Draft report of

11.4.3 UGC-DAE Consortium for Scientific Research (UGC-DAE CSR)
This Consortium was established as the “Inter University Consortium for DAE Facilities” (IUC-DAEF) in 1989. The Consortium had the mandate of making three major “Big-Science” facilities of DAE available to the researchers in the University system. These three facilities are the Dhruva Reactor at BARC, the Variable Energy Cyclotron at Kolkata, and the Synchrotron Radiation Source at Indore. Accordingly, the Consortium established three Centres at Indore, Kolkata and Mumbai, with the head office at Indore. A new MOU was signed between UGC and DAE in Dec. 2003 and the name of the Consortium was changed to “UGC-DAE Consortium for Scientific Research”, hereafter referred to as “UGC-DAE CSR” or simply “Consortium”. Before signing of this new MOU, the activities of Consortium were largely confined to research in physical sciences. The new MOU envisages that the Consortium should expand its activities to cover other disciplines such as Chemical Sciences, Life Sciences and Engineering Sciences as well.
Consortium has developed a large number of world-class research facilities. In particular, a beamline for Photoelectron Spectroscopy has been developed on the Synchrotron Radiation Source INDUS-1 and is fully operational for the last 6 years. Another beamline for Neutron Diffraction measurements has been developed with the active participation of university scientists on the Dhruva Reactor at BARC, and has become operational in September,2006.. These beamlines, in addition to long term CRS, also allow users from the university system short-term, one-shot utilization of the neutrons and synchrotron radiation. Development of a large multi-clover gamma-array, started by the Kolkata Centre of the Consortium in 1998 jointly with universities, VECC and BARC/TIFR has grown into a very large national facility-Indian National Gamma Array (INGA) is expected to be completed in 2008. Kolkata centre has been a major contributor towards research, development and utilization of facility in its phase I installations at BARC/TIFR Accelerator, IUAC and VECC. The DAE accelerator utilization by universities for these INGA runs was supported exclusively through Kolkata centre. During the X Plan period, a Low Temperature High Magnetic Field facility, which is arguably the best in the country, has been commissioned at Indore Centre with part financial assistance from DST. The Thin Film Fabrication and Characterization facilities at Indore Centre are again among the best in the country.