SOA gets weather and air quality monitoring system

Bhubaneswar: The Bronx Community College of City University of New York (CUNY) installed an automatic solar powered weather and air quality monitoring station on the campus of Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA), here on Monday.

The station will monitor weather and air quality within a five mile radius of SOA’s Centre for Environment and Climate (CEC) located on the campus of the Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER), faculty of engineering and technology of SOA. The initiative has been funded by US Consulate at Hyderabad and the principal investigators are Prof Neal Phillip, chairperson of Bronx Community College’s department of Chemistry, Earth Sciences and Environmental Sciences and Prof Paramita Sen of the same department.

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The project also involves Indian Initiative for Research and Education Collaboration of CUNY CREST Institute which was officially launched on
September 9, 2022. The solar-powered weather station, part of the green initiative, was inaugurated by Prof Manas Kumar Mallick, director of ITER in the presence of Dr Sarat Chandra Sahu, director of CEC, Prof Phillip, Prof Sen and adviser to the US consul general at Hyderabad Salil Kader.

Dr Sahu said that the weather and air quality monitoring station will put the issue of climate and air quality at the forefront of sustainability discussions in the university and local circles. The data which will be generated continuously would be used by the faculty for climate research, he said adding it would also be incorporated into the curriculum.

The Indian Meteorological Department would also be encouraged to use the weather and air quality data generated by the station for societal good, Dr Sahu said.

“Climate change and air quality have become two most important factors affecting mankind and our effort is to work with Indian institutions of higher
education to make a difference,” Prof. Phillip said.

Prof Renu Sharma, additional dean (Student Affairs), ITER, Prof Mira Das, professor in the Department of Chemistry, Prof Aditya Kishore Das of SOA’s Centre for Bio-fuel and Bio-processing Research Centre, Dr Akshay Kumar Verma, Prof Bidyadhar Basa and Prof Jagannath Prasad Behera of the Civil Engineering department were present.