Quality of life has improved thanks to science and society and government must support progress of science, Director General, Naval Systems and Materials, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Ministry of Defence V Bhujanga Rao said.
Science is key to all development and today for an economy to grow it requires scientists and not economists, he said addressing the students of Andhra University Department of Physics at a one-day workshop on Raman Spectroscopy conducted to mark the National Science Day here on Friday. The workshop was organised by Institution of Engineers India Visakhapatnam local chapter and Andhra University departments of Physics and Systems Design.
It is unfortunate that the interest in science research has been dwindling over the decades, however, there is some revival of interest in the recent years, he said. The government had designed a number of incentives such as scholarships to encourage talented youth to take up research in pure sciences, he added.
Tributes paidPaying tribute to the legacy of Sir C V Raman whose discovery of Raman Effect is celebrated as National Science Day, he said the interesting feature of the discovery was that it was soon adopted by the industry and a number of applications were developed using the concept within matter of years.
He listed out a number of areas of application that required research in basic sciences, for example the riblets on the shark skin help it attain high speeds underwater and research was on to see how to adapt it on man-made underwater machines. He touched upon research topics covering nearly all disciplines of physical sciences urging students to look at research in those areas. Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University G.S.N. Raju did some plainspeak on what ails research in universities, in most instances the research guides are the biggest hurdle to take up productive research, he said. The guides are either ignorant or too busy to be able to encourage the scholars, he said.
Professor and head of Department of Physics K Niranjan, professor and head of Department of Systems Design and chairman local chapter of IEI M Purnachandra Rao, faculty and students of Department of Physics attended.
