PEC varsity gets Rs 10 cr for Kalpana Chawla Chair

Aarti Kapur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 22

The PEC University of Technology has received a grant of Rs 10 crore from the Railway Ministry to set up Kalpana Chawla Chair on Geospatial Technology on the campus. PEC will set up a laboratory and give expert consultancy to the Railway Ministry for its projects, including designing of bridges, tunnels and material testing. In the 2016 Railway Budget, the Chair was announced to promote research in geospatial technology.

The PEC Director, Dr Manoj Arora, said the university received funds from the ministry last week to set up the Chair. He said in the coming week, a meeting of the core committee would be held in which a decision  would be taken regarding the railway project on which the Chair would commence its work. He said the institute would also have to give its share to make the Chair operational.

He said PEC would provide consultancy in case the Railways required it for making the Chandigarh station world class.   The objective of the Chair is to encourage research activities in geospatial technology and to strengthen the Railways, especially railway projects where the

 use of remote sensing data, the global positioning system (GPS) and the geographical information system (GIS) is predominant. This will help the Railways find in-house solutions to problems which are often outsourced to western countries.

The Chair will be headed by VK Gupta, Member, Engineering, while Manoj Arora, Director, PEC University of Technology, will be the co-chairman. The Chair will function through a Chair Core Committee having members from the Railways and PEC.