IIT Bombay, Tata Institute Make Efforts To Reduce Gender Gap In STEM Fields
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To bring female attention to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses, Mumbai's Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) are making continuous efforts.
Over the past five days, IIT Bombay has hosted 160 girls from 40 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNV) schools located in rural Gujarat, Diu, Daman, and Goa. Institute's goal is to help these young girls make decisions for their careers. The idea is to expose them to the possibilities in STEM fields.
IIT Bombay launched this new programme called WiSE (Women in Science and Engineering from Rural Parts of India) last year to reach out to students. It is funded by the Circuits & Systems Society—Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (CAS-IEEE).
This programme specifically targets rural Class 9 girls. It selects about 160 girls from 40 different schools for a five-day training on the IITB campus. WiSE aims to spark interest in STEM fields in these girls. It provides them with mentorship from students at IIT Bombay.
Most of the selected students for this year were from JNV schools in Goa, Daman & Diu, and Gujarat. The participants of the programme stay in the university hostel and follow a schedule for the entire week.
They engage in practical activities in various labs and attend motivational talks by successful women in STEM. The lab activities range from creating basic lightbulb circuits to building sophisticated remote-controlled rover robots.
Similarly, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) runs a programme called Vigyan Vidushi. This programme allows students to spend three weeks at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science and Education. During this time, they get the opportunity to visit labs, interact with female scientists, and learn from their professional experiences.
The Vigyan Vidushi programme is highly selective. It chooses about 50 female students from approximately 500 applications nationwide. The programme is for students who have completed their first year of an MSc in physics and are prepared for a PhD.
Since its start in 2020, Vigyan Vidushi has benefited almost 160 students. Currently, nine of them are engaged in research at TIFR, while about forty percent are pursuing their PhDs at various universities in India and abroad.
Source: mumbailive.com
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