15th AGM of MRSI at Varnasi

MINUTES OF THE SIXTEENTH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF MATERIALS RESEARCH SOCIETY OF INDIA (MRSI)

The Sixteenth Annual General Meeting of Materials Research Society of India was held on Thursday the 10th February 2005 at National Chemical Laboratory, Pune.

101 members attended the meeting.

WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT, MRSI

Dr. Mashelkar, President, MRSI extended a hearty welcome to all the members and to the invitees. He thanked Dr. S Sivaram, Director, National Chemical Laboratory for the excellent arrangements for the Council Meeting and AGM and hoped that the meeting will take up all the important issues including the activities of MRSI and take further decisions to meet the objectives.

The President remarked that the number of Patron members has remained stable for the past 3 years He stated that to increase the corpus fund of MRSI more patron members have to be enrolled. Dr. Mashelkar mentioned that efforts should be made to reach a target of 100 patron members by next year. The President also stated that the Patron Membership fee could be increased from Rs. 25,000/- to Rs. 50,000/-.

Dr. Mashelkar stated that a committee would be formed to make improvements in the MRSI Newsletter particularly to make it more interactive. The members of the committee would suggest measures to make the Newsletter more interesting and informative.

The President stated that two or three topical meetings on subjects of interest to industry have to be conducted every year. This could be done by the Subject Groups, Chapters and MRSI as a whole.

CONFIRMATION OF THE MINUTES OF THE FIFTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING

The Fifteenth Annual Meeting of Materials Research Society of India was held on Tuesday the 9th February 2004 at Swatantrata Bhawan, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. The minutes of the Annual General Meeting have been circulated. No comments have been received. The minutes of the last AGM were confirmed.

I. Presentation of the Annual Report

a) Prof. S V Subramanyam, Vice President-General Secretary of MRSI presented the annual report on the activities of MRSI during 2004. There have been some changes in the chairmanship of the Chapters, the details of which are furnished hereunder:

REPORT ON THE CHANGES IN THE COUNCIL

The Secretary pointed out the following changes in the Chairmanship of the Chapters.

Dr. S P Mehrotra has taken over as Chairman of Jamshedpur Chapter from Dr. C S Sivaramakrishnan
Dr. T L Prakash has taken over as Chairman of Hyderabad Chapter from Prof. S V Suryanarayana
Dr. Baldev Raj has handed over charge to Dr. V S Raghunathan as Chairman of Kalpakkam Chapter
Dr. R P Singh has handed over charge to Dr. Sanat K Roy as Chairman of Kharagpur Chapter
Dr. Krishan Lal has handed over charge to Dr. Anil K Gupta as Chairman of New Delhi Chapter
Dr. M K Sanyal has taken charge as Chairman of Kolkata Chapter from Prof. S P Sengupta.
Dr. G S Bhuvaneshwar has taken over from Dr. B C Pai as Chairman of Thiruvanathapuram Chapter.
Dr. B K Das has handed over charge to Dr. S K Kulkarni as Chairperson of Pune Chapter
Dr. Mashelkar, President, MRSI, stated that the Subject Groups have to be reconstituted and a sub committee will have to be formed to look into this issue.

(b) RECONSTITUTION OF THE COUNCIL FOR THE PERIOD 2005-07

At the request of Prof. S V Subramanyam, the council has been reconstituted. Prof. Subramanyam has been discharging the work of General Secretary for more than ten years. He requested that he be relieved of this responsibility. The council acceded to this request and requested Prof. Subramanyam to continue as one of the Vice Presidents. Prof. S B Krupanidhi was requested to take over as General Secretary, Prof. SV Bhat as Joint Secretary and Prof. M K Surappa as Joint Treasurer. The revised council of MRSI for the period 2005-07 is given below:

