(From left) Manjula, Hina, Indira and Ranjana in New Delhi. Picture by Rajesh Kumar

New Delhi, March 8: Nallamalli Ranjana recalls a moment at home when her 11-year-old boy was relating his role in a school play, but her mind was immersed elsewhere — in software that guides India’s Agni missile.

Ranjana, head of the software quality and assurance division at the Advanced Systems Laboratory, Hyderabad, leads a team of engineers trying to ensure that each chunk of software code embedded in the missile is error-free throughout its flight.

A two-day conference to showcase cutting edge science by women scientists in India opened here today, providing a rare glimpse of women who are helping build India’s defence and warfare systems. Dividing time between home and the workplace, they are designing combat aircraft, debugging missile control software or developing electronic warfare systems.

“You can feel the thumping of the heart when the missile takes off from the launch pad,” said Ranjana, a computer scientist who’s been with the Defence Research and Development Organisation for 15 years.

The DRDO has 950 women among its scientific workforce of 7,000, with the bulk of women scientists — one in three — concentrated in electronics, radars and software.

“Women scientists in the DRDO enjoy the challenges and the benefits of working in cutting edge technology,” said Nabanita Krishnan, a scientist at the DRDO headquarters. “But they too have had to go the extra mile to prove their capability as is perhaps true in any work environment,” Krishnan said in a paper at the conference.

“When there’s support, things work out,” said Hina Gokhale from the Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory, Hyderabad, who’s using her training in statistics to help develop the best possible coatings for components that go into aero engines. Her husband is also a scientist. “When I’ve got to stay late, I send an SOS to him.”

For even those engaged in software, the workplace isn’t exclusively a desktop in a sanitised laboratory. Electronics engineer Jillellamudi Manjula who led the team that built India’s first electronic warfare systems — under a project named Samyukta — has toured Anantnag, Doda, and Tezpur to fine tune and validate the technology.

A number of systems that she had helped design to jam radio communications of adversaries are used by the Indian army, the navy and border security forces.

Women scientists have participated in virtually every aspect of India’s Light Combat Aircraft — the world’s smallest, light-weight, supersonic fighter, said the DRDO’s Krishnan.

They’ve contributed to the aerodynamic design, hardware, avionics and flight control software of the aircraft which has completed 830 successful flights — with 442 hours of flying time.

“The first flight in 2001 was a proud moment, and we’ve had 830 flights since then,” said Indira Narayanaswamy, a scientist at the Aeronautical Development Agency, who helped in the aerodynamic design of the aircraft and is now working to reduce the drag during the supersonic phase of its flight.

Indira, a doctorate in mathematics from Chennai, had worked on a project to design smoother cars in the US before joining the ADA 21 years ago — in an early phase of the LCA project.

“It’s been challenging and exciting to work on such technologies,” said Rohini Devi, a scientist at the Advanced Systems Laboratory.

Many years ago, a day before she delivered her son, Rohini visited her laboratory to watch experiments on a miniature version of the heat shield that protects the nose tip of Agni during the missile’s fiery re-entry into the atmosphere. This visit has become legendary in defence science circles.

The conference, inaugurated by President Pratibha Patil today, will feature presentations by women scientists on their work on brain research, climate change and futuristic materials.