The Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station's Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute (NSSPI) at Texas A&M University and Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University (PDPU) co-hosted a two and half-day nuclear security training workshop for the Indian academics from Feb. 10-12. The workshop was held at the PDPU campus in Gandhinagar (Gujarat State) India, and was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State's Partnership for Nuclear Security (PNS) with support from CRDF Global. The audience for the workshop included 21 faculty members and 43 students from ten different universities in India.
The workshop covered 16 lectures on nuclear security fundamentals, nuclear security culture, insider threat, and insider threat mitigation. The U.S. team included PNS program officer Priya Sethi, along with NSSPI interim director Dr. Sunil Chirayath and NSSPI senior research engineer and assistant professor of nuclear engineering Dr. Craig Marianno, both of whom lectured at the workshop. Indian faculty delivered approximately half of the lectures at the workshop. These faculty were trained through various PNS-sponsored programs, including the Nuclear Security Training Series, an annual summer program for Indian academics that takes place at Texas A&M and the U.S. national laboratories, and the Advanced Nuclear Security Workshop for Indian Universities, a four-day workshop in India led by NSSPI faculty, Indian faculty and technical experts from Sandia National Laboratories. All of these activities are intended to promote the integration of nuclear security topics into the normal course of study for students in Indian nuclear engineering programs.