A News of India’s Bureau
Prof. Venkatesh Singh of Central University of South Bihar has been honored with the Visitor’s Award by Honorable President Draupadi Murmu. This award has been given to Prof. Venkatesh Singh for his innovative invention. As a part of this award, he has been given a citation and a prize money of 2.5 lakhs. The award ceremony, held at Rashtrapati Bhavan, was attended byUnion Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and several dignitaries from the education world, including, Vice Chancellors of several Central Universities, Directors of several Central Institutions of Higher Learning, and several senior officials of the Government of India. The Visitor’s Award for ‘Innovation’ was conferred on Prof.Venktesh Singh from the School of Physical and Chemical Sciences, Central University of South Bihar for developing indigenous Charge Pick-up Panels for Resistive Plate Chamber Detector using Silicon Fiber Sheet.
According to Prof.Venktesh Singh “This project provided a golden opportunity to work on many basic scientific research related to nuclear and astroparticle physics as well as detector design and development.In this project, the main detector, an iron calorimeter known as I-Cal, a very large detector of the order of the tan-scale, was to be built, which would study some of the fundamental properties of the very elusive particle neutrino. Neutrinos always surround us in large numbers, but they do not cause any harm.The charge pickup panel generally used with this detector is plastic based, rigid, highly inflammable and imported. The use of such component in large quantities i.e., sixty thousands, in underground is practically prohibited. So it was the moral responsibility of all of us to design and develop a new charge pickup panel having the same electrical properties but flexible and flame resistant in nature, cost effective. The most important is that – it should be indigenous and its materials should be available in the local market.With this challenge our team started working on it and designed a new, indigenous manifold cheaper, flame resistant, flexible, silicon based charge pickup panel with most of the electrical properties better than the earlier panels. The team prepared panels of 1 meter * 1 meter sizes and tested it in the laboratory. The team has the capability to manufacture panels of 2m*2m.”
The Visitor’s Awards for universities go back to 2014 when the then President Pranab Mukherjee, in his capacity as Visitor of the Central universities, announced the annual Visitor’s Awards “to promote healthy competition among central universities and motivate them to adopt best practices from around the world in pursuit of excellence”.
