Kerala University renames SICC as CLIF

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala University has approved the renaming of the existing Sophisticated Instrumentation and Computation Centre (SICC) to Centralised Laboratory for Instrumentation and Facilitation (CLIF).

This was one of the proposals for KIIFB funding to raise the university into an international centre of excellence in academics and research that the university syndicate approved on February 8.

Its coordinator K.S. Chandrasekar, a professor at IMK, said the entire research and development of the university departments, including interdisciplinary, would be centralised here.

For this, the existing facility will get one more floor on vertical expansion, and it will create a new ground floor plus three storey facilities alongside.  A centralised lab complex concerned departments can share is the key to this model, not only avoiding duplication of infrastructure but also providing for taking up challenging research projects by pooling intellectual capital and infrastructural facilities, he told DC.

Besides integrated interdisciplinary lab for ultrafast spectroscopy and molecular imaging (chemistry-nodal and nanoscience, physics, optoelectronics, medicine and Life science), the second phase will cover data science, lifestyle diseases and management (biochemistry), complex networks and systems, (future studies), multi-disciplinary project lab on 'bioprospecting and chemo profiling of medicinal plants from Southwestern Ghats' (botany as nodal department), biogeochemistry, isotope hydrology, environmental health (all three by environmental sciences), Advanced Centre for Regenerative Medicine and Stem cell Research in Cutaneous Biology (ACReM-Stem) (zoology), advanced geology, solar energy and material processing proposed by optoelectronics.

It will facilitate interdisciplinary research programmes, modular laboratory and office spaces. There will also be a video conferencing facility.