Dr. Bhim Singh from India and Dr Aaesha Alnuaimi from United Arab Emirates won the Kalpana Chawla Haryana Solar Awards for their contribution in the field of solar energy. Haryana chief minister (CM) Manohar Lal announced this at the third Conference of International Solar Alliance organised through video conferencing at Haryana Bhavan in New Delhi. The winners will be given a reward amount of ₹24.40 lakh each.
The CM said, “The Kalpana Chawla Haryana Solar Award was instituted by Haryana Government in the everlasting memory of Astronaut Kalpana Chawla, which will not only encourage the scientists all over the globe to work in the field of solar energy but will also strengthen the movement of Government’s ambitious programme ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’.”
The Haryana government had signed an MoU with the International Solar Alliance for the establishment of the haryana solar award and an overall corpus fund of ₹10 crore has been earmarked for it. “It is a matter of great pride for us that the headquarters of International Solar Alliance is situated in Gurugram,” he said.
Dr Bhim Singh is working as professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and Dr Aaesha Alnuaimi is director, Solar Innovation Centre at Dubai Electricity and Water Authority in UAE. The CM added, “On March 17, 1962, Kalpana Chawla was born in Karnal. She completed her schooling from Karnal and did her B.Tech in Aeronautical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, in 1982. She was the first Indian- American astronaut and first Indian woman in space.”
