TSWREIS students get up, close and personal with scientists

Interact with CCMB scientists, carry out hands-on experiments

Select students of the Telangana State Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (TSWREIS) had a weeklong opportunity to interact with scientists of CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and also carry out hands-on experiments and activities designed to help them understand the prescribed school syllabus .

The students, who were selected based on a quiz programme, are part of the ‘Milo CCMB’ programme started during the COVID-19 pandemic when scientists made animated videos on some of their well-known work aligned with high school curricula and conducted online scientist interactions with students over six months.

TSWREIS has a state-wide network of 235 schools, largely catering to female students from marginalised families. The Department of Science and Technology (DST) funded the interaction programme. “Milo CCMB programme aims to create role models in the TSWREIS community who are aware of the scientific advances and possess problem-solving abilities. We strongly believe that these skills are important for the young people, no matter what careers they choose for themselves,” said science communication and outreach officer at CCMB, and lead of Milo CCMB, Somdatta Karak, on Friday.

CSIR-CCMB director Vinay Nandicoori called for greater participation of people from diverse backgrounds for science to be accessible to the society. “Most students pursuing science are interested in engineering and medicine, and the few pursuing sciences as a career often always come from privileged backgrounds. This causes only a select section of society to be involved in knowledge generation,” he said.

“While we have been collaborating with institutions from all across the world on various academic and co-curricular projects. Milo CCMB is particularly interesting because we introduced discussions on the concepts of genetic diseases, infections, and nature conservation to these students, who in turn will take these learnings to their communities to create awareness,” said TWSREIS secretary D. Ronald Rose.

TSWREIS Joint secretary (education) Praveen Mamidala said many programmes to provide quality education and encourage activity-based learning in the classrooms to promote scientific temperament among students are taken up. “The students have especially enjoyed learning about the research at CCMB and interacting with scientists,” he added, according to a press release.