Preema Pais of St Aloysius College PG Dept completes Research Internship in Belgium
Mangaluru: Preema Cealla Pais, Assistant Professor, Department of Postgraduate Studies and Research in Chemistry, St Aloysius College (Autonomous), Mangaluru had been to the University of Namur, Belgium for a research internship for a period of five months from February to July 2018.
Principal, Rev. Dr Praveen Martis SJ in his message said that Preema Pais did her UG and PG Studies in Chemistry at St Aloysius College (Autonomous), Mangaluru. In fact, she was a proud rank holder in her PG studies. She has greater dreams of pursuing her research studies in Nano-science. We are proud of her achievements.
The project was on the “Decoration of BaO nano-particles on multi-walled carbon nano-tubes” funded by Erasmus plus exchange programme. It involved the improvement of previously published paper entitled “Decoration of Multi-walled carbon nano-tubes by Barium oxide nano-particles” reported by Arvind K Bhakta, University of Namur. The work included optimization of concentration, nature of salt, solvents, duration of IR Irradiation and calcination temperature most suitable for the maximum deposition of BaO nano-particles on carbon nano-tubes. It was guided by Prof Zineb Mekhalif and Prof Joseph Delhalle (Laboratory of Chemistry and electro-chemistry of surfaces, Belgium) and co-guided by Rev. Dr Praveen Martis SJ, Principal, St Aloysius College (Autonomous).
Nanotechnology is the application of nano-science leading to the use of new non-materials and nano-size components in useful products. Nanotechnology will eventually provide us with the ability to design custom-made materials and products with new enhanced properties, new nano-electronics components, new types of “smart” medicines and sensors, and even interfaces between electronics and biological system.
These newborn scientific disciplines are situated at the interface between physics, chemistry, materials science, microelectronics, biochemistry, and biotechnology. This emerging field provides lots of opportunities to the upcoming scientists to discover and invent solutions to several problems in the global scale.
The management at St Aloysius College (Autonomous) has been promoting the development of its staff and students in various ways. I’m grateful to the management for providing me with an opportunity by the college to be a part of this project.
The internship provided with a chance to learn and to explore the field of nano-science, work on various characterization instruments including SEM, TEM, EDX, XPS, PXRD, UV Visible spectro-photometer etc, to interact with students and research scholars from different parts of the world pursuing research in various fields of science. This has contributed to have a new outlook towards research in the nano-metric scale.
University of Namur campus is situated in the centre of the city of Namur, the capital of Wallonia (the French speaking region in Belgium), which is close to other major centres like Brussels. Already renowned for its excellence in teaching, the University of Namur (UNamur) is increasingly recognized for the quality of its research. Many research units, from within six faculties, gather academic, scientific, administrative and technical staff, all sharing a common passion for research. The University of Namur belongs to and partakes in several, often interdisciplinary, research networks at the local, regional, federal, European, and international level.
