The University has been promoting research through constitution of Departmental Research Committees, Research Advisory Committee and Academic Standing Committee to evolve appropriate policies. The University has been proactive in encouraging its faculty to undertake collaborative and inter-disciplinary research. The University departments organized 63 seminars/conferences and 27 workshops during the last 5 years, inviting over 150 eminent scientists/researchers. In addition, the faculty and research scholars have actively participated and presented papers in the National and International seminars/ conferences, etc., several faculty members served as resource persons, key note speakers and special guests in such events.
The University departments and faculty mobilized resources through UGC-SAP, DST-FIST and DBT-BIF schemes at the departmental level and also at the individual level through major research projects during 2010-15. While seven departments got recognition under UGC-SAP, seven departments got recognition under DST-FIST. Five departments, viz., Botany, Microbiology, Chemistry, Physics and Polymer Science got benefited both under UGC-SAP and DST-FIST. In addition, all the Life Sciences and Physical Sciences departments received Non-SAP BSR infrastructure facility grant, resulting in an improvement in infrastructure facilities. The Department of Biochemistry established Bioinformatics Facility sponsored by DBT. The faculty has undertaken a total of 63 major and 12 minor research projects. The total funds mobilized by the University faculty for research stood at about Rs. 27.5 crore during 2010 and 15
The University has three centres of National and International recognition, viz. Aerosol and Atmospheric Research Laboratory (AARL), DBT-BIF Facility, and Herbarium. The University Science Instrumentation Centre (USIC) has been providing services to the University departments for repair and maintenance of the instruments and equipment purchased under different projects.
The AARL was established in the department of Physics as the nodal centre with all infrastructure and research facilities worth about Rs.8 crore, supported by ISRO, Bangalore. The AARL focuses on atmospheric aerosols, climate change and health effects, meteorological modelling and climate research. The interest of the centre is to extend study to air quality and the relationship between the changing climate and airborne pollutants.
The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India provided financial support for the establishment of Bioinformatics Infrastructure Facility (BIF) for the promotion of Biology Teaching through Bioinformatics (BTBI) at the University as a central facility, under the Biotechnology Information Network (BTISnet) program.
The Department of Botany has Internationally recognized Herbarium with an acronym ‘SKU’ by Index Herbariorum, a global directory of herbaria of world. It houses about 33,000 specimens collected during 1983-2015 from different parts of Southern Peninsular India and Andaman Islands. Most of the collections are made through research projects sponsored by national funding agencies like UGC, DST, CSIR and DBT.