This year, day one kicked off with Mrs. Leena Bokil giving a lecture on Space: The Final Frontier to a jam-packed auditorium.
Right at the beginning of the lecture, a video of the Lunar landing was shown which displayed the fun side of the moon mission and enraptured the audience and captivated their attention. Reminiscing about her childhood, she considers her father as a principle. She talked about how the society demotivated her from being science communicator, which was otherwise considered to be a rigid job with long work hours. However her passion for teaching led her to address around 8000 people in Baramati, a few years earlier. Remembering Kalpana Chawla, and her dreams of reaching the stars, she spoke about how being a teacher moulded her into a life where she put her priorites in the backseat and now her only dream is to see her students touch the stars.
Describing space as the big unreachable barrier, she spoke about how space has always been a great fascination for man, making aerospace engineering a sought after field of engineering. Travelling through space and time, she gave a insight into the various developments of astronomy, which all began with the cosmonaut named Yuri Gagarin.
In the United States, Mrs. Leena Bokil observed that students were less inclined to turn towards science, while in India the situation is reversed. With the view of increasing the interest of students in Space Exploration through out the world, NASA needed Space educators who would motivate and intrigue the fascination for space among the students. Considering herself to be one of the privileged members of the NASA Honeywell programme, she spoke about how meeting famous astronauts like Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin made her more passionate about her work towards STEM.
Being an electronics engineer, the engineering crowd of VJTI connected to her words. Leaving the audience with a in-depth information of the space exploration, Ms. Leena Bokil ended the lecture to a huge round of applause that echoed throughout.