Science Congress-2020 begins in online mode

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 17

The 14th Chandigarh Science Congress (online mode), CHASCON-2020, commenced today. The event is being organised by Panjab University in collaboration with the Chandigarh region Innovation and Knowledge Cluster (CRIKC). The congress started with a brief introduction by Prof Deshdeepak Singh. Prof Prince Sharma, Dean Sciences, enlightened the students with his views about the event and its history. Professor Anil Bhardwaj, Director, Physical Research Lab, Ahmedabad, graced the inaugural session and spoke on the topic, Indian Planetary Missions. He included various aspects of Mission Mangal, Chandrayaan 2 and a lot more. Prof Amulya K Panda, Director, NII, New Delhi, talked about the recent vaccines. His talk was focused on the topic, Challenges in the Development of Vaccines. He illustrated with his presentation that normally it takes a decade for the vaccine to come to the market but what could be the major hurdles for the coming of the vaccine in reference to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Prof MRN Murthy, AstraZeneca Chair, Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB), Bengaluru, discussed “The Structural Biology of Coronavirus”. He emphasised how SARS Cov2 was evolving at a drastic fast rate and why the transmission rate was relatively faster than other viruses. The session for the Pandemic Covid-19 also included another prominent scientist, Prof R Vardarajan, Molecular Biophysics Unit, IISC, Bengaluru. He presented a very informative talk on “Immunogenic Design for COVID Vaccine”.