India: Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR)
About Us
Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) is a relatively young but already well-known multidisciplinary research institute. Our mandate is to pursue and promote world-class scientific research and training at the frontiers of science and engineering. The Centre was established in 1989 by the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India, to mark the birth centenary of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. However, the bulk of our growth has been in the past decade.
Our small size (around 40 faculty members, spread over several disciplines) is an advantage: not segregated in far-flung labs, our chemists, physicists, biologists and engineers rub shoulders throughout the day. This fosters a spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration which is one of the hallmarks of JNCASR.
In addition to our young and dynamic faculty, we have over 150 bright and energetic graduate students and state-of-the art experimental, computational and infrastructural facilities. We are a “Deemed University”, granting Master’s and Ph.D. degrees.
Researchers at the Centre are divided into seven units: Chemistry and Physics of Materials, Engineering Mechanics, Evolutionary and Organismal Biology, Molecular Biology and Genetics, Theoretical Sciences, Educational Technology and Geodynamics. We also have two off-campus units at the Indian Institute of Science: the Chemical Biology and Condensed Matter Theory Units. Though it is of course difficult to quantify scientific performance, by all numerical indications (numbers of publications, citations, grants, patents filed, etc.), science at the Centre is flourishing. In the last few years, the Centre’s faculty members have published their research in some of the most prestigious scientific journals, including Nature, Nature Medicine, Science, Evolution, the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie, the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, and Physical Review Letters. The work of the Centre’s faculty is also being recognized by various awards.
