Department of Chemistry

Department Website: http://chem.iitm.ac.in

The Department of Chemistry has 32 faculty members with expertise in diverse areas of Chemistry. The Department typically has more than 150 students registered for Ph.D. and more than 80 students registered for M.Sc. In addition, the Department is supported by many technical and other staff members. The 2 year (4 semesters) M.Sc. course is an internationally well-recognized programme and is designed to expose students to all important branches of Chemistry.

New curriculum and syllabus are in place for the M.Sc. programme from July 2011 onwards. Core theory and laboratory courses are offered during the first three semesters and elective courses in highly specialized subjects in the fourth semester. The core theory courses are designed to expose the students to advanced levels of Chemistry in all the areas. The core laboratory courses are designed to give practical training in organic, inorganic and physical chemistry. In addition, a computational and spectroscopy laboratory course is also offered as a core laboratory course to train the students in these areas. M.Sc. students have an option to either carry out a project (9 credits) under the supervision of a faculty or take additional three elective courses (instead of the project) to earn the 9 credits. The project work is expected to be an original piece of research work and it is meant to prepare students adequately for a career in research. The duration of the project is for 2 semesters in the second year of the programme. Students who get more than 8.0 CGPA in the M.Sc. programme can be directly admitted to Ph.D. programme with an interview at the Department level. They need not write GATE or CSIR/UGC-NET examinations. The top two first year M.Sc. students who have secured the highest All India JAM rank (within first 50 ranks) are eligible for Professor and Mrs. V. Ramamurthy scholarship

The Department is endowed with excellent instrumentation (UV-Vis, FTIR, Fluorescence, ESI-MS, NMR, powder and single crystal XRD, TGA and DSC, AFM-SPM, CHN analyzer etc.) and computational facilities. Students have access to Scifinder, a Chemistry on-line database, and several on-line journals. With funding from MHRD and DST more and more facilities are being added every year to make the Department one of the best in the country and comparable to top ranking universities around the Globe. The National Centre for Catalysis Research (NCCR), MRI-MRS Centre and DST Unit of Nanoscience are part of the Department. In addition to the Central Library, the Department Library houses books that are prescribed for the courses. For further information, students are encouraged to contact the Head of the Department (cyhead@iitm.ac.in, cyoffice@iitm.ac.in).