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APL Director Swadhin Behera gave an invited talk to Indian Prime Minister Modi during the inauguration ceremony of VAIBHAV summit.

Indian Prime Minister Modi and APL Director Swadhin Behera

Swadhin Behera (Director, Application Laboratory: APL) was selected as one of 16 outstanding Indian scientists to give an invited talk to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the inauguration ceremony of VAIBHAV Summit on October 2 (Fri), 2020. Vaishwik Bharatiya Vaigyanik (VAIBHAV), a collaborative initiative by science, technology and academic organizations of India, aims to bring out the comprehensive roadmap to leverage the expertise and knowledge of global Indian researchers for solving emerging challenges such as climate change, health issues and sustainable energy resources. During the ceremony, Dr. Behera stressed the importance of ocean and climate application studies (see his remark below), the research in polar regions and Southern Ocean to understand their impacts on tropics on inter-annual as well as decadal timescales and the ongoing collaboration between JAMSTEC and Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) based on the initiatives taken by India and Japan Prime Ministers. The summit will be held from 3rd October to 30th October 2020 among researchers through webinar mode.

Director Swadhin Behera’s speech:

Honorable Prime Minister, Namaskar. I am grateful to Hon'ble Prime Minister and the VAIBHAV organizer for this opportunity.

Based on my experience in ocean and climate research, I feel that there is a lot of potential to apply the research outcomes of this field to improve the quality of life of common people, to address COVID-19 like pandemics and to reduce natural disasters. We have developed such applications and for example applied them in the malaria early warning. The deep oceans and polar regions hold resources and key to understand future climate. In particular, there is a need to study the impact of Southern Ocean on monsoon. This can be applied for even decadal scales.

I hope we will continue to research in this direction by taking forward the relationship developed between the Ministry of Earth Sciences and my institute JAMSTEC through the personal care of the Honorable Prime Minister and the former Prime Minister of Japan Mr. Abe, who was in the office until recently.

Research and innovation are the backbone of a great nation, and especially it is essential for a self-reliant India.

Continuing with the excellent opportunities initiated under the guidance of the Honorable Prime Minister I feel it will be nice to increase the participation of the private sector (especially for the funding)

In global research collaborations, I hope for further strengthening of the ongoing collaborations among MoES, JAMSTEC, IITs and IIT like reputed centers as well as developing new collaborations with regional research centers.

In the spirit of Vasudeva Kutumbakam (one world, one family) I hope to join hands for the development of a strong India.

Thank you. Namaskar.

Reference websites:
VAIBHAV Summit
Inauguration ceremony (Youtube)
Application Laboratory (APL), Research Institute for Value-Added-Information Generation (VAiG), JAMSTEC