Ajit Kulkarni, senior faculty at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mumbai, has established a new centre to study the changing climate pattern and contributing factors for it in recent years.
Speaking after inaugurating the 22nd district-level children’s science congress organised by the Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishat at Chandrakant Patil Pre-University College in Kalaburagi city on Saturday, Dr. Ajit Kulkarni said that IIT Mumbai had decided to form a separate Centre for Climate Change after a series of studies conducted by the Centre for Environment failed to produce concrete results on the contributing factors to climate change and how the latter could be prevented.
Head of the Physics Department in the Karnataka State Women University M.S. Jogad said organising such programmes for students in high schools and pre-university colleges would instill interest among students in science.
Prof. Jogad said students should make use of funds made available by the Science and Technology Department by taking up research projects. “Crores of rupees meant for funding science research projects by students is gathering dust with the Deputy Commissioner. Interested students and teachers should submit their project proposal to the District Science Centre, who in turn would recommend projects for funding.”
Girish Kadlewad, treasurer of the Vijnana Parishat, in his introductory remarks, said that the 10 best teams of students from different schools whose projects on the theme ‘Understanding Weather and Climate’ would represent their district in competitions at the State-level Children’s Science Congress to be held in Bidar for three days from December 10.
The 10 best teams selected in the State Congress would represent the State in the National District Science Congress, scheduled to be held in Bengaluru from December 27 to 31. The National Conference would be inaugurated either by Prime Minister Narendra Modi or President Pranab Mukerjee.
Clarification
The Public Relation Officer of the Indian Istitute of Technology, Bombay has clarified that there was no new centre to study the changing climate pattern established in IIT Mumbai as reported in this column.
The clarification further stated that the IIT had a well established centre for environmental science and engineering, established in 1985 and an interdisciplinary programme in climate studies started in 2012.
Further the name of the faculty mentioned in the story as Dr Abhijit Kulkarni was wrong and there was nobody by that name in the faculty of the IIT.
In the earlier version of this story, the name of the faculty has been wrongly mentioned as Dr Abhijit Kulkarni instead of Dr Ajit Kulkarni who addressed the gathering after inaugurating the Gulbarga district level children science congress and the error is regretted.
