CSIR IICT ex-chief scientist awarded Raja Ramanna Chair (RRC)
Former chief scientist at CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) Manorama Sunkara Vardhireddy has been awarded the Raja Ramanna Chair (RRC) by the Department of Atomic Energy as a testament to her decades-long contributions to materials science and impactful research in chemical sensors and nanostructured materials. The tenure of this position is three years and she will join CSIR-IICT.
Ms. Vardhireddy, with a foundational background in physics from Savitribai Phule Pune University, began her research journey in materials science, eventually becoming a pioneering figure in chemical sensors. She played a key role in developing sensors for detection of toxic and explosive gases, such as a low-temperature H₂S sensor for use in nuclear reactors, a room-temperature hydrogen sensor (recognised as breakthrough research by Ames Laboratory, USA), and a carbon monoxide sensor to prevent poisoning in oxygen-deficient environments encountered by defense personnel, said a press release.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
13 hours ago
- Time of India
Neeri studying health effects of microplastics, experts discuss sustainable tech, waste management
Nagpur: CSIR-Neeri director Dr S Venkata Mohan on Thursday expressed concern over plastic waste entering the oceans during his address at the institute's auditorium on the occasion of World Environment Day. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now "Plastic waste is a major issue globally. Only 10% of plastic is being recycled. Plastic management is a multi-pronged issue. Neeri is monitoring microplastic, toxicology and health issues from it," he said. Dr Mohan described Neeri's role in plastics management, including the monitoring of microplastics in air, water, and soil. He also mentioned that Neeri is actively involved in health studies related to microplastic exposure. He briefed the audience on technologies such as waste-to-graphene conversion and thermocatalytic combustion for plastic waste management. K Rajeevan, vice president and chief technology officer, Larsen and Toubro Limited, Chennai, was the chief guest. Besides Dr Mohan, Dr P Ganesh Kumar, R&D Head, L&T Water Technology Centre, Chennai, was also present. A meeting was also held between Rajeevan and Neeri scientists to explore new avenues for joint research, technology transfer, and deployment Rajeevan said that science and technology can play a pivotal role in converting plastics into biodegradable materials. He highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle complex environmental challenges. He stressed the need to shift from a linear to a circular economy and called for a change in mindset — from exploitation of nature to co-existence with it. He also underlined the value of sustainable innovations in industrial processes and urged scientists and engineers to develop scalable and affordable green technologies. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Rajeevan briefed about water supply, irrigation, and municipal wastewater projects accomplished by Larsen and Toubro Limited. He discussed smart monitoring systems, automation, and advanced technologies such as membrane filtration and MBBR, highlighting their role in delivering efficient, sustainable, and scalable water and irrigation solutions for both urban and industrial applications. He informed that the Prime Minister recently inaugurated the L&T-built Surya Regional Bulk Water Supply Scheme to ensure a water-secure future for Vasai-Virar and Mira Bhayandar regions. He also highlighted the futuristic innovations of L&T's Water Resource Centre.. Dr Debishree Khan, senior scientist, Neeri, conducted the proceedings. Prakash Kumbhare, senior principal scientist, Neeri, proposed a vote of thanks.
