Bhubaneswar: Quality education, healthcare and focused research being its maxim, the Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan Deemed to be University (SOA) in Bhubaneswar has completed 18 years of its existence while aiming to become one of the country’s top-notch institutions of excellence in future.
Ranked 14th in the country among institutions of higher education in India by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2024, SOA is a Category I university governed by the University Grants Commission (UGC), its Vice-Chancellor Prof Pradipta Kumar Nanda said while addressing the Foundation Day programme on Friday.
SOA had come into existence on July 17, 2007 when the Education Ministry had conferred on it the status of a Deemed to be University under Section 3 of the UGC Act, 1956.
From a humble beginning, SOA had traversed a long distance with focus on research as 115 of its projects were being funded by the government, Nanda said adding it had set up 18 inter-disciplinary research centres and 60 laboratories to facilitate the work.
Dr Debasis Dash, Director of the Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar, who graced the occasion as the chief guest, said after 18 years of existence it was time for SOA to introspect as to what it should be known for.
SOA should think of a project in which researchers from health sciences, engineers and life scientists should collaborate to create a data base for which inter-disciplinary collaboration was required, Dash said.
“You have to do it on an international level and the entire country will look at SOA for this,” he said.
Dash said that researchers should take up projects which were more relevant to the society requiring integration between disciplines.
Nanda said SOA’s aim was to attain excellence in whatever it did while contributing to the society.
“Researchers at SOA had developed simple economical and innovative pharmaceutical formulations to treat different chronic medical conditions for which the Deemed to be University had signed technology licensing agreement with the National Research Development Corporation of the Ministry of Science and Technology,” he said, adding that two of the products had been commercialised.
Research publications, which numbered around 300 a few years ago had risen to 15,800 at present, Nanda said while stating that 300 Ph.D researchers were getting enrolled every year.
SOA had come forward to battle the Covid-19 pandemic and help the state government run five stand alone Covid hospitals in Odisha deploying its own doctors, nurses and paramedics to treat patients.
The university had been appointing adjunct professors drawn from top notch universities of the country in different subjects, the Vice-Chancellor said adding “we take the resolve to grow and aim to be among the top ten universities of the country.”
