Picture: Participants of STEM Mentorship Program Awarded Certificates

New Delhi: The first batch of class 11th girl students has successfully completed the STEM Mentorship Program launched by the Academic Outreach and New Initiatives office at IIT Delhi. In a felicitation ceremony the mentees were also awarded certificates by the Institute.

The STEM Mentorship Program was launched in December 2021 with an aim to encourage the young schoolgirls to pursue career in science and technology.

The selected students were mentored and guided by the IIT Delhi faculty members over a period of seven months on varied range of project topics such as artificial photosynthesis, water reuse using nanotechnology, theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, climate change, brain mapping and neuroscience, optics, vibrations in engineering and engineering of human joint implants.

Speaking about the STEM Mentorship Program, Prof. Pritha Chandra, Associate Dean, Academic Outreach and New Initiatives, IIT Delhi, said, “As an institute, we earnestly believe that every child has the right to quality education in all disciplines, irrespective of one’s gender. Our primary motivation for starting the STEM program for girl students was to help mitigate the gender imbalance we find in science and technology-related careers. Success of the program has given us the confidence to carry on with our mission and reach out to more girl students through this particular initiative and similar others.”

The program received an overwhelming response from the schools. In the first batch, 10 government school students from Delhi Region were selected and each of them was assigned a faculty mentor.

While describing her experience, Sanmita Paul, one of the girl students who participated in the program, said, "I really liked interacting with the faculty and Ph.D. students at IIT Delhi during the STEM Mentorship Program. I got to learn new things which developed my research interests. Especially, the online lecture series was very useful to learn about concepts, which are not taught in school curriculum. The program has helped me to decide the discipline in which I would like to pursue my higher studies."

Prof. Divya Nayar, a faculty member at IIT Delhi’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Coordinator for the STEM Mentorship Program, stated, “With the success of the first batch of students, we aim for expanding the program to other regions of the country, increasing the student intake and actively involving our research scholars and UG students in this Program in future.”

The three phases of the program included a winter internship (Dec 2021-Jan 2022), an online lecture series by IIT Delhi faculty (Feb-Apr 2022) and summer project (May-June 2022).

                                                          **********

                                              Press Release Issued on: 26-06-2022