The Hindu
15 hours ago
- The Hindu
On a wing and a prayer
On April 4, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research – National Aerospace Laboratories (CSIR-NAL) announced that it had entered into a 'historic agreement' with a private company, Pioneer Clean AMPS Pvt Ltd, to manufacture the upgraded version of the Hansa-3, called the Hansa-3 NG (Next Generation). This two-seater trainer aircraft gives trainee pilots the opportunity to practise within India while undergoing their basic flying training. Touted as 'India's only government R&D organisation in civil aircraft development', CSIR-NAL is in Bengaluru and was established in 1959. 'While we have had a successful track record, we have now managed to seal a partnership with a private company, which will manufacture these planes,' N. Kalaiselvi, Director-General, CSIR, had said at the launch event held in Delhi. It was also presided over by Union Minister for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh and Minister for Civil Aviation Ram Mohan Naidu. Pioneer Clean AMPS Pvt Ltd is three years old and expected to set up manufacturing facilities as well as handle marketing, servicing, and after-sales. NAL will be closely involved in the initial years to help the company with various aspects of manufacturing and operations, says Abhay Pashilkar, Director, CSIR-NAL. Kishore Patel, founder and managing director of the Mumbai-based company, says his experience in business lay in the chemicals and automotive sector, but he decided to venture into aircraft manufacturing because of the opportunities and untapped potential. In the past year, he has organised a team of experts from the aviation sector, including engineers and scientists from organisations such as Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd — India's workhorse producer of defence aircraft — to be able to manufacture the Hansa-3 (NG). 'The aviation sector is rapidly growing and with that, the demand for trained pilots. We expect locally manufactured aircraft trainers to be cheaper and offer quick turnaround time for maintenance than foreign planes,' he said on the sidelines of a press event to announce the technology transfer. The making of a plane The NAL, a cluster of buildings spread out on a verdant campus of centenarian banyan and peepal trees, was intended to be away from the city. Few public labs in India can boast of having their own runways. Among these, the CSIR-NAL runway — a bluish grey rectangle of tarred road improbably laid out in a vast grassy field — is unique. It isn't your everyday airstrip intended for the private planes of the privileged. It is meant for planes imagined, designed, crafted, welded, and assembled on the campus. Even a small plane going awry mid-flight can be an aerial coffin for the pilot, and at worst, a crashing inferno of a public hazard. Therefore, every plane, when it flies for the first time, is a nerve-wracking experience for the engineers, designers, and technicians behind it because of the many things that could go wrong. It's inevitable that a runway and a surrounding vista, far from a bustling city, be built into a facility made to make planes. In one of these buildings is a cavernous workshop. There is a smattering of plane-parts: fuselage, wings, cockpit, propeller in various degrees of assembly, with none having reached their denouement. Like the baking moulds used to create cookies or cakes in assorted shapes, the fuselage — or the main spindle-shaped body of the plane where passengers and pilot are seated — is made by layering multiple layers of 'composites' like glass fibre, carbon fibre, and aluminium over spindle-shaped moulds. Depending on whether the plane will be a two-seater or a five-seater, the placing of the plane's engines, the positions where the wings will be, different fuselage is employed. There are large 'layup' machines housed in various locations of the workshop. Like the handlooms that spin out fabric, these machines can spin out the 'composites' used to make wings or any other parts. 'You can have up to 70 layers of composite depending on which part of the plane is involved and how they must be attached to the fuselage,' explains Abbani Rinku, Chief Scientist and the person in charge of CSIR-NAL's flagship Hansa (Swan) category of planes. First flight On May 11, 1998, three nuclear tests were conducted deep in Rajasthan's Pokhran desert, the first time such bombs had gone off since 1974, in a move by India to 'announce' its status as a nuclear power. It's the reason that India annually commemorates this day as Technology Day. Nearly 2,000 km away in Bengaluru, another tech event took place: the inaugural test flight of the Light Trainer Aircraft Hansa-3 Prototype II. Speaking in Parliament on June 8, 1998, then Education and Science Minister Murli Manohar Joshi said, 'This aircraft is a prototype designed, developed, and manufactured by National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore.' The production of the aircraft was to be taken up towards the end of 1998 by a private sector company in Bengaluru. The expected cost of production was ₹30 lakh per aircraft. NAL had entered into an agreement with Taneja Aerospace and Aviation (TAA), which had a manufacturing base in Hosur, Karnataka, to make the plane. Out of the 14 Hansa planes that were manufactured, one was made by TAA, says Rinku. However, he doesn't explain why more planes weren't manufactured by the company. They have all been given to flying clubs used by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and were being used as