Indian brainpower sought to drive NASA earth data

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by manjuap, Jan 8, 2003.

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  1. manjuap

    manjuap New Member

    Indian brainpower sought to drive NASA earth data
    IANS

    Wednesday, January 08, 2003

    BANGALORE: It is not only in software that the U.S. needs Indian intellectual capital - it needs Indian brainpower to understand the complexities of data emanating from earth science satellites.

    "If you can do it for Microsoft, why not for earth sciences or space technology?" asked James Dodge, director of earth sciences at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

    "Our own students are seeking other careers. We have a shortage of people in space science. We need intellectual capital in this area," he said at a news conference on the last day of the Indian Science Congress here.
    "Assimilating data, for instance, to predict weather is one promising area where cooperation between India and the U.S. could grow. We have data but we need to analyse it," he said.

    The U.S. has sent aloft several earth sciences satellites that generate huge amounts of data. Pointing to the difficulties in studying this information, he said scientists were still grappling with several models to correctly predict the monsoon.

    "It's a difficult mathematical problem. Neither the model followed by the Indian Meteorological Department or the fluid dynamics model followed by the U.S. and other countries can correctly predict the monsoon.

    "What we require is people with the ability to master physics and mathematics. The brainpower exists here. It is more a sharing of minds," he said in reply to a question.

    Dodge had during his presentation at the Space Summit, held as part of the science congress, said NASA's biggest difficulty lay in the area of meteorological prediction. "This is one major area in which India's experts can help NASA," he maintained.

    "We are right now swimming with new data that could predict the future. Our focus, like the Indian space programme, is also on meeting the societal needs in the next two decades," he added.
     
  2. Dennis Ruhl

    Dennis Ruhl member

    Indian brainpower has an added advantage of being cheap.

    Some companies find it cheaper to contract programming out to Indian companies than have it done at home.
     
  3. Guest

    Guest Guest

    I agree it is cheaper but it is also easier to find competent help in India. I have used two programmers in Bangalore to write java code. I have 50 people in the office @ a big blue company in the States and perhaps 2 could handle this work. It was simple straight forward code of perhaps 2000 lines. (it was not for that big blue company but for another job I do)

    A lot of people at the office have MBA's and business degrees and IT and CIS degrees but few if any keep their skills current. There are a lot of MCSE floating around though and that has to be the most useless credential I have ever seen - they generally are complete dolts.
    We are in Florida and there are a few graduates of Florida Metropolitan University I would not have hired if they let me make hiring decisions.

    Bangalore - and I extrapolate that the rest of India - has skilled workers willing to work who will work for what the contract offers. I pay a good price and the work is done correctly and on time. It seems that more Indians are willing to study the needed courses to complete work that must be done than students in the States who seem to want to be in management. Another instance of too many Chiefs and not enough Indians (Native American Indiginous persons not persons from India - a common cliche in the States.)
     

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