The Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, (IISER), Thiruvananthapuram, will partially shift to its new campus at Vithura with the inauguration on Thursday of the Chemical Sciences block, the central dining hall, and two hostel blocks.

The buildings will be inaugurated by Union Minister for Human Resource Development Smrithi Irani. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy will be the chief guest. The Physics and Biology blocks and additional hostel facilities for 500 students are expected to be in place in the next one-and-a-half years. Academic activities would shift to the new campus in the academic year 2016-17, a press note issued by IISER on Wednesday said.

IISER-Thiruvananthapuram started functioning on its ‘transit campus’ at the College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram, (CET) in 2008. Even though the first phase of construction commenced on 200 acres of land at Vithura, handed over by the State government, in March 2011, construction was delayed because the “construction activities could not be accelerated by the contractor.”

The contract for construction was terminated in February 2014 and IISER initiated action for executing certain holdover work of the first phase and campus development directly. The three-storey Chemical Science block getting inaugurated on Thursday has three common instrumentation laboratories, 28 research labs, six teaching labs, one computer lab, 12 classrooms, 33 faculty rooms, a seminar hall, and a landscaped court. The Central Public Works Department has now been entrusted with the second phase of the construction and campus development, the press note said. This is estimated to cost Rs.380 crore. During the last three years, three batches of BS-MS students (114 students) have passed out of IISER-Thiruvananthapuram. Currently 566 students are doing the programme.