Seven Indian scientists have received the IndiaBioscience Outreach Grants (IOG) awards for taking science out of the lab.
IndiaBioscience, which is housed and supported by the National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, had initiated the awards to bridge the gap between scientists and society.
The IOG awards were launched under two schemes: First time grants and Extension Grants.
The first-time awards were for young scientists who haven’t been awarded the IOG award last year, while the extension grant enabled second IOG awardees to re-apply for another year of funding.
“The researchers were encouraged to team up with one or more professional science communicators and come up with project ideas that have the potential to extend beyond English and incorporate regional languages,” IndiaBioscience said.
The seven winners ( five first-time awardees, two extension grant awardees) were selected from within a pool of over 98 proposals, and cover a variety of areas and niches including citizen science initiatives, educational webinars, stakeholder awareness programs, as well as interactive videos and graphics.
The winners of IOG first time grant are: Bittu K Rajaraman, (Ashoka University) for Discover Learning - scientific ways of learning and critical thinking, Chandana Basu (Banaras Hindu University) for GENETIKS4U project which aims to help students in grades 9-12 understand genetic concepts through colorful illustrations, infographics, comics, story-telling, and hands-on activities, Ishwariya Venkatesh (CSIR - Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology) for Let’s Talk Life - An integrated online platform to drive up student engagement in Life Sciences in India, Mayuri Rege (Ramnarain Ruia Autonomous College) for Aamchi Prayogshaala a project which aims at giving hands-on lab experiences to disadvantaged students and lab visits to ensure early exposure to careers in science and teaching and Tuli Dey (Savitribai Phule Pune University) for Back to the Future which focuses on virtual lab sessions, meeting scientists, online quizzes for school and college students.
The winners of IOG Extension Grant are Megha Kumar (CSIR - Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology) for the project IndiaAsksWhy a science podcast promoting curiosity-based learning by observation and asking life science related questions about the world around them and Neha Jain (Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur) for the project engaging youth to fight against antimicrobial resistance.
