The President Mr. Pranab Mukherjee conferred the prestigious Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration, Academics and Management for the year 2012 to Ms. Tessy Thomas at a function in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Konwn as Missile woman, a key scientist at Defence Research and Development Organisation, DRDO, Ms Thomas has contributed in various fields such as Guidance, Control, Inertial Navigation, Trajectory Simulation and Mission Design. She is the first woman scientist to head a missile project in the country. Ms Thomas has been associated with the Agni Programme right from their developmental stages and has designed the guidance scheme for long range missile systems which is used in all Agni missiles. At present, Ms Thomas is the Project Director of Agni -IV, which is a major project with state of the art technologies. The award carries a cash award of five Lakh rupees, a Citation and a Plaque.