Activities

Extension activities

Environmental awareness and training

Environmental awareness and training programmes are for all groups of people, students, various working groups and the general public. The programmes are meant for dissemination of information on environmental awareness and healthy practices, all aim to conserve nature thereby maintaining a sustainable life support system. The Centre also prepares source modules for various environment friendly practices benefiting the students, teachers and the community. A  novel Nature Study programme, ‘Spend a Day in the Campus’ has been launched by the Centre for selected school students who are given special training in bird watching, butterfly watching and identification of common plants around.

Rainwater harvesting

The Centre has collaborated with the School of Environmental Sciences and selected Achinakom, a village in Kuttanad (Vechoor Panchayat) to provide them with drinking water through rainwater harvesting. Three different models of tanks have been designed and fourteen tanks of different capacities have already been constructed benefiting sixty families. It is planned to extend the facility to all the households in the village. The quality of drinking water is regularly monitored. Innovative water purification methods are also being tried by the research group of the Centre.

As a second phase, improvement of sanitary facilities will be extended with the participation of the community members wherever it is needed. Overall quality of the life of people will be monitored to bring improvements and healthy life style through community participation. The project works in association with the Woman Self Help Group of Achinakom.

Short Term Training programme in Analytical Instrumentation

Training programme involves –

• Lectures – theoretical background and techniques
• Demonstration sessions
• Hands-on training
• Familiarization of techniques
• Discussion sessions for future collaborations between research groups
• Evaluation and grading

List of instruments:

• Hiperformance liquid Chromatography (HPLC)
• Gas Chromatography (GC)
• Ion Chromatography (IC)
• Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR )
• scanning electron microscope(SEM)
• Ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy
• Trace metal analyzer
• Inductively CoupledPlasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS)
• Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS)
• Liquid Chromatography Quadrupole Time-of-Flight (LC-QToF)
• Total Organic Carbon analyzer (TOC)
• Spectro-radiometer
• Soil Respirometer