India's Initiatives in Nano Science and Technology: a Brief Report
Monday, April 16, 2012
Presenter
Praveer Asthana
Join us for a special presentation by Dr. Praveer Asthana from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. He will be accompanied by Dr. Debapriya Dutta, Counselor, Embassy of India.
Dr. Praveer Asthana, an Adviser/Scientist-G in the Department of Science and Technology, is currently the Mission Director of Nano Mission of the Government of India and Head of the Autonomous Institutions Division of DST. After his B.Sc. Hons. School and M.Sc. Hons. School in Physics from Panjab University, Chandigarh, he obtained an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Theoretical Particle Physics from the University of Alberta, Canada. After two brief teaching stints at BITS, Pilani and NERIST, Itanagar, he joined DST in April 1989. He has handled a variety of responsibilities in DST. Some of the important ones are - adoption of Science and Technology Policy 2003 by the Government of India, launch of the Nano Mission, establishment of the Science and Engineering Research Board (the equivalent of NSF in India), CERN-India Collaboration, Fermilab-India Collaboration, KEK-India Collaboration, Indian Beam Lines at Photon Factory, Tsukuba, Japan, Elettra, Trieste, Italy, DESY, Hamburg, Germany and other such major international collaborative projects in Physical Sciences, other major national and international projects in Physical Sciences, Women Scientists Scheme, etc.
Please find detailed information about India's Nano Mission at: http://nanomission.gov.in.
Dr. Debapriya Dutta completed his Ph.D from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi in 1992 and joined the National Agricultural Research Service of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). He served as Scientist in the Central Soil and Water Conservation Research and Training Institute, Dehradun, till 1994. He joined the Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS) Division of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India in 1994 as Senior Scientific Officer- I and was serving in the same Department as Scientist 'F' / Director, till May, 2008. Thereafter, he has joined as the Counselor (Science and Technology) in the Embassy of India, Washington D.C.
Dr. Dutta was deputed to the Blackland Soil and Water Research Institute, University of Texas, Texas, USA as UNDP visiting scientist during 1998. He completed his Post Doctoral Fellowship in Geo-information Management from the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), the Netherlands in 2003-2004. He was awarded Senior Professional Research Fellowship on "Groundwater Governance" from International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Sri Lanka in 2006-2007.
His areas of expertise and research interests are application of Geo-informatics for Natural Resources Management (Focus on Land and Water), Watershed management technologies, Geo-information Management and Capacity Building for Local Level Planning. He has number of publications in national and international journals and has authored two books.