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Public Engagement

Science education is an integral part of IISER Mohali's name and fame. We are committed to the sharing of knowledge, to accelerate the pace of science as well as benefit the community.

Stakeholders' meet-up: Getting involved with the ones who matter

Having learnt so much since the start of our project, we found it quite challenging to explain our project to an audience as diverse as ours! Farmers, the general public, researchers, industrialists, and policymakers shape the future of FearOmone, so we held a Stakeholders' Meetup on October 13th, 2018, to take their input and address their concerns in an open forum. The following dignitaries were in attendance: -

Mr. JPS Randhawa

General Manager, Punjab Mandi Board (2007 – present). Regional Director, Council of All India Agriculture.

Mr. Surender Singh Takshak

Deputy General Manager (Security and Vigilance), Food Corporation of India (FCI)

Mr. Madan Lal Ola

Manager (Quality), FCI

Mr. Surja Ram

Senior Assistant Manager (Technical), Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) (2015 – present)

Prof. Arvind

Coordinator, Outreach, IISER Mohali. Professor, Department of Physical Sciences, IISER Mohali

Prof. Anand K Bachhawat

Primary PI, IISER Mohali iGEM Team 2018. Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, IISER Mohali

Dr. Sunil A Patil

Secondary PI, IISER Mohali iGEM Team 2018. Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, IISER Mohali

The audience turnout was an encouraging sight, with students from multiple majors and years of study showing up to interact with our team and the distinguished panel above. We benefitted from the program as well, with the setup serving as a mock iGEM presentation, complete with a Q&A session.

Our project was delivered at different technical levels to cater to everyone. The event was successful, and helped us establish further contact with state owned enterprises (SOEs). Apart from formal meetings like these, our members have personally traveled to nearby villages, to assess the ground reality of murine infestation based problems. We thank Mr. Mohan Singh, the Sarpanch (village leader) of the nearby village of Raipur Khurd, for facilitating the same.

Ketto & Reddit: The Teams behind the Team

"Those who know the story of India's White Revolution, know well the power of cooperatives. We liken Ketto Crowdfunding to this success story. A little help from the masses is equal to massive help!"

Ketto is India’s biggest crowdfunding platform. With a 2.5 million plus strong supporter base, thousands of fundraisers have seen light at the end of the tunnel due to numerous anonymous well wishers. We are amazed to see how in the matter of three days, Ketto managed to take us to over the halfway mark of our overall donations! Initially, we were skeptical about public opinion of our project, but it was a reassuring sight to see anonymous donors pouring in with support! A little help from the masses is equal to massive help, and Ketto exemplifies the same.

Speaking of anonymous, the Reddit community (r/IndiaSpeaks and r/india) has been an invaluable partner to us. After sharing the details of FearOmone with Redditors, they were prompt to commend us for a solution to what was evidently a pervasive problem. At the same time, they highlighted vulnerabilities in our project design which together with questions from the Stakeholders’ Meetup, remind us of hurdles we still face. Indeed, our project is far from over!

Science through music: Science communication made scientific

IISER Mohali’s music club, Aria, is the largest one on campus based on membership. It took us little time to realize the potential of a collaboration with Aria, making it the fastest way to communicate our work. However, we also pondered as to how the music club managed to gain so much recognition. While the efforts of the club itself are laudable, we quote here a saying by Vishwas Kamal, convener of Aria:

“The intrinsic power of music as a way to communicate thoughts and emotions lends to its appeal with the masses. Words may be heard, but music is felt.”

Music has proved to be an effective tool in teaching. Just imagine: if prosody can bring life to boring lectures, what would happen if we went one step further? That’s exactly what we did with our Science through Music initiative.