Reconstituted MRSI Council 2005 – 2007

Founder President	CNR Rao
President	R A Mashelkar
Past Presidents	D Chakravorty R Chidambaram S K Joshi P Rama Rao
Vice Presidents	P Ramachandra Rao C Ganguly S Sivaram K T Jacob A K Barua S V Subramanyam
General Secretary	S B Krupanidhi
Joint Secretaries	H L Bhat H S Maiti S V Bhat
Treasurer	V Chandrasekaran
Joint Treasurer	M K Surappa
Editor of Publications	K J Rao
Members S Lele R V Krishnan S Banerjee G Sundararajan	D Bahadur Ashutosh Sharma A K Raychaudhuri E S Raja Gopal D Banerjee
Chapter Chairmen: Bangalore Bhopal Chennai Gujarat Hyderabad Jamshedpur Kalpakkam Kharagpur Kolkata Roorkee Mumbai New Delhi Thiruvananthapuram Varanasi/Kanpur Pune Subject Group Chairmen: Building Materials Biomaterials Ceramics & Glasses Composites Computer Aided Design of Materials Electronic Materials Fracture Magnetic Materials Materials Characterization Metals Polymers Processing Technologies Surfaces & Interfaces Thin Films Materials under High Pressure Materials for Rural Technology	Prof. T R N Kutty Dr. N Ramakrishnan Prof. U V Varadaraju Prof. L M Manocha Dr. T L Prakash Dr. S P Mehrotra Dr. V S Raghunathan Dr. Sanat K Roy Prof. M K Sanyal Prof. A K Jain Dr. S Banerjee Dr. Anil K Gupta Dr. G S Bhuvaneshwar O N Srivastava Dr. S K Kulkarni Dr. N Ramakrishnan Dr. M Jayabalan Dr. H S Maiti Dr. O P Bahl Dr. G P Das Dr. Vikram Kumar Dr. G Malakondaiah Prof. K V S Rama Rao Dr. Baldev Raj Dr. P Ramachandra Rao Dr. S Sivaram Shri S L N Acharyulu Prof. M K Sanyal Prof. K L Chopra Dr. S K Sikka Shri. Deepak Bhatnagar

The number of members of MRSI has increased steadily during the last one year. The current status of the membership is given below.

Category	As on 1.1.2003	As on 1.1.2004	As on 1.1.2005
Life Members	1632	1700	1790
Annual Members	57	73	93
Honorary Members	140	143	145
Patron Members	61	61	61

The Annual members have been requested to convert their membership to life membership. The Council members have been requested to enroll more life members and institutions/industries as Patron members.

Many activities were carried out at various chapters. The activities are basically of the following categories (a) lectures (b) one day / half a day seminars (c) chapter AGM. The reports of Bangalore, Bhopal, Jamshedpur, Kalpakkam, Kharagpur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Gujarat and Varanasi Chapters are enclosed (Annexure-I). Reports of the activities of Chennai, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Roorkee, and Thiruvananthapuram Chapters were not received. The reports of Subject Groups on Biomaterials, Composites, Computational Materials Science and Materials for Rural Technology are enclosed (Annexure-II).

d) REPORT ON INTERNATIONAL LINKS OF MRSI

MRSI has been a founding member of IUMRS. IUMRS has a newsletter ‘FACETS’.
MRSI makes an annual contribution of $ 1000 to IUMRS and it can cast 2 votes for MRSI in IUMRS meetings
The IUMRS-ICA-2004 was held during November 16-18, 2004, at Taiwan
The IUMRS-ICEM-2004 was held at San Francisco, California, USA during April 12-16, 2004.
The IUMRS-ICAM-2005 and IUMRS ICMAT-2005 will be held in Singapore during July 3-8, 2005.
The IUMRS-ICAM 2007 will be held in Bangalore, India during October 8-13, 2007. The details are being worked out.
MRSI is a founding member of Asia Pacific Academy of Materials (APAM). It has continued its strong links with APAM.
The Eleventh APAM Seminar on ‘Frontiers in Functional Materials’ was held in China during, 18-23, October 2004.
APAM Topical Seminar proposed in India during 2005 on “Advanced Materials with special Emphasis on Eco-friendly Materials for Energy”
The APAM India Chapter held its meeting at Pune on 9th February, 2005. There has been a request from the President, Secretary of APAM-India Chapter for reconstitution of the same. The President and Secretary of MRSI were authorized by the council to do the needful.
The members of MRSI have been participating in the MRS Meetings in USA and in particular at Boston.
The second Asian Consortium on Computation of Materials Science (ACCMS-2) meeting was held in Novosibirsk, Russia during 2004.

