Report of the Scientific Committee
8th Research Day, JIPMER

In an effort to improve the scientific temper and outlook of the faculty and students of JIPMER, the Scientific Committee under the Chairmanship of the Prof. Rakesh Aggarwal, Director JIPMER took some innovative steps during the 8th Research Day.
Scientific sessions were held over three weeks on Friday and Saturday afternoons, starting February 17th and ending 4th March, which facilitated better attendance and high-quality discussions during the sessions. Two new sessions were added, namely Faculty Unpublished papers and Non-Student Research Staff presenting In-progress research. All the abstracts were independently and objectively reviewed by two members of the Scientific Committee who did not have any conflict of interest for selection of the papers for oral and poster presentations. The awards papers were chosen by three eminent external experts after the initial screening by the committee. Another first-time during this research day was the chairing of the sessions by the peers. There was an overwhelming response from the peers in all the category of presentations with very high-level intellectual discussions. The ICMR and GJSTRAUS presentations were combined into one UG session, with some outstanding presentations by the students.

The scientific sessions culminated in the main function held from 9th to 11th of march 2023 with four simultaneous workshops on Use of statistical software STATA, DNA Sequencing, Animal Research and PCR technique on 9th and 10th of March. The concluding function on the 11th of March started with the Key Note address by the Director General, ICMR and Secretary Department of Health Research, Dr. Rajiv Bahl, followed by interview of young scientist innovator Dr. Krithika Rangarajan (Oncoradiologist, AIIMS, New Delhi) by Dr. Nanda Kishore. There was an interesting debate on the use of AI tool ChatGPT by faculty and residents speaking both for and against it. Another initiative was the faculty research awards to two faculty; basic sciences and clinical/nursing sciences, providing wider representation to researchers from all fields as the research activities in the institution increases.  Four departments, Cardiothoracic vascular surgery, Pulmonary Medicine, Emergency Medicine and Nuclear Medicine and JIPMER Karaikal got the opportunity to present their research activities this year.

Overall, the successful completion of 8th Research Day in JIPMER gave a boost to the research interest of faculty and students in JIPMER in addition to showcasing the work that is being conducted.