The first women Director General of CERN, Dr. Fabiola Gianotti visited Vigyan Samagam at Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, Bangalore. Her visit was looked upon as a great opportunity to boost India’s collaborations with CERN.
“India is one of the biggest contributors to CERN, being involved in various programmes like computing, power supply systems, hi-tech components, and high precision mechanics. India however could increase its contribution through new collaborations,” said Dr. Fabiola Gianotti, while addressing the scientists, students and other stakeholders gathered at Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, Bengaluru.
Dr. Fabiola visited the second leg of ‘Vigyan Samagam’ mega science exhibition on 30 August, 2019 and delivered a public lecture. Dr Gianotti pointed out that of the 18000 scientists working with CERN from 111 institutions from all over the world, 400 are from India and India has major contributions in all the experiments: the Large Hadron Collider, the CMS, the ATLAS and the ALICE experiments.
Dr Gianotti spoke about the future of particle physics which includes High Luminosity LHC until which will have ten times more collisions than the original design and also about studies in progress like compact linear collider and future circular collider.
She added that that mega science projects explore and improve knowledge -- an intrinsic aspiration of human beings and also result in cutting edge technology. Besides, she pointed out that mega science projects involve people from all over the world and established links and relationships with other countries.
She said that India which became an Associate member of CERN in 2017 have had associations with it since the 1970s. India however could increase its contribution through new collaborations with institutions and industries.
Dr Fabiola also interacted with the young students who has gathered at the museum and visited the Vigyan Samagam exhibition. During interaction she highlighted about CERN’s Educational activities and how India could take more active part in it.
This multi-venue Science Exhibition is covering four cities - Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and New Delhi and has come to Bengaluru in its second edition. The exhibition, in its 11-month long run, was flagged-off from Mumbai in May 2019.
The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Department of Science and Technology (DST), the co-ordinating and funding agencies of these projects and the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM), Ministry of Culture, having expertise in design and hosting such exhibition, have jointly organized this prestigious Science Exhibition.
Dr Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, Former Chairman ISRO and Former Secretary Department of Space delivered the Keynote address on ‘from science to Mega Science’ at Vigyan Samagam at Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, Bengaluru.
He mentioned that how India is increasingly contributing to the different mega science projects like International Thermonuclear Experiment Reactor (ITER), Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and the India based Neutrino observatory and the LIGO.
He also pointed out how these are benefiting India in terms of science, technology, domestic industry and human resource development.
DST Secretary Professor Ashutosh Sharma in his message while welcoming DG CERN said that the visit offers an opportunity for the Indian industry to learn more about getting involved in CERN’s projects. He added CERN management and the DG CERN herself could provide them advice, inputs and help increase the participation of Indian industry in in CERN.
Secretary DAE Shri K N Vyas emphasized that CERN provided the seed for Vigyan Samagam when they showed their keenness to make arrangements for the CERN exhibition to travel to India.