trainer-aircraft for pilots in training. The upgraded version of the Hansa-3 that will be made by Pioneer is a far more evolved variant of the one from Joshi's time. The aircraft offers a digital display (glass cockpit) system and is powered by an advanced fuel-efficient Rotax 912 iSc3 Sports engine and bubble canopy with a cabin width of 43 inches. It is equipped with electrically operated flaps to meet the user's requirements. It can fly up to 620 nautical miles and has 7-hour endurance and maximum cruise speed of 98 knots calibrated airspeed (KCAS). All of this also translates to the Hansa costing around ₹3 crore, a 10-fold spike. Pashilkar says it is still half the cost of an equivalent imported plane, and with the manufacturing and repairs expected to be handled locally, have a lower 'down-time' than comparable ones. Moreover, he added, the real draw of the plane is that many more pilots can be trained within India (today, several must go abroad for their licences). It will meet what Naidu projected as an 'explosive' demand for planes and pilots in India. The country will need 30,000 pilots in the next 15-20 years, with 1,700 planes to be added to the fleet, he had said. Manufacturing blues The CSIR-NAL is a research agency. Its mandate is in designing new planes. This means experimenting with every component of the aircraft — wings, fuselage, tail, propeller — and figuring out new ways of making planes lighter and more durable. They are also expected to design planes for a range of purposes, for instance as air-ambulances, or transporting cargo, or chartered planes, or fuselage of varying lengths to run smaller planes that can be used in towns and cities, sans full-sized airports. These new designs can then be taken up by private manufacturing companies that can make these planes in bulk, service them, find new markets, export, and most importantly establish the complex chain of intermediary manufacturers and suppliers of the complex hardware that must all be integrated into the manufacture of an aircraft. Despite successfully designing two-seater planes such as the Hansa and a 14-seater plane, Saras, the NAL hasn't yet been able to successfully rope in an Indian company that will manufacture its planes. In 2018, the CSIR-NAL made significant upgrades to the Hansa-3, including integrating a glass-cockpit as well as significantly improved avionics and instrumentation. It announced a partnership with Mesco Aerospace Pvt Ltd to design and manufacture the Hansa-3 NG. The 'targeted' cost of manufacturing the plane would be ₹80 lakh-₹100 lakh, an accompanying press release had said then. Rinku says while Mesco showed interest in producing the NG plane, the firm couldn't continue beyond one year. 'There were reportedly some internal issues (with the company) but nothing to do with the aircraft or its design. While we had signed an agreement to be involved right from the stage of designing the aircraft, we didn't progress to the stage of production,' he adds. This forced NAL to look for a new partner to design the Hansa-3 NG, and after four years of search found a partner in Pioneer. It isn't because the manufacturing of plane parts, assembling them, or establishing workshops is technically daunting that only research institutions like the CSIR-NAL or the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (which makes defence aeronautical systems) are capable of. In America, Pashilkar says, the Hansa category of planes would come under the 'home-built' category. The Hansa has its origins in a category of planes called the Light Canard Research Aircraft (LCRA), a Long-EZ aircraft developed by pioneering American aerospace engineer and designer Burt Rutan and put together in 1985 at NAL by a team led by Rustom Damania. Over the 300 hours that the plane was flown in its lifetime, engineers and scientists discovered practical challenges, including the use of composites. 'We simply imported it as a knock-down kit, assembled it ourselves, then flew it. Even today, these are categorised as home-built planes and so in theory can be built by anyone. Despite all the know-how and potential, it is challenging to get a private manufacturer,' says Pashilkar. Among the concerns that potential manufacturers raised were the availability of trained and skilled manpower. 'There's huge attrition in this industry. Yes, setting up the facilities to manufacture plane parts aren't that challenging, but it requires extremely skilful people.' For a plane like Hansa, it is essential that every component be made to the exact weight specifications. 'We can now make it to within a kg of the required weight. Few organisations in India can do that. Take welding. While it sounds simple, only a few organisations — like HAL — have been approved by aviation regulators to be able to weld components. Aviation is a highly regulated sector, and you can't go to a corner shop,' explains Pashilkar. 'A car, if it malfunctions on the road, can be taken to the roadside for fixing. You can't do that for an aircraft. Hence, the making and manufacture — given the risks — of even the smallest part is tightly regulated. This deters private sector participation.' Then there's the challenge of importing the raw material to make the composites. 'With so few manufacturers, nobody produces these materials in India. And because nobody makes enough of this, there are few manufacturers, necessitating imports. You add up all the demand for civilian planes — an existing fleet of about 800 with 1,200 in the next five years — and it still doesn't make commercial sense for a private manufacturer to set up a foundry (to make raw materials) in India,' Pashilkar reckons. Another challenge is finding pilots. The NAL does not have pilots of its own, and given that these are test planes, it depends on pilots from the Indian Air Force. 