II. MRSI PUBLICATIONS-REPORT BY THE EDITOR

i. Prof. K J Rao, Editor, Bulletin of Materials Sciences stated that BMS is being published regularly and on time continuously for the last 5 years. The journal has a good citation index. In the year 2004 there were 86 papers published in 578 pages. The BMS is now available in full text form on the web http://www.ias.ac.in/matersci. The impact factor of BMS has increased to 0.593 during the year 2004. This is a credible achievement in the Indian context. The council appreciated this significant development and complimented the Editor for this. The members of MRSI are requested to utilize the web facility of BMS. The Editor invites good papers from all MRSI members. Cooperation from every member of the materials science community is solicited.

Prof. Rao stated that the BMS has continued to record improvements in its performance. The enthusiasm of the scientific community for publishing in BMS has been increasing he noted. The Editor is most beholden to those who have cooperated in this important activity of journal publication. Prof. Rao stated that the reconstitution of the Editorial Board will be undertaken soon. .

MRSI has a website with address http://www.igcar.ernet.in/mrsi. This website offers extensive and useful information on MRSI to members and to others interested. It is hoped that this website would be made an interactive website to enable MRSI to interact with industries. Efforts will also be made to have a mirror site of MRSI website.

MRSI has received Rs. 4158/- as royalty from M/s Allied Publishers, New Delhi for the book ‘Materials Research: Current Scenario and Future Projections’ edited by Dr. Chidambaram and Dr. S Banerjee.

The MRSI has been regularly publishing the MRSI Newsletter for the last four years. This is a quarterly publication. Prof. H L Bhat and Dr. R V Krishnan are the Editors. The members of MRSI have been appreciating the usefulness of the Newsletter, its quality and timeliness in publication. In addition, several issues have been brought out successfully for the past four years. Dr. T G Ramesh of NAL, Bangalore has also been requested to be one other editor of the MRSI Newsletter

The fifth edition of the membership directory will be brought out shortly.

III. CONTRIBUTION OF MRSI TO INDIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES FOR SUPPLY OF BULLETIN OF MATERIALS SCIENCE TO MEMBERS

A survey was conducted by the Academy about the supply of BMS to members of MRSI. 30 to 35% of the members had responded and most of them had opted to contribute to receive the hard copies of the journal. Only about 10% of the members had exercised their option to stop receiving the journal. MRSI has been contributing a sum of Rs. 1.75 lakhs to the Academy on an annual basis for this purpose.

IV. AWARD FOR THE BEST PAPER PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF MATERIALS SCIENCE

The paper entitled ‘Fabrication of silicon based glass fibres for optical communication’ by Vivek P Kude, Department of Applied Physics, MGM College of Engineering, Nanded and R S Khairnar, School of Physical Sciences, SRTMU, Vishnupuri, Nanded has been adjudged as the best paper published in the BMS out of the work carried out in India (Volume 27 (1), February 2004, pp 73-77). The General Body was pleased to accept this recommendation.

AWARD OF THE GC JAIN MEMORIAL PRIZE FOR THE BEST Ph.D THESIS IN MATERIALS SCIENCE

Proposals were invited by MRSI for the GC Jain Memorial prize for the best Ph.D thesis in Materials Science for the year 2004 and four nominations were received. A committee consisting of Prof. M K Surappa, Dr. R C Budhani and Dr. S K Kulkarni was formed to select the appropriate candidate for the best Ph.D thesis prize. The selection of the best Ph.D thesis prize would be carried out by the committee based on the presentation by the applicants in the AGM. This will be announced at the concluding session of the AGM.

