FROM THE DIRECTOR'S DESK

Heartiest Greetings!!

In August this year, the NAM S&T Centre completed two glorious decades of its existence. To commemorate, a document prepared by the Centre is now under print, giving the background of the Centre's establishment and underscoring its impressive range of activities in this period.

During the last quarter, a major component of the multilateral project on 'Rainwater Harvesting and Ground Water Recharge in Developing Countries - HRD and Technology Transfer' partially supported by G77/PGTF got successfully executed by holding an international workshop in August 2009 in Pune, India with participation of 29 concerned experts from 15 developing countries, which concluded with the adoption of a 'Pune Recommendations' on this theme and was followed by the 2^nd meeting of the Project Apex Committee.

The Centre also held another international workshop, titled 'ULE-2009' - Urbanisation, Land Use, Land Degradation and Environment', from 28^th September in Denizli, Turkey jointly with Pamukkale University and TÜBİTAK. 25 experts from 19 foreign countries and >200 Turkish scientists and academicians attended this 4-days event.

A book titled 'Microelectronics: Micro- and Nano-Electronics and Photonics' (ed. Dr. Krishan Lal) was brought out during this quarter. Those interested may place order with the Centre to purchase this valuable publication.

We have also been receiving very good response to the announcements on our three Fellowship schemes and some scientists are already proceeding to ICCBS/HEJ Institute of Chemistry, Karachi, Pakistan and ZMT, Bremen, Germany to avail these Fellowships. Since the applicants are selected on first cum basis, and only limited seats are available, the aspiring young scientists are invited to submit to us their applications right now for consideration for the coming year.

The Centre is continuing to receive requests from the scientific agencies in various developing countries with offer to host scientific activities on partnership basis. Please be on the look out for our announcements on some highly exciting programmes in the near future.

Happy Reading!