The 2nd in-house symposium on Materials Research (MR05) was jointly organized by Research Scholars of Dept. of Met. Engg. and Mats. Sci. and Corr. Sci. and Engg. on February 26, 2005. More than 110 delegates including students and professors from different departments working in the areas of materials research actively participated for the Symposium. Prof. Ashok Misra, Director IIT-Bombay inaugurated the symposium and delivered a key-note lecture on “Polymer Blends and Composites Macro to Nano Scale”.

The welcome address of Prof. B.P Kashyap, HOD, Dept. of Met. Engg. and Mats. Sci., encouraged the efforts of the organizers as well as participants. Prof K.C Khilar, Dean R&D gave the introductory remarks on MR 05 in his speech. He acknowledged the efforts of representatives from different departments on editorial and technical committee who worked under the umbrella of MR 05 to produce the informative proceedings.

The highlights of MR 05 were the four invited lectures by eminent professors of IIT Bombay namely, Prof. N.B Ballal, Dept. of Met. Engg. and Mats. Sci., Prof. A.Q Contractor, Chemistry, Prof. P.P Date, Deptt. of Mech. Engg. and Prof. Shiv Prasad, Deptt. of Physics. The heart of the symposium was the eighteen oral presentations and thirteen poster presentations by students of different departments. The best oral and poster presentation awards were given to Mr. Sumit Mahajan, Bio Sciences and Mr. Niraj Kumar Singh, Physics, respectively.

The convener Mr. Sushil Kumar Mishra and his teams of editorial and technical committee (comprising eight members across the departments) and organizing committee (inclusive of twelve members) worked in harmony to make this symposium a success. The motive behind organizing such a symposium was not only to explore the possibilities, opportunities and understanding the difficulties in the current research scenario in materials science but also to initiate collaborative work with different departments. The platform provided right mix of interaction between the scholars for tackling their research goals and showed the need for more such activities.