Expos, webinars mark National Science Day celebrations

Bhubaneswar: The Regional Science Centre (RSC) here in association with the Odisha Chapter of National Academy of Sciences hosted a series of webinars and exhibitions to celebrate the National Science Day (NSD), Sunday.

RSC project coordinator Somen Ghosh said that the theme for this year’s NSD was ‘Future of STI: Impacts on Education, Skills, and Work’. “The NSD 2021 aims at motivating the students to gain hands-on experience in the field of science. And RSC, Bhubaneswar is hosting a series of activities to serve the purpose,” Ghosh added.

An exhibition on ‘Simple Camera’, which was inaugurated by former head of department of Physics, Regional Institute of Education (NCERT) on RSC premises, was one of the major attractions of the day. The expo witnessed many experiments, especially on optics.

Over 100 students and teachers from across the country took part in the webinars on different topics related to science.

A session on ‘Biotechnology: Building India as an innovation nation’ was presented by Nivedita Jena, Chief Operating Officer Bio-incubator, Institute of Life Sciences.

The Odisha Geo-Spatial Data Centre also hosted an exhibition to mark the NSD 2021 at Survey Bhawan here, Sunday.

The expo is an effort to inculcate map awareness and usage of geo spatial data in different fields of development. “The exhibition focussed on the latest technology being adopted in the field of survey engineering, digital map making, satellite image processing, application of global positioning system and geographic information system,” said a senior official who attended the exhibition.

G Varuna Kumar, director of Odisha Geo-Spatial Data Centre, said that the exhibition aimed at making students and public in general aware about the job of Survey of India and help make them realise the importance of Geo-Spatial Data Centre.

According to Kumar, Survey of India dedicates itself to the advancement of theory, practice, collection and applications of geospatial data, and promotes an active exchange of information, ideas, and technological innovations amongst the data producers and users who will get access to such data of highest possible resolution at an affordable cost in the near real-time environment.

Notably, NSD is celebrated February 28 every year to honour the discovery of the ‘Raman effect’ by noted physicist Sir CV Raman back in 1928. For this discovery, Sir CV Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.

PNN