Postgraduate Department of Chemistry, Khalsa College, Amritsar had organized National Seminar on Recent Advances in Chemical Sciences (RACS-VII)

Postgraduate Department of Chemistry, Khalsa College, Amritsar had organized National
Seminar on “Recent Advances in Chemical Sciences (RACS-VII)” This is seventh in the series of
seminars organized under the banner of Recent Advances in Chemical Sciences since its inception in
2015. The seminar was a virtual event this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and spanned two days
from Thursday August 08, 2022- Friday August 09, 2022. The theme of the seminar is “Green
Catalysis: An effective approach for productive synthesis.”  This seminar will highlight the
importance of advances in various fields/aspects of Greener approach towards catalysis.
A total of 145 people participated in the Seminar including faculty members, research scholars
and students of other colleges, master’s and bachelor’s science students of our college. The opening
session was addressed by Head of Department, Dr. Randhir Singh, welcomed the dignitaries and greeted
one and all on the occasion. He officially declared the seminar open. Organizing secretary of the event,
Dr. Kirandeep Kaur narrated the need and necessity of such programme mentioning the mission and
vision also. Soon after, the inaugural session, the first day technical session commenced. The Keynote
Speaker for this session was Prof. Swapandeep Singh Chimni, Professor, Guru Nanak Dev University,
Amritsar. He gave a brief overview about the concept of Asymmetric catalysis as a greener approach
towards catalysis. Our worthy Chief Guest and an eminent scientist of IISC, Benglore, Prof. Uday
Maitra, IISc, Banglore then delivered an interesting talk on “Learning Chemical Principal with
experiments”. Prof. Maitra demonstrated the green chemistry using exciting experimental videos. At the
end of the first day technical sessions, Dr. B. K. Randhawa, concluded the session by giving an overall
view about the presentations and thanked our worthy speakers. The final day of the seminar opened with
the prayer followed by welcome speech by Dr. Randhir Singh, Co-ordinator of RACS-VII. The
honourable speaker, Prof. R. V. Jayaram, Head, ICT, Mumbai emphasized on the role of heterogeneous
catalysis for green chemistry processes waste minimization and waste treatment in her remarkable talk.
The lecture was followed by an interactive session where the participants too actively contributed. The
afternoon session was started with the invited talk by Prof. R. K. Sharma, Professor, Department of
Chemistry, Delhi University and co-ordinator of Green Chemistry Network Centre. In his lecture, he dealt
with the history and developments taking place in the field of Green Chemistry all over the world. He also
discussed several Indian and Global case studies, whereby industries got direct or indirect benefits by
adoption of Green processes. He emphasized the role of chemists and engineers for exploring new
molecules and alternate processes so that waste is minimized and energy consumption is optimized. A
poster presentation session was conducted in parallel. About 50 posters were received and selected
papers were presented in the conference website for both days. The prizes for the best poster presentations
were announced in the seminar.
Finally, the two-day seminar, RACS-VII came to an end with a brief valedictory function where
Dr. Amit Anand delivered the valedictory notes and thanked everyone present and those who contributed
to the success of the seminar, and then officially declared the conference closed. The seminar was
attended by Dr. Taminder Bhatia, Dr. Harwinder Kaur, Dr. Hardeep Kaur, Dr. Kultar Singh, Dr.
Punita Tiwari, Dr. Seema, Dr. Navalpreet Kaur, Dr. Jasneet Kaur, Dr. Kuljit Kaur, Dr. Sukhmeet
Kaur, Dr. Aabroo, Dr. Gurpreet Singh, Dr. Harpreet Kaur, Dr. Harpreet Singh, Dr. Jagroop Kaur,
Dr. Preetkamal and all students of Department of Chemistry, Khalsa College, Amritsar.