Physicists Dr Aditya Sadhanala and Darshana Joshi, together with colleagues Shruti Sharma (Stony Brook University, New York) and Dr Vijay Venugopalan (Marie Curie ITN Fellow, DESTINY, Politechnico Di Mailan) have returned from a month-long, 10,000 mile tour of India during which they brought hands-on science from Cambridge’s laboratories to 5,000 students. The team reached out to teenagers from a wide range of backgrounds in cities, towns and villages in some of the remotest parts of rural India.
The tour was part of VIGYANshaala (‘the classroom of science’ in Sanskrit/Hindi), which encourages Indian graduate students and researchers around the world to collaborate with academics, teachers and students in India. The programme aims to establish a mentoring network committed to communicating research and inspiring others.
Though science lessons are compulsory in India, few pupils get to undertake hands-on experiments. The Cambridge academics believe this is vital in inspiring them to take up STEM subjects at an undergraduate and postgraduate level.
Darshana explains: "Born into a lower middle class family and a first generation learner, I wanted to be a scientist from an early age.
“The only role model children in my generation often came across on TV was Kalpana Chawla, a NASA astronaut.
“Growing up I had little or no opportunity at all to experience the magic of science in action. It is only because of dedicated teachers that this interest kept growing.”
Aditya adds: “Our main motivation is to expose people to that kind of science I never had when I was growing up”.
Image: Schoolgirls in Mumbai observing a surface tension experiment
Credit: University of Cambridge
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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