Interesting Projects Form Part of the 5th National Level Exhibition and Project Competitions (NLEPC) at IIT Delhi

Interesting Projects Form Part of the 5th National Level Exhibition and Project Competitions (NLEPC) at IIT Delhi

Union Minister for Science and Technology Dr Harsh Vardhan takes keen Interest and Interacts with Student Exhibitors 

Three (3) students will be awarded National prizes and 57 consolation prizes for winners in. The NLEPC was held yesterday and today along with the India International Science Festival at IIT Delhi.

The Union Minister for Science and Technology & Earth Sciences Dr Harsh Vardhan after inaugurating the exhibitioninteracted with the INSPIRE students and took a round to see their projects.

699 students who had earlier competed at District level and State Level competition and short listed for the National Exhibition are participating in this 5th NLEPC held under INSPIRE programme.

Several School children from various Delhi schools  are also visiting the INSPIRE Exhibition stalls inaugurated  by the Minister along with Secretary, DST, Prof. Ashutosh Sharma, Director, IIT, Prof. Kshitij Gupta, Secretary General, VIBHA  Shri Jaya Kumar and senior officials  from DST, IIT and TIFAC. Speaking on the occasion Dr. Harsh Vardhan expressed happiness that most of the innovations presented at NLEPC also stem from the aim of improve day-to-day life of the common people.

A jury of 200 scientists will be judging the science projects /models and will be interacting with the students to shortlist 60 winners.

Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) is a national programme implemented by the Ministry of Science & Technology for attraction of talent amongst the students to study Science and pursue career with research.  The basic objective of the programme is to communicate to the youth of the country the excitement of creative pursuit of science, attract talent to the study of science at an early age and thus build the required critical human resource pool for strengthening and expanding the science and technology system and R&D base.  The programme was launched by the Prime Minister on 13th December 2008.  The implementation started during 2009-10.

INSPIRE Award, is implemented centrally through the States/ UTs. Under this scheme, during the five year period two students are selected from each middle and high school of the country for an INSPIRE Award of Rs.5000/- each for preparing a Science Project / Model.  These awardees, who are students from classes 6th to 10th, then participate in a three tier competition: District, State and National Level.  The projects exhibited are evaluated by a jury of experts.  All the 29 states and 7 UTs are participating in the scheme.  The Scheme is continuing in the 12th Five Year Plan.

In so far as INSPIRE Award component is concerned, 12.94 lakhs INSPIRE Awards have been sanctioned till date. About 47 % of the awardees are girls and 26% SCs/STs.

Most exhibits are basically themed on energy conservation, lowering cost of household and farming devices, water-harvesting, curbing road accidents, simple anti-terror gadgets, better waste management, stemming atmospheric and water pollution, robotics etc.

For instance, Telangana teenager M. Shilpa has come up with a model that shows how sensors safely buried below urban roads ahead of busy junctions can sound quick alerts on passage of bomb-carrying vehicles above them.

Zulfa Iqbal of a Srinagar school has displayed a machine that will cut short the time to make the famed numdah rugs of the Kashmir Valley to just seven minutes instead of a whole day’s manual labour. Two boys from the Andaman & Nicobar Islands have developed a spy car that can go deep into otherwise inaccessible forest and return with video and still visuals.

How human urine can simply converted into an effective organic fertiliser is the focus of a little scientist from Palanpur in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district. Diagonally opposite, from the east, ‘Common Balance for the Blind Grocer’ is the item presented by Sima Pal from near Malda of Bengal region. Still farther, from the Northeast, a customised power loom invented by a Manipuri student from Bishnupur is along equipment displayed by children from Sikkim and Nagaland of the region.

Novel ways of conserving water is among the themes of items from the desert state of Rajasthan, while students from hilly Himachal Pradesh have devised apparatus that can handle disaster management better. A head motion-controlled wheelchair is on display from a Chandigarh student. A boy from Angul district of Odisha has come up with a theft-proof motorbike.

A class X boy from Jharkhand Pranav Kumar has come up with a model of a train where passengers can board and get down at stations without it stopping, thus saving the energy lost over restarting the engine. Kerala’s Devang M of Mattannur has modelled a boat that can withstand sinking.  There were over 700 similar such exhibits from students across the country. 

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2,000 School Students from Delhi Conducted the ‘Largest Practical Science Lesson’ 

  

Two thousand school students from Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) today assembled at the sprawling lawns of IIT Delhi to conduct ‘the largest practical science lesson’, seeking to script a new world record for the Guinness Book. 

The existing world record is held by a group of 1,339 Irish school pupils.

The ‘historic’ event was organized by Vijnana Bharati (VIBHA), an organisation for science movement in the country and by the Ministries of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences. This is a part of the December 4-8 India International Science Festival (IISF) 2015.

The participating students, with excitement writ large on their faces, got a pep talk from Union Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan and Union Human Resource Development Minister Smt. Smriti Irani ahead of the lesson. 

