The annual IGRMS lecture will be organized online by the museum on July 20, 2021, in which S.B. Ota, Tagore National Fellow, Ministry of Culture, Government of India and former Joint Director General, Archaeological Survey of India, will deliver a lecture on the topic “Inquiries Into Deep Human History: Investigations of Acheulian Sites around Tikoda and Damdongri District Raisen, Madhya Pradesh”.
Ota has been the Director of IGRMS (National Museum Of Mankind), Bhopal. He was the first director of the National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities launched by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India under the aegis of the Archaeological Survey of India. Ota was honored with "Young Scientist Award '' from Indian Science Congress Association in 1987. He was awarded the Charles Wallace Indian Trust Fellowship in 1995. He was also a Short-Term Visiting Fellow of the Japan Foundation in 2006. During his career he has done archaeological exploration work in different regions of the country.
Some of the major projects include Archaeological Exploration of the submergence area of Narmada Valley Dam projects in Madhya Pradesh, prehistoric exploration in high mountains of Ladakh Himalaya, geo-archaeological exploration of Acheulian sites in Raisen district, Madhya Pradesh. In addition to archaeological exploration, he also conducted extensive conservation work on a large number of monuments including World Heritage Sites under ASI. His areas of interest include prehistory, field archaeology, salvage archaeology, documentation, archaeological heritage management, structural conservation etc.