Dr. Vikas Kumar, FNAE, Distinguished Scientist & Former Director, DMRL/DRDO, and Chairman – Steering Committee, Aeronautics Research & Development Board (AR&DB), DRDO delivered a lecture on “Structure Integrity of Aerospace & Defense Structures – An Integrated Approach from Concept to Design to Deployment”, on 27th Jan, 2023, organised by the Directorate of Institute of Eminence (IoE), University of Hyderabad, under the Chairmanship of Honourable Vice Chancellor, Prof. B. J. Rao. The lecture has been well attended by the research scholars and the faculty members across several schools and departments of the university.
Dr. Kumar brought out the importance of materials-design-manufacturing-testing-deployment and Life Cycle Management (LCM) of critical defence platforms which operate under highly hostile environment. He sensitised the audience about the challenges and technology gaps in few strategic and futuristic areas of multidisciplinary and multiphysics research, which defence services are looking for by creating academia driven ‘Consortiums of Excellence’, a model approach through Academia-Industry-R&D Labs partnership initiatives.
As the Chairman, Steering Committee (AR&DB/DRDO), he presented the opportunities for academia for Govt funding available in various areas of cutting edge research & technologies. Few latest initiatives undertaken by the speaker have also been highlighted to bring out these strategic technologies for the benefit of defence services and other spin-off sectors. The lecture has been highly interesting and interactive, especially among research scholars.