PIERA presents
Dialogue on Indo-US Space, Higher Education and Aviation
Friday 23 October · Evelyn Smith Music Theatre · Free
DISHA is a two-day conclave, convened by the India Policy & Economy Research Club at Arizona State University.
The point of it is contact. India's space and aviation leadership, in the same rooms as American industry, American universities, and the professional bodies that sit between them.
Dr. S. Somanath is the Chief Guest. He brings a delegation drawn from India's public and private space organisations.
Chief Guest
Somanath ran ISRO from 2022 to 2025. Chandrayaan-3's landing near the lunar south pole falls inside that window. So do Aditya-L1, India's first solar observatory, and the LVM3 programme.
He now sits on the Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India and is Chancellor of Chanakya University, Bengaluru. He advises both Indian companies that have flown privately developed launch vehicles, Skyroot Aerospace and Agnikul Cosmos.
Plenary lecture
Padhi holds the Prof. Satish Dhawan Chair at the Indian Institute of Science. His field is guidance and control: the mathematics by which a vehicle works out where it is and what it should do next. Nonlinear and adaptive control, state estimation, aerospace guidance.
Still being settled. Names appear here as each is agreed.
Friday 23 October · the public day
Friday is open to the public. Three plenary addresses open the morning, one of them from the American side. The visiting delegation then sits through the entire day, its own sessions and everyone else's, which is the part worth turning up for.
Evelyn Smith Music Theatre, ASU Tempe Free, registration required Doors at 10:00, Arizona time
The running order is being finalised and goes up here once it is fixed. What is settled is the shape of the day.
Dr. S. Somanath
The United States contingent
Prof. Radhakant Padhi
A fireside conversation with Dr. Somanath. PIERA's own format: a member in conversation, on stage.
Indian and United States space leadership on one stage.
Students with the visiting delegation.
After lunch it goes behind closed doors. The delegation meets the American space sector privately, tours ASU's space research facilities, and the day ends over high tea with the university's leadership.
Thursday 22 October · institutions and students
The delegation spends the day on campus: the manufacturing research building and its laboratories at Polytechnic, the shared cleanroom at the university research park, the engineering laboratories at Tempe.
Then the part PIERA cares most about. The Policy Symposium 2026 finalist teams put their aviation and space recommendations to the delegation and take questions on them. Students, defending their own work, in front of the people who run India's space programme.
The day closes with ASU's research leadership, and an industry dinner.
Thursday is by invitation.
23 October 2026. Evelyn Smith Music Theatre, Arizona State University, Tempe. Doors at 10:00.
Thursday, and Friday afternoon, are by invitation. To ask about partnership, participation or speaking, write to asu@piera.org.
disha · direction
Indian cosmology holds the world in eight directions: the four cardinal points, and the four that sit between them. Together they account for every way a person can face, and every way a path can turn.
By the sixth century Varahamihira was using them in the Brihat Samhita to lay out buildings and whole cities, reading a bearing to decide where a door should open and where a foundation stone should go.
DISHA has eight engagements across two days. The eight points of the mark give each one a place.
The India Policy & Economy Research Club at Arizona State University is a student research organisation, working on policy for technology, economy, polity and business in the context of Bharat.
PIERA's four-week cohort. The 2025 edition put 25 students into four finalist teams, and those teams carried their reports to decision-makers in India. This year's theme is aviation and space, which is why its finalists are the ones presenting to the delegation on Thursday.
With
