INAUGURATION: President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam with Governor Surjit Singh Barnala, Dr. A. E. Muthunayagam, Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Madras, and M. S. Ananth, Director of IIT, at the conference in Chennai on Thursday. — Photo: Shaju John

CHENNAI : Enhancing the efficiency of solar power, better understanding of basic health issues,precise forecasting of weather and accurate prediction of disasters such as earthquakes are vital for society's growth, President Abdul Kalam said on Thursday.

Dr. Kalam, who inaugurated the 13th edition of International Conference on Computational and Experimental Engineering and Sciences (ICCES 2005) at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, wanted scientists to help solve these issues.

Solar power

On power needs, he said the present solar photovoltaic cells had an efficiency of 12 to 14 per cent. It was possible to increase this three-fold — 45 to 50 per cent — and efforts should be made. If this could be done, solar power would be the most efficient source of power production.

Stressing the need to concentrate on proteomics — study of all the proteins expressed by the genome of the cell — he said it was much more challenging than figuring out the human genome.

Dr. Kalam said there was an urgent need to track multiple parameters and predict earthquakes. One needed to look at research across borders and find patterns in pre-shock conditions and the electromagnetic phenomenon that exists before the final rupture. Iceland had developed a reliable model to forecast earthquake and India and Russia were collaborating with it to further the research in the area.

Pointing to the recent rains in Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and elsewhere, he said that it was very necessary to pinpoint, with a fair degree of accuracy, the amount of water that would be received during a rain.

Monsoon research remained a global priority but there was a lot of ground to be covered before a model with a fair amount of accuracy could be developed. Earlier, there was a feeling that with the advent of the super computers, the combination of computers, atmospheric balloons and rockets would make prediction of weather easier. A. E. Muthunayagam, Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Madras, and an exponent on liquid propulsion systems, presided. Governor Surjit Singh Barnala released the conference proceedings. S. N. Atluri, UC Irvine, USA, highlighted the themes that would be discussed at ICCES 05.

M. S. Ananth, Director, IIT Madras, A. M. Rajendran, ICCES 05 general chair and S. Narayanan, chairman, local organising committee spoke of the various aspects of the conference.

The theme of the conference is `Engineering and its interaction with the sciences.' A post-conference session will be held in Jaipur from December 8 to 10. This will focus on `multi-spatial and multi-temporal scale phenomena in engineering and the sciences.'

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