NRL Hardship Fund (NHF)

Background and Purpose:
Nanotechnology Research Laboratory (NRL) started its journey at the Department of Physics, BUET under the supervision of the principal investigator (PI) Professor Dr. Mohammed Abdul Basith in 2014. Every year a good number of students coming from different parts of the country join NRL for research and obtain their M.Sc., M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees. However, at one point in time, NRL’s PI Professor Basith realized that students, especially who belong to outside of Dhaka, find it difficult to bear their living as well as research expenditures and this demoralizes them to some extents. Having no other means, they have to seek loan from the PI which seems somewhat awkward for all. Hence, Professor Basith felt the necessity of establishing a non-profitable fund to provide monetary aid to the students of NRL who are experiencing unavoidable financial crisis.

On this account, in 2019, a fund has been developed at NRL which is named NRL Hardship Fund (NHF). It has been inaugurated with Taka 45,000/= contributed by Dr. Brajalal Sinha (MIST) and the PI, professor Basith. On the 17th April 2019, one of their papers titled “Simple top-down preparation of magnetic Bi_0.9Gd_0.1Fe_1−xTi_xO₃ nanoparticles by ultrasonication of multiferroic bulk material ” published in Nanoscale (Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry) has achieved the United Group outstanding paper award and the four authors of that paper have been rewarded Taka 1,00,000/= in total. With great altruism, Dr. Brajalal Sinha has donated Taka 20,000/= from his portion of award money to NHF and Professor Basith has endowed all his award money, Taka 25,000/= for the foundation of NHF.

How NHF works:

The students of NRL can take loans from NHF at any time without any formalities. To keep track, they just need to make an entry in the register or log book at their own responsibility and return the money without any profit return at their convenient time so that other students can get the same privilege later.

For the time being, students only from NRL can borrow money from NHF due to its limited amount of funding. It is earnestly expected that the alumni of NRL will come forward to contribute for the expansion of NHF and with their contribution, NHF will be able to lend money to all the students of the Department of Physics, BUET in near future. Further, the PI, Professor Basith dreams that one day NHF will be expanded to such an extent that each and every student of BUET will be privileged by NHF during their hardship.