New Delhi, May 13: For the first time, a woman is set to lead a key missile project in the country. Scientist Tessy Thomas, 45, has been appointed as Director of a special Agni missile variant project.

India’s “Missile Woman”, as she is now being referred to after storming a traditional male bastion, has been a crucial member of the Agni missile project. She will now head a classified project at a DRDO lab in Hyderabad to develop an Agni missile with “advanced technologies”.

While details of the project have not been divulged, sources said she will work on developing a variant of the 700-km Agni II ballistic missile system.

For the guided missile scientist, it has been a long journey spanning two decades to get to the top slot. But Thomas insists that capability, and not gender, has always been the criteria for selection at the defence research organisation.

“I have been associated with the Agni project for the last 20 years and have been Associate Project Director for Agni I, II and III. Now, the time has come to head a project for an Agni missile with advanced technology,” said Thomas, who is based in Hyderabad.

While there are more than 950 women scientists in the DRDO at present, Thomas is the first to become the project director of a crucial missile system. Nearly 20 women scientists are currently involved in the Agni project itself.

Thomas’s fascination for missiles started while she was in school at Alappuzha.

“During our school days, we used to hear about the rocket station at Thiruvananthapuram and would also be fascinated by the Apollo moon missions. I guess that in my inner mind I always wanted to be involved with rockets and missiles,” she said.

She later joined the Pune-based Defence Institute of Advanced Technologies (DIAT) to get a masters degree in guided missile systems.

Thomas was initiated into the Agni project by India’s original “Missile Man”, former president APJ Abdul Kalam, when she joined DRDO in 1988 as one of the five woman scientists in the research organisation. “The post-graduation gave me some insight in guidance technology and the moment I joined DRDO, Dr Kalam put me in the guidance system of the Agni programme,” she recalled.

While the DRDO and the Armed Forces have known to be at loggerheads over development projects, Thomas shares a special bond with the services. Her husband, who also holds a masters degree in guided missile technology, is a Captain in the Indian Navy and is currently posted at Vizag.

Their only son, who has just completed his Class XII examinations, is named Tejas, a name he shares with India’s Light Combat Aircraft (LCA). However, Thomas claimed that this was purely a coincidence. “We named our son before the aircraft was called the Tejas. My husband’s name is Saroj and we jumbled out first names together to name him,” she explained.

Women form close to 14 per cent of DRDO’s 7,000-strong scientist force and are involved in all projects ranging from missile systems, radars, aeronautics, naval systems and strategic systems. While the research organisation’s attrition rate is just over 6.3 per cent, officials say that the retention rate of women scientists is much better.