VI. STUDENTS’ PROJECTS

The Council of MRSI and the AGM had taken a decision to partially support students’ projects in the area of Materials Science and Technology. Accordingly, there was a notification the April 2004 issue of the MRSI Newsletter stating that MRSI would partially support upto 10 projects of students (B.Tech, M.Tech, ME, Ph.D) in the area of Materials Science and Technology under the supervision of a MRSI member. Proposals were invited and MRSI received a large number of proposals of which the following have been accepted and granted support of Rs. 1000/- each.

Name of the Student	Title of the Project	Project Supervisor
Bhavani R	Surface Energy and three Phase contact angle at solid/liquid interface as indices to predict isoelectric point of proteins.	Dr. Aruna Dhathatreyan CLRI Chennai
Balamurugan N	Growth of High Quality Potassium Iodide and Cesium Iodide single crystals for Detector applications.	Prof. P Ramasamy Anna Univ. Chennai
Meenakshi Kumari	Structural, Electrical and Magnetic Properties of CMR materials LaxSn1-xMnO3	Dr. S P Sanyal Univ. of Bhopal, Bhopal

VII. RECOGNITION BY DSIR TO MRSI

The Department of Scientific & Industrial Research under the scheme on Recognition of Scientific & Industrial Research Organizations (SIROs) has accorded renewal of recognition to MRSI from 1.4.2004 to 31.3.2007.

VIII. PRESENTATION OF THE STATEMENT OF ACCOUNTS FOR 2004

The accounts of MRSI, Bangalore office have been prepared and audited. The audited statement of accounts for the year 2003-2004 was presented during the AGM. The Provisional statement for the period 1.4.2004 to 31.12.2004 was also presented.

IX. ELECTION OF HONORARY MEMBERS

The list of nominations received for election of Honorary members of MRSI for the year 2005 was placed for consideration of the Council. The Council decided to recommend the following as Honorary members of MRSI for the year 2005. The General Body has unanimously accepted this recommendation.

1.	Prof. M Klein Laboratory for the Study of Materials (MRL) University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, USA
2.	Prof. T Enoki Department of Chemistry Graduate School of Science & Engineering Tokyo Institute of Technology 2-12-1, Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8551, Japan
3.	Prof. Jacques Lucas University of Rennes Campus of Beaulieu 35042, RENNES, France

X. VENUE FOR THE SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF MRSI

The Council discussed the various proposals for the meetings of the Council and AGMs in the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. The following decisions were taken:

February 2006	Council Meeting & AGM Lucknow To be organized by Dr. R P Singh (Lucknow University)
February 2007	Council Meeting & AGM New Delhi To be organized by New Delhi Chapter of MRSI (Dr. Anil K Gupta)
February 2008	Council Meeting & AGM Thiruvananthapuram To be organized by Thiruvananthapuram Chapter of MRSI (Dr. G S Bhuvaneshwar)

XI. ITEMS FROM THE MEMBERS

Some members (E C Subba Rao, E S Raja Gopal …..) stated that MRSI should initiate steps to make more Indian writers to write books in Materials Science and Technology.

Financial resources of MRSI:

The MRSI gratefully acknowledges the following receipts:

Rs.1,00,000/- from Department of Atomic Energy towards Grant-in-Aid for the year 2003-2004 (expected)
Rs. 50,000/- from Department of Space towards Grant-in-Aid for the year 2003-2004

ANY OTHER MATTER

The hosting of IUMRS-ICAM 2007 in Bangalore during October 8-13, 2007 was accepted by the Council. The partial list of the various committees formed was placed before the council, which was accepted. The council expressed happiness that this prestigious IUMRS-ICAM conference will be organized in India during 2007 and expressed its desire that all efforts should be made by MRSI to make it a grand success.

The meeting concluded with a vote of thanks to the President of MRSI.