The Department of Chemistry was established in 1968. It started with 3 faculty members and 12 students. Along these years, from its nascent state, the department has grown both in terms of academics and research.
The major objective of the department is to create quality human resource for the country in various areas of chemical science by generating and distributing knowledge among the students. Presently, the department offers three courses: M.Sc., M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Chemistry. Each year 33 students are admitted into M.Sc. Chemistry course. Students graduated out of this course are regularly recruited by different companies like OIL, ONGC, Pharmaceutical companies etc. Every year students from this department are qualifying national level competitive exams like NET, GATE etc. Many of our alumni are now holding responsible and authoritative positions in their respective areas and organizations.
The department boasts a vibrant work culture. The faculty members of the department are trained at renowned institutes of India and abroad. They are engaged in both teaching and research. At present 12 faculty members and 41 research scholars are actively generating knowledge in various contemporary areas of Chemical Sciences. The major thrust areas of research include Catalysis, Organic synthesis, Natural Products Chemistry, Green Chemistry, Polymer Chemistry, Co-ordination Chemistry, Materials Chemistry, Nanomaterials, Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Biofertilizers, Agricultural delivery, Crystallography, Metal Organic Framework, Computational Biophysics etc.
The faculty members have already completed several personal projects funded by DST, SERB, DBT, UGC, CSIR, ISRO, GBPIHED etc. At present, there are 12 ongoing personal projects amounting to a total of Rs. 2.87 crores funded by different national funding agencies. Faculty members of the department are involved in collaborative research with many institutes of national importance like CSIR-CSMCRI, Bhavnagar, CSIR-CDRI, Lucknow, Tezpur University, CSIR-NEIST, Jorhat etc.
The department has also successfully completed international collaborative projects with National Academy of Science, Kyiv, Ukraine and Instit de Chemie, University de Neuchatel, Switzerland. In the recent years the department was awarded with DST-FIST-I twice (2003-2008, 2010-2015) and UGC-SAP-DRS-I once (2008-2013) and were completed successfully. Another UGC-SAP-DRS-I (2016-2021) grant award is presently being implemented. All these projects and grants have provided the necessary funds to develop modern infrastructure in the department.
The department is equipped with sophisticated facilities like LCMS, GCMS, HPLC, Cyclic Voltametry, FT-IR, UV-Vis, TGA-DTA, Biosafety Cabinet, Microwave Synthesizer, Computer Workstations, Surface area analyzer, Impedance analyzer etc. The department also has access to state-of-the-art equipment like NMR (500 MHz), XRD, and SEM centrally available in the University.
