These are among the 82 educators from across the country who will receive the National Teachers’ Awards on September 5. An asteroid hunter. A Maths wizard. A trailblazer in a coal mining community. A Special Olympics hockey coach. The President of India Droupadi Murmu will confer the awards.
Divyendu Sen from Rajasthan, another recipient of the award, is a teacher in a government school who bridged rural classrooms with deep-space science by training local students to track and hunt asteroids. He has pioneered low-cost solutions, including an AI-enabled Biology education model, a Virtual Biology Laboratory, and ‘Tree Talk’, a QR-based botanical learning system. Among the higher education faculty members receiving awards is Kirti Chandra Sahu from the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, whose pioneering research on the shape and size distributions of raindrops at different altitudes contributes to more accurate rainfall prediction. Vinay Chamola at the Birla Institute of Technology, Pilani, is receiving the award for the courses he has developed in the Internet of Things (IoT) and drone technology, and for establishing a hands-on IoT Tinkering Lab, translating cutting-edge research into project-based learning. “Her research on a computational model for the linguistic study of Sanskrit reflects her pioneering efforts to connect Paninian grammar with modern language technology. She has contributed to major academic and technological initiatives, including Mahakosha, National Language Translation Mission, Shastrakosha, Pythonskrit, and Academic GPS, advancing the digitisation and computational study of Sanskrit knowledge,” the Education Ministry spokesperson stated.
“He has developed a unique experimental facility from scratch that simulates atmospheric conditions experienced by raindrops as they descend from clouds to the ground, with potential applications in weather forecasting and climate modelling,” a spokesperson from the Union Ministry of Education said. “He also leads an interdisciplinary Shrimad Bhagavad Gita course that has demonstrably enhanced student well-being, blending technical excellence with compassion, values and purpose,” the spokesperson said.
