Ms. Akula has been awarded for her work that garnered attention at the national level with the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and Wildlife Institute of India and WWF-India
As part of its 150-year celebrations, the IET in India launched Awards that recognise outstanding contributions in engineering and technology that have put India on the global innovation map
Ms. Naga Vara Aparna Akula, (Principal Scientist, CSIR-CSIO) was awarded the Young Women Engineer of 2021 by The Institution of Engineering and Technology as part of the first edition of the IET India Awards 2021. She has contributed significantly to the design, development and commissioning of intelligent sensing and alert systems using Infrared Imaging and seismic sensing. Novel techniques developed by her for target detection and recognition have resulted in successful implementations as well as several academic publications and patents. Most importantly, her work has also found application in wildlife monitoring, border-security intelligence and radiometric image analysis software for the defence sector and even an Earthquake warning system (EqWS) for the Delhi Metro.
Naga Vara Aparna Akula, Recipient of the IET India Young Women Engineer Award
IET India’s Young Woman Engineer Award aims to celebrate and spotlight young women engineers in India, under the age of 35 who have made a positive impact on the Indian engineering ecosystem, with the ability and influence to further the engineering discipline in academic, corporate, research and development settings. The felicitation was done by Professor Danielle George, former president of the IET and second female IET President in 150 years.
With increasing attention being drawn to India’s potential to become the world’s next technology innovation hub, the past years have seen remarkable feats and achievements by home-grown companies and individuals that have served to contribute greatly to national development. As part of the IET’s 150-year celebrations, the IET India Awards aims to highlight this growth and recognise the individuals that have contributed to the same. In doing so, it also hopes to inspire India’s extensive and fast-growing engineering talent to use emerging technologies to solve global problems.
Today, India has placed itself on the global technology map and this journey is on a sharp growth trajectory – as we see increasing interest from global companies and investors, in India as a strategic engineering hub.
“The best way to celebrate our 150 years is to recognise the country’s change-agents, difference-makers and engineering champions who have truly transformed the scope of technology and used it to solve some of India’s most pressing problems. We hope that the IET India awards serve to inspire even more people to channel this exciting age of innovation and new technologies towards creative solutions that create widespread impact not just in India, but globally,” says Shekhar Sanyal, Country Head & Director, IET India.
“The #WomenInTech revolution has reached new heights in India and we look forward to felicitating young women engineers like Ms. Akula, who have the potential to contribute tremendously to the nation’s development through engineering innovation. We hope that this first edition inspires young women engineers across the country and encourages even more women engineers to apply to the IET India Awards such that we can impact gender diversity in the engineering space,”Ujani Ghosh, Thought Leadership & Policy, IET India adds.
The IET India Young Woman Engineer Award was judged by an expert jury, consisting of Sukla Chandra, Senior Managing Director GE Licensing Inclusion & Diversity Leader GE South Asia, Madhura DasGupta Sinha, Founder & CEO – Aspire For Her, Arnab Thakur, India Director of Strategy and Growth – Prosus Fintech and Anandi Iyer, Director & Head – Fraunhofer India.
The IET India Awards 2021 extend across 7 categories, with entries open to industry, academia and not-for-profit organisations. The announcement of the next edition is expected in a few months and the application details will be online, by May 2022.
About The IET
The IET is one of the world’s largest engineering institutions with over 168,000 members in 150 countries. It is also the most multidisciplinary – to reflect the increasingly diverse nature of engineering in the 21st century. The IET is working to engineer a better world by inspiring, informing and influencing our members, engineers and technicians and all those who are touched by or touch the work of engineers.
Institution of Engineering and Technology – India
The IET office started operations in India in 2006, in Bangalore. Today, it has over 13,000 members and has the largest membership base for the IET outside of the UK. Given the increasing global importance of India as an engineering hub their aim is to make an impact that has relevance both locally and internationally. The strategy is to make a meaningful impact on the overall competency and skill levels within the Indian engineering community and play an influencing role with industry in relation to technology innovation and solving problems of public importance. IET does this by working in partnership with industry, academia and government, focusing on the application of practical skills within both learning & career lifecycles, driving innovation and thought leadership through high impact sectors.
For more information, please visit india.theiet.org.
