MoU to set up Kalpana Chawla Chair on geospatial technology signed between Railways and PEC University of Technology

Ministry of Railways and PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh on 30 May 2016 signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to set up Kalpana Chawla Chair on Geospatial Technology for Indian Railways at the University.

The MoU was signed in the backdrop of 2016-17 Railway Minister’s Budget announcement.
For the purpose, the Indian Railways would provide a corpus of 10 Crore rupees to PEC University of Technology, for setting and to meet the running expenses of this chair.

Objective
• To encourage research activities in Geo-spatial Technology.
• To strengthen Indian Railways especially Railway projects where use of remote sensing data, global positioning system (GPS) and Geographical information System (GIS) is predominant.

Key highlights
• This academic chair is being instituted in fond memory of Late Kalpana Chawla an Indo–American Astronaut and Alumnus of PEC during the year 1978-82.
• To honour her contributions in Aerospace Engineering Indian Railways decided to institute the academic chair in the area of Geo-spatial Technology in her alma mater.
• Incidentally, Chawla was the first woman of Indian origin in space.
• The Chair will be headed by VK Gupta, Member Engineering, Railway Board as Chairman and Shri Manoj Arora, Director, PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh as Co - chairman.
• The Chair will function through a Chair Core Committee (CCC) having members from Railways and PEC.

Significance
• Development of the chair and its research will help Indian Railways to develop in house solutions to the problems which are often outsourced to western countries.
• It will help in developing applications to remove day to day engineering and technological problems and geospatial solutions to Indian Railways.