Prof. Parameswaran Sreekumar is Director of the Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences, Centre of Excellence, MAHE, Manipal. He is an astrophysicist with a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of New Hampshire, USA. His research at the NASA/ Goddard Space Flight Center, Indian Space Research Organisation and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, involved gamma-ray and x-ray studies of cosmic sources and the design & development of space payloads.