New Delhi , 03 July.Team India 2021 won 9 Grand Awards and 8 Special Awards at Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) for innovations ranging from identification of genes responsible that resist abiotic stress in species to augmented reality smart stethoscope that allows non-medicals to perform accurate pulmonary screening. These innovations were by young students who received the awards and brought accolades home.
Prof.
Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology (DST),
Government of India, virtually interacted with the 26 winners of the Initiative
for Research and Innovation in STEM -IRIS National Fair, who participated as
‘Team India 2021’ in the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair
(ISEF). These students have competed with 1833 budding scientists from 64
countries, regions, and territories across the globe and won 17 awards.
“Creativity
is connecting dots of knowledge. Our aim should be to become a creative thinker
with some nonlinear expertise and to reach out to connect the dots,” Prof.
Sharma said at the occasion. He went through all the projects and complimented
the winners on the research they had conducted. Also present on the occasion
were Dr. Praveen Arora, Head NCSTC, Department of Science and Technology; and
Mr. Sujit Banerjee, Scientist F, Department of Science and Technology,
Government of India.
Ms.
Sharon E. Kumar, Fair Director IRIS and Chief Operations Officer, EXSTEMPLAR
Education Linkers Foundation, said that IRIS is a platform which celebrates the
journey of innovation. The success of programs such as IRIS brings accolades
back home and gives an opportunity to young students to showcase their
scientific talent at the international stage.
IRIS
National Fair was held virtually this year and saw participation from more than
65,000 students and science enthusiasts, wherein the projects represented a
wide range of scientific disciplines and were judged under 21 categories. Each
project went through a stringent judging process to select Team India 2021. The
team was subsequently mentored by the IRIS Scientific Review Committee members
to prepare it for participation in ISEF.
‘IRIS
National Fair’ is a program of EXSTEMPLAR Education Linkers Foundation; funded
by Broadcom and supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST),
Government of India. School students based in India in the age group 10 to 17
with innovative projects can participate in it responding to invitations for
applications.
IRIS
aligns with 5 national level mega-fairs - National Children Science Congress
(NCSC); Science Fair by National Council of Science Museums (NCSM); Jawaharlal
Nehru Science Fair by National Council of Educational Research & Training
(NCERT); Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Science Exhibition;
Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) awards program.
To
ensure that the best quality projects from across the country represent India
and compete on an international platform, the best-performing students from
these fairs are encouraged to participate in the IRIS fair. Selected National
Award-winning projects from each of these fairs are invited to participate in
Mentoring and Evaluation Camps. They are motivated to develop their projects to
meet international standards, after which 5 projects per fair are selected for
the IRIS National fair as lateral entries. A 70: 30 model is followed whereby
70 percent of the students are selected from open competition and 30 percent
from among the best 5 in the other fairs.