Mr. A. Jayakumar, Secretary General, VIBHA, said the experiment went smoothly and in a glitch-free manner. “All students conducted the experiment successfully. We will be sending the result to the Guinness Book this evening. Hopefully, the final result would come in three-four days,” he added.

Prof. K. Girish Kumar, senior professor of chemistry in Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) in Kerala who coordinated the mega event, said three independent observers for the event— Mr Dharmendra Kumar, Senior Police Commissioner, Delhi; Mr Arup Kumar Mishra, Director, Assam State Council for Science and Technology; and Prof. Akhil Ahamed, former Vice Chancellor, Mysore University—are evaluating this.

Lokesh Mohanti, a 17-year-old student of National Public School who participated in the event, was ecstatic. “We did it. The experiment went well for all of us. The record is ours,” the exuberant student said while coming out of the huge makeshift laboratory after finishing the experiment.

The nearly 65-minute-long programme began at 1037 hrs with the schoolchildren of the 9th to 12th standard — 50 each drawn from 40 schools, both government and private — listening in rapt attention to a lecture as a prelude to the experiment. The lecture was delivered by Ms Shalini Menon, a CSIR research fellow at CUSAT.

Neatly attired in their white lab coat and wearing gloves, the students conducted two science practicals, both related to catalysis, a process which makes chemical reactions faster without any additional input of energy. The process is extensively used in manufacture of some 90 per cent products that the world uses today.  

A major feature of the exercise was ‘Elephant Tooth Experiment’ in which hydrogen peroxide underwent catalytic decomposition in the presence of iodide, resulting in the liberation of a large amount of oxygen and foaming up to resemble a giant toothpaste being squeezed. The other experiment was discoloration of methylene blue by hydrogen peroxide. 

Huge screens were set up for the students as they conducted the experiment under the watchful eyes of the observers. To conduct the practical, five students each shared a table with equipments and chemicals. There were 40 stewards to observe students’ work, who would be witnesses to affirm that students did complete the experiment successfully.

The largest practical science lesson before this event was conducted at the Odyssey Arena in Belfast on 24th February  this year. As per the Guinness Book of Records, 1,339 primary school students of 7th and 8th standard from Belfast participated in a mass chromatography practical. That effort was supported and conducted by The Royal Society of Chemistry, London.

Expressing happiness over the IISF event, Smt. Irani said efforts need to be made to hold similar festivals in all the states. “Hopefully, 6-7 months down the line, we would be able to make even a bigger attempt at the world record by assembling 20,000 students at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Delhi,” she said, exuding confidence.

Dr  Harsh Vardhan congratulated the students for the ‘mega event’. “I am excited like you. I am sure you will succeed and make the country proud,” he said.

“You have the blessings of our Prime Minister who has immense faith in you and the youth of the country. The PM believes that our youth can bring glory to India. They have huge potential to become professionals like engineers, scientists and doctors and create new innovations to mitigate the hardships of the people,” he noted in his address.

Those who spoke on the occasion included Dr Vijay P. Bhatkar, President of VIBHA and Chairman, Board of Directors, IIT Delhi; and Dr Kshitij Gupta, Director, IIT Delhi.

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NRDC Inks MOA With CSIR-IICT Hyderabad on “Technology Transfer” 

National Research Development Corporation, an Enterprise of Department of Scientific & Industrial Research, Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India, New Delhi (NRDC) has entered into Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with CSIR - Indian Institute of Chemical Technology Hyderabad (CSIR-IICT) for marketing the inventions/innovations, patents, formulations, know-how/processes developed by CSIR-IICT and also collection of Premia and Royalties arising from these activities.

CSIR-IICT during its seventy year journey has made its mark as a dynamic, innovative and result oriented R&D organization in chemical and allied sciences and technology. It has emerged as a reliable destination of chemical and biotech industries and its clientele spans all corners of the globe. The research efforts during the seventy years sojourn with science has resulted in development of several innovative processes for a variety of products necessary for human welfare such as drugs, agrochemicals, food, organic intermediates, adhesives, materials etc. In terms of research outputs, CSIR-IICT has an outstanding record in research publications, patents and technology packages. It presently occupies the top spot in the Chemical Science research in India in all such research performance metrics. The main strength of CSIR-IICT is its rich pool of scientists and PhD students numbering over 600. CSIR-IICT has active collaborations with several countries including France, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Italy, USA, Australia, Japan, Korea etc., and several students have benefitted from various exchange visit and post-doctoral opportunities.

CSIR-IICT has generated a large number of Technologies, know-how/processes which can be transferred to industries for commercial exploitation and for social benefits. Under this MOA, NRDC will work with CSIR-IICT to commercialise/transfer the technologies developed by CSIR-IICT.

Chairman & Managing Director NRDC Dr. H. Purushotham announcing the MOA has said NRDC has been serving the nation for more than six decades in development, promotion and commercialisation of technologies emanating from R&D organization and academia. It has so far licensed technologies to more than 4800 enterpreneurs/ companies in the country in almost all sector of industry and provided technical and financial assistance for filing about 1700 patents in India and abroad.