April 9: Presidency University hosted a symposium on pure and applied physics for undegraduate students and experts over the weekend.

Since most Indian universities promote research at the doctoral or post-doctoral level, this was a rare initiative by a state university to encourage undergraduate research.

Such research is common at universities like Yale or Harvard, though.

At Presidency, undergraduate students from across the country presented papers at the two-day symposium that started yesterday.

Aprotim Mazumder, a reader at the TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Hyderabad, was present at the meet as an expert. "I haven't come across such an initiative by a state university in the past in Bengal," he said.

The students' papers reflected the advanced research work that's being done at the undergraduate level, Mazumder said. "This wasn't the case till a few years ago."

At top-notch universities across the world, the guiding principle is learning through research from the undergraduate level and not through studies alone, Parthasarathi Majumdar, physics professor at Belur's Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University, said.

He has been with the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in the past. "In India, the conventional approach is students getting into research at the doctoral level."

But Presidency is trying to junk this dated concept and follow the best of the international research practices, he said. "The symposium is a culmination of this new approach and it makes studying an interesting experience."

Presidency's undergraduate physics curriculum has a paper on "directed studies" in the third year that requires students to do research under a professor.

A thriving research atmosphere from the undergraduate level would help counter the perception that Presidency has ceased to be a bright institution, Sagnik Mukherjee, a second-year student of Presidency who presented a paper on astrophysics and cosmology, said.

Sristy Agarwal, a fourth-year student of Calcutta's Indian Institute of Science Education and Research who presented a paper, said she hadn't heard of such an initiative by any state university in the city.

"I hope the authorities here send their students to ours to promote the scope of collaborative research," she said.

Students from Pune's Fergusson College, Noida's Amity University and Punjab's Central University were among the others at the meet.