Students at the third graduation ceremony of Niser in Bhubaneswar on Monday. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, June 9: Fundamental research has continued to be the top career choice for students at the National Institute of Science Education and Research (Niser) here.

Students of the third batch of this premier institute, who were awarded their degrees during the graduation ceremony held here today, have offers from some of the most sought after companies in the world.

They also have offers for doctoral programmes from reputed universities in Paris, Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin-Madison, Maryland, Stony Brook, Louisiana, Houston, Toulouse, Connecticut, Cologne and South Dakota, besides the IITs, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the National Institute of Immunology in home country, institute director V. Chandrashekhar told The Telegraph.

“Like their predecessors, our students are spoilt for choice this year, too,” he said, adding that this reinforced the mandate that Niser was committed to creating quality manpower for research in various areas of the basic sciences.

As many as 37 students from across the schools of physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology were awarded graduation certificates today. Two doctoral candidates also received their degrees.

K. Sandeep Rao of the school of chemical sciences was awarded a gold medal for outstanding overall performance of the year. He was also awarded a silver medal for best academic performance in chemistry. Similarly, Sabyasachi Barik from the school of physical sciences, Vishal Gupta from the school of mathematical sciences and Priyanka Mishra from the school of biological sciences received the silver medals for the best academic performance in their respective schools.

Delivering his address, former chairman of the atomic energy commission Anil Kakodkar said: “Large advanced technology projects require people who understand the science behind such projects and can engineer them. In today’s higher education, neither the science stream nor the engineering and technology stream addresses this need.”

“It is for institutions such as Niser to bridge this gap and remove the artificial barrier between science and technology. Our research should become focused on important problems and to solve those problems, one should be able to leverage any discipline that becomes necessary,” he said.

Chandrasekhar said that there were plans to start disciplines such as computer science, engineering sciences, and earth and planetary sciences in a couple of years.

The institute will move to its permanent campus at Jatni anytime between October and December, he added. There were 37,000 applicants for 100 seats of Niser.