'Whether it is Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, or us, there is always a shortage of pilots. Because there are different certification requirements for civil and military aircraft, we face delays in flying our test aircraft,' rues Pashilkar. By the rules under which NAL works, any private manufacturer has to first replicate NAL's manufacturing facilities. 'Following this, they can come to our facilities and get help with making the first prototype; then we can go to theirs for the next one,' explains Pashilkar. 'This time, we've reduced technology transfer fees and given them two-year access to our facilities. Aircraft manufacturing is full of challenges in India, but we persevere.' Edited by Sunalini Mathew
Time of India
16 hours ago
- Time of India
‘Prudent use of natural resources need of hour'
Lucknow: There were green celebrations at almost every medical, scientific, and academic institute in the city. From releasing a special stamp to lectures, touching every aspect of the environment, events were held across the city to celebrate on Thursday. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Earth magazine released at IITR At the CSIR-Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, the celebration commenced with a plantation, symbolizing the commitment to environmental sustainability. This was followed by the formal inauguration of the science exhibition. EARTH 2025, a magazine focused on environmental research and technological harmonization, and the "My Stamp" card, a special commemorative stamp reflecting CSIR-IITR's contributions, was released. NBRI National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow, and the International Society of Environmental Botanists (ISEB) jointly celebrated World Environment Day. On the occasion, director of CSIR-NBRI, Ajit Kumar Shasany, highlighted the importance of this year's theme. He said that awareness regarding the sustainable use of our natural resources is the need of the hour. We must change our lifestyle to save our environment. Dr Shasany also highlighted various initiatives of CSIR-NBRI for mitigating plastic pollution and identifying plants for pollution remediation. AKTU Vice chancellor Prof JP Pandey planted sandalwood trees on the Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University (AKTU) campus. Addressing students, teachers, and non-teaching employees, Prof Pandey said we should ensure both the planting of saplings in vacant places and taking care of plants around us. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The extension and conservation of green areas are equally important. Lucknow University At Lucknow University, the 64 UP battalion planted saplings from the commerce block to gate number four, while research scholars of the botany department joined in the green celebrations. All teachers and departments planted a sapling in a pot, mentioning their name and pledging to take responsibility. KGMU Environment-related quizzes, skits, and a plantation drive marked the celebration at King George's Medical University. UPNEDA director Inderjit Singh, who was the chief guest on the occasion, urged the use of solar panels and EVs, while vice chancellor Prof Soniya Nityanand stressed individual responsibility in cutting plastic use. Balrampur Hospital Based on the environment theme, debates, poster-making, and a tree plantation were held at Balrampur Hospital. Director Dr Dinesh Kumar said spreading environmental awareness is a duty of medical institutions. Participants took a pledge to protect nature. Lok Bandhu Hospital Lok Bandhu Hospital held a plantation and awareness event. Director Dr Sangeeta Gupta planted an Amla sapling, highlighting its medicinal value, while MS Dr Ajay Tripathi discussed plastic hazards with patients. The solar panel agency also distributed fruits and promoted tree planting. Bharwara STP At Bharwara STP, Suez India, the firm handling city sewage disposal, held a plantation drive under the 'One Tree in the Name of Mother' campaign with support from women SHGs. The Sindoor plant, symbolising respect for motherhood and nature, was a special attraction. Project director Rajesh Mathpal called it a model of environmental care and women's empowerment. State Museum At State Museum Lucknow, an awareness drive for visitors was organised on 'Environmental Protection'. On the occasion, the importance of animals, plants, air, water, and earth was explained. Students of Saraswati Balika Inter College visited the museum. "We explained to the students how important the environment is for us and how essential it is to conserve and protect it," said assistant director of the museum, Al Shaz Fatmi. Uttarakhand Mahaparishad Members of Uttarakhand Mahaparishad distributed plants on the occasion and pledged to protect the environment. "It is very important for us to protect the environment. If we want to remain healthy, we have to maintain a green, clean, and healthy environment," said general secretary of the Uttarakhand Mahaparishad, Bharat Singh Bisht. Shree Shyam Parivar Members of Shree Shyam Parivar organised a plantation drive at Ramadhin Inter College and installed five water coolers at different places in the city on Environment Day and the birth anniversary of CM Yogi Adityanath. The chief guest on the occasion was MLA Neeraj Bora.
