[dot]gov[dot]in

24. 24. Centre for Advanced Research in Environmental Radioactivity" (CARER), Mangalore University. It has state of art facilities for radio-ecological studies.

Nodal Person: Dr. N. Karunakara; email: drkarunakara[at]gmail[dot]com

25. 25. Development on Aerogel Supercapacitor and design of back-up power-packs at C-MET, Thrissur; Nodal Person: Dr. N.C. Pramanik; email: pramanik[at]cmet[dot]gov[dot]in

26. 26. Programme on Sensitivity & Uncertainty Analysis in Engineering / Environmental Matrices at IISc., Bangalore, caters for solving various problem-domains in the structural & environmental engineering.

Nodal Person: Prof. C.S. Manohar email: manohar[at]civil[dot]iisc[dot]ernet[dot]in http://civil.iisc.ernet.in/~manohar/

27. 27. National Centre for Accelerator based Research (NCAR) at Department of Pure & Applied Physics, Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya, Bilaspur Chhattisgarh, for carrying out studies on ion beam-material interaction and environmental applications.
    
    Nodal Person: Prof. P. K. Bajpai, bajpai[dot]pk1[at]gmail[dot]com

28. 28. Regional Nuclear Agriculture Research Centre (RNARC) at, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Nadia, WB for carrying out research in the field of Agriculture, Biotechnology and food preservation by utilizing RNARC lab having major instruments like Gamma Chamber, GC-MS, HPLC, Gel Doc including 2D Scanner, Plant Growth Chamber, RT-PCR, Liquid scintillation detector etc.

Nodal Person: Vice-Chancellor, ddrnarc[dot]bckv[at]gmail[dot]com

29. 29. Accelerator Mass Spectrometry facility with special emphasis on Carbon dating upcoming at University of Mumbai. For analysis of archaeological objects. Radiocarbon dating using AMS is distinguished from conventional decay counting method in that the amount of 14C in the sample of interest is directly measured, without the need for individual radioactive decay events to occur and the resultant statistical uncertainties.

Nodal Person: Prof D C Kothari, email: kothari[at]physics[dot]mu[dot]ac[dot]in

30. 30. Development of a Photo Injector based Electron Gun to produce Electron Beam of 5 MeV suitable for a Free Electron Laser (FEL) at Inter University Acceleration Centre, New Delhi.

Development of photocathode-based electron gun for generation of high-quality electron beam for its injection in to an undulator to produce intense radiation of Tera hertz. This development would open up frontier of exciting science experiments in the fields of Material, Chemical and biological sciences with a facility available within India.

Nodal Person: Director, IUAC, dk[at]iuac[dot]res[dot]in