Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 27: An International webinar was organized live from NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California, USA on the theme “Interaction with NASA Scientist: career opportunities and 21st century skills” by son of the soil, Dr Vishal Sharma (Fulbright Climate Fellow, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA).
Organized under the patronage of Talat Parvez Rohella, Commissioner Secretary, Higher Education Department, Government of Jammu & Kashmir, the webinar was aimed at providing awareness regarding career opportunities and various skills required for students/research scholars/faculty at National and International level.
Talat Parvez Rohella, Commissioner Secretary was the chief guest and Dr Gautam Chottapaudya, Senior Scientist NASA, JPL, California, USA was the special guest/resource person at the occasion. In his inaugural address, Rohella stressed the need for holding such events and stated that it would increase the awareness among the students and will help them to think critically in their future endeavor.
Introducing Dr Goutam Chottapaudya and other dignitaries (Dr Sanjay Khajuria from SKUAST Jammu and Manpreet Singh form Microsoft, USA) to the audience, Dr Vishal Sharma said that Dr Goutam has been responsible for actually building and developing technologies that has enabled NASA to send astronauts into space.
Dr Gautam in his address stated how he has made his journey to be the top scientist starting from a modest family background. He also shared his strategies to cope up with stress during his journey of becoming a world’s leading scientist.
The webinar was attended by more than 7000 participants from 30 countries with age group ranging from 7 years to 70 years. The participants had purposeful interaction with the resource person. The inquisitive participants raised various questions involving existence of aliens, space, blackhole, life beyond earth, humans on planet Mars etc. All these questions were very well enlightened by Dr Goutam with his satisfactory answers.
The webinar was anchored by Dr Vishal Sharma and Dr Sanjay Khajuria, Senior Scientist, SKUAST, Jammu gave the final vote of thanks.