The India Post, Chandigarh 26th February, 2009 :The Plenary sessions of the lectures were started by 9.30 and there were two plenary sessions containing two lectures each. The first lecture was given by Prof. S. C. Laroiya, Director, NITTTR, Chandigarh, on the “Science for better future”.
He enlightened the young students by reminding the glorious past of Indian scientific achievements narrating the inventions of Sir CV Raman, Sir JC Bose, Homi Bhabha and others. He emphasized the need for science education as the basis for technological advancement. The students must be encouraged to take up basic science studies by extending several measures like offering fellowships, prizes and different other facilities.
Later Prof. R. C. Sobti gave an extensive account of the parameters of unbound quality education in the changing world. In his scintillating talk, he dwelled upon higher education and its global and Indian scenario. According to him the world today is a global village. He emphasized to produce quality of education to come up to global standards which can be ensured by standardizing and updating curriculum, augmenting research and faculty empowerment.
The 2nd plenary session was started with an inspiring talk by Dr. G. P. S. Raghava, Senior Scientist and Head, Bioinformatics Centre, IMTECH, Chandigarh. He is the recipient of the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Biological Sciences for 2008. He talked about the role of computational skills in drug development for various communicable and other ailments. He emphasized the need to develop ways and means to bring open source software for drug discovery. He gave several examples of participation of several diverse branches of science in this endeavour.
Later Dr. S. Srinivasan, Deputy Director, SASE (DRDO), Chandigarh, discussed a case study of Western Disturbance using versatile Mesoscale Model: MM5 Version 3.. He gave a perspective view of Himalaya ranges and discussed the topographical image of Kashmir and Manali and vertical profiles of temperature and specific humidity over Srinagar and Manali. He also emphasized the sensitivity of various physics schemes for precipitation with MM5 Model.
Later in the afternoon, as many as 17 different scientific sessions have been conducted at individual sections.