PGIMER, Chandigarh celebrated its ‘7thAnnual Institute Research Day’ today in which various researchers including faculty, residents, scholars and others presented findings of their top notch research in medical, surgical, nursing, basic sciences, health and hospital administration and other fields through more than 400 posters on published research in peer reviewed journals. A total of 31 researchers were awarded for their quality and high impact research (list attached).
Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Guest of the function Dr. Arun Grover, former Vice Chancellor of Panjab University and President of Chandigarh Region Innovation and Knowledge Cluster (CRIKC) emphasized the need to foster partnership between various institutes in the region to promote intersectoral research.
Dr. Amod Gupta, former Dean and Head of Ophthalmology, PGIMER, Chandigarh while speaking on the importance of following ethical standards in research stressed upon learning from the past to avoid ethical pitfalls in future projects. He shared stories of various controversial research studies of the past including Tuskegee trials, Nuremberg trials, Rota virus trials in India,and others to underline the ethical and moral dilemmas of research, and need to protect vulnerable study participants from abuse.
Dr. Sarit Das, Director of IIT, Roparshared his experience of world class research in IITs and abroad and said that the ‘Ambience’ and ‘Collaboration’ play a vital role in promoting research in any organization. He was very impressed with the research work displayed today and suggested that PGIMER, Chandigarh and IIT, Ropar should join hands to do research to fulfill the societal need of affordable healthcare. He further stressed the need to increase the spending on research in the country which is currently just 0.6% of GDP.
Dr. Jagat Ram, Director, PGIMER welcomed all the dignitaries and participants of the function. He informed that PGI has published more than 1850 papers in the past year, and called upon researchers to do ‘Disruptive and Ethical Research’ in the basic, applied, clinical, and community based sciences. He emphasized the need to break barriers to provide more opportunities for research in the country.
Earlier in the day, Dr. Jagat Ram, Dr. Sarit Das, Prof Arun Grover, Prof. Amod Gupta, Dr. Rajesh Kumar, Dean (Academics) and Dr. ArvindRajwanshi, Dean (Research)viewed the research posters displayed and interacted with researchers.