Drdo’S Only Woman Lab Chief Climbs New Heights

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[color=#3F3F3F][font=Georgia,]When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh singled out Tessy Thomas, the project director of Agni ballistic missile programme, in his inaugural speech at the ISC, as evidence of women making great strides in the field of science, he could well have been talking about another distinguished woman scientist, Shashi Bala Singh.[/font][/color]


[color=#3F3F3F]Singh, in her mid-40s, is the only woman director in the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to head a laboratory that is doing crucial research in acclimatising over 80,000 jawans posted in cold and arid regions of the western sector.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]Singh, a physiologist from New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences, is the director of Defence Institute of Physiology & Allied Sciences (DIPAS), one of DRDO’s 52 laboratories, which is now in the process of reducing the six-day acclimatisation period for jawans in cold climates to three days.[/color]


[color=#3F3F3F]In Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir, which is about 3,500 metres high from the sea level, hypoxia (lack of dissolved oxygen in air making breathing almost impossible) can be a traumatic experience for a person from the plains. Hypoxia affects the short-term memory of jawans as lack of oxygen impairs the brain cells. For jawans posted in Ladakh and Siachen, the need to acclimatise fast to the harsh surroundings has always been a challenge.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]“There is a limit to the body’s physiological manipulation in sub-human conditions as jawans need to work in the temperature as high as 40 degrees Celsius in a tank to as low as —60 degrees Celsius. The trick is how to adjust quickly and optimise the performance of jawans. In places such as Siachen and Ladakh our goal has been to increase the oxygen level in blood so as to avoid drowsiness and fatigue,” said Singh, who was in Bhubaneswar to deliver a speech on “low cost sustainable technologies for cold arid desert” at the ISC.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]At DIPAS, where she started her career in 1990 and since then has been one of the star scientists in the DRDO’s male-dominated labs, Singh has been involved in getting the Ladakh locals grow 75 types of vegetables such as radish, turnip and bittergourd using the DRDO technology which helps the Army meet its vegetable requirement during summer. The lab has customised yoga for soldiers as the jawans can’t go for physical exercises outside due to paucity of oxygen. It is also using aloe vera in the treatment of frostbite, pentoxifyl-line and aspirin in managing cold injuries, and has developed a solid-state cooling garment for tank crew.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]Singh’s area of interest has been hypophagia (undereating) at high altitude in terms of taste receptor sensitivity changes. Her lab maintains a database of the nutritional requirements of the Indian population under various stress/ environmental conditions.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]Singh says that she never felt disadvantaged at male-dominated DIPAS, where she now heads a 120-member staff.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]“In 2007, the DRDO asked me to go to Defence Institute of High Altitude Research at Leh-Ladakh as director and I accepted it without a murmur. Some people asked if it was a punishment posting for me. But to me it was an opportunity to prove my worth,” said Singh, adding that in the next one year, the DRDO will be able to bring down the acclimatisation process of jawans in high altitude areas by 50 per cent.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]“All our research so far has been in the western Himalayas. But with Chinese interests increasing in eastern Himalayan states like Arunachal Pradesh, we need to do high-altitude research there,” she said.[/color]

[color=#3F3F3F]A fellow of Indian Association of Biomedical Scientist and Indian Academy of Neurosciences (IAN), Singh has over 60 publications. In 2007, she received the prestigious DRDO Technology Spin Off Award.[/color]

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