ARCI organises outreach programme for students

Hyderabad: Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), Hyderabad, an autonomous R&D Institution under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, pursuing R&D in high-performance materials and processes has been successfully developing several materials-based technologies and transferring them to industry for application and commercialisation.

ARCI organised an outreach programme on Thursday and conducted an open day, quiz, elocution and solar cell assembly competitions for students both from schools and colleges. Interaction programmes were also held with more than 100 scientists and research fellows. The event was conducted under the auspices of the Ministry of Science and Technology and Vijnana Bharathi (VIBHA).

The event was an outstanding success with overwhelming response from about 200 young registered participants from Schools and Colleges for the events. They were taken around the laboratory to see live demonstrations of state-of-the-art equipment at various Centres of Excellence to start with.

The Inauguration started with a brief about the Outreach Program by the Nodal Officer, Dr G Ravichandra, followed by welcome Address by Dr G Padmanabham, Director-ARCI, and remarks by Dr K. Ratna, K V Rao Scientific Society, Hyderabad, and the chief guest, Dr. G. Madhusudhan Reddy, Scientist 'H' and Outstanding Scientist, Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory (DMRL), Hyderabad.

Dr Ratna emphasised the importance of popularising the science among the student community and also briefed about their society's contribution for the same. Dr Madhusudhan Reddy highlighted the challenges and excitement in scientific and technological research and such programmes will be very useful to ignite the young minds.

He gave interesting insights into materials challenges in advanced products like hypersonic vehicles etc., and touched upon applications of computation and artificial intelligence in materials research. Dr Padmanabham delivered a lecture on 'Innovations and Advances in Materials' covering various aspects from fundamentals of material to applications developed at ARCI.

He highlighted the importance of material processing techniques, testing methods, technology demonstration and the translation of concepts to commercialization. The lecture has certainly created lot of interest among the students about the materials science and engineering as a future career.