Dear Fellow Members
Greetings from the Society and me, personally, for a happy and prosperous New Year.
I wish to briefly update you on the activities of the Society during the past one year.
The highlight of the year was the successful conclusion of Macro 2013 at Bangalore, May 15-18, 2013. As you are aware Macro 2013 was held in conjunction with the Third Congress of the Federation of Asian Polymers Societies (FAPS). The Conference was a great success and as usual brought together a large number of active Indian scientists and those from overseas for four days of intense deliberations. We also had a large number of student poster presentations. In view of the FAPS participation we also had good participation from Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Malaysia.
I wish to thank Professor S. Ramakrishnan and his band of enthusiastic volunteers for having organized a wonderful conference and set a new bench mark for scientific excellence. A new initiative was the “power” presentation by students short listed for “best poster” awards giving aspiring young scientists a platform to present their work before a large audience.
On the sidelines of Macro-2013, SPS (I) held its AGM on May 16, 2013. The minutes of the AGM are uploaded on the web.
One of the important decisions taken at the AGM was to accept the offer of Kolkata Chapter to host the next Macro 2015. This will be jointly hosted by the Kharagpur and Kolkata Chapter with active participation of institutions in the vicinity such as IISER-K and University of Kolkata from 23-26 January 2015. The venue will be the Indian Association for Cultivation of Science, Kolkata. SPS (I) will also complete twenty five years of its existence in January 2016. The year 2015-16, thus, marks the Silver Jubilee Year of SPS (I). It is only fitting that Macro 2015 is being hosted at IACS, Kolkata, where, under the leadership of Professor Santi Ranjan Palit, Indian polymer science research was born in the late forties and early fifties. Historically, the first paper from India in polymer science was published by Professor Palit and coauthored by Sadhan Basu and J.N. Sen in 1950, Proc. Royal Society, A, p.485 titled “Degree of polymerization and chain transfer in methyl methacrylate”.
I wish the organizers all success as they prepare for this meeting.
Increasing number of regional meetings is also being held under the umbrella of SPS (I). I welcome these initiatives as they bring greater visibility to the activities of the Society.I encourage each chapter to actively engage their members in a meaningful manner. It is through the activities of the Chapters that the Society acquires its identity.
I am also happy to say that the Pune Chapter has accepted to host the FAPS Council Meeting in October – November 2014 at CSIR-NCL, Pune. A small Symposium is planned to coincide with the Council meeting
I wish each one of you a very productive New Year.
Society of Polymer Science (India) (SPSI)
(www.spsi.co.in) was established in 1995 with its national headquarters located at the campus of National Chemical Laboratory
(www.ncl-india.org), a constituent laboratory of the Council of Scientific Research, New Delhi
(www.csir.res.in). India had a few regional organizations catering to the needs of the polymer community prior to that time. However, in 1992, a decision was taken to merge all the regional societies and to constitute a national society.