200 participate in conclave on women in science & technology at IITGN

Women researchers were encouraged to read about their role models and carve path by overcoming all challenges 

The Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) in association with the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Government of India, organised a two-day national conclave on ‘Women in Science & Technology: Fostering Innovation”.  

2 SERB-POWER research grants launched 

The event also served as a platform to launch two new SERB-POWER research grants, the POWER Translation Grant and POWER Mobility Grant, for women scientists and researchers.  

POWER Translation Grant will enