Young faculties present proposals for research

BHUBANESWAR: The higher education department has shortlisted 106 research proposals from young faculties of different government colleges and universities to carry out research after getting seed fund from the state government. A technical selection committee with subject experts has started interviewing the faculties from Friday.

The faculties will present their papers in favour of their research ideas before the committee. This process will continue till March 24. After going through the presentations, the committee will select 40 faculties for the seed fund of Rs 5 lakh, said higher education minister Arun Kumar Sahoo here on Friday.

These candidates had applied between December last year and January this year. As many as 166 faculties had applied for seed fund this year. The selection committee has found 13 of them ineligible. Research papers of 153 faculties were sent for external review. Only 106 research proposals were shortlisted for the final interview starting from Friday.

According to the policy guidelines of ‘Odisha University Research and Innovation Incentivisation Plan (OURIIP)’ framed by the state government in November 2018, a seed funding of Rs 5 lakh will be given to each faculty member for research work. Each year 40 faculties will be provided with such funding, said the minister.

He said any young faculty below 45 years with a PhD degree and working in a regular capacity in state universities and colleges (government and aided) under higher education department and also in state government technical colleges/universities under skill development and technical education department can apply for this seed funding.

The proposal should be based on new and innovative ideas, use of an appropriate methodology to address the research problems, proper budgetary estimation and outcome of the project. They will publish their research articles in a reputed Scopus Indexed journal. Now 37 faculties are undertaking research on different proposals approved by the department in November 2019.

The department has also received 52 applications for junior research fellowship from some selected national eligibility test (NET) qualified scholars, who have failed to get junior research fellow (JRF) awarded by the University Grants Commission (UGC) or Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Out of 52 scholars, 16 are shortlisted for the fellowship this year.

The minister said the period of fellowship will be limited to four years, extendable to another one year with the prior approval of the OSHEC. “An eligible candidate can get fellowship of Rs 15000 per month with a contingency of Rs 25000 per year for subjects having laboratory work and Rs 15000 for subjects without laboratory work. The number of fellowships in each subject is limited to five with two fellowships reserved for girl students. That means 40 per cent seats for fellowship is reserved for girl scholars,” he added.

The scholars will also take three classes every week. “A total of 175 scholars can be selected for the fellowship each year. It will be given in 35 subjects. The candidate must be below 35 years of age to get this fellowship,” said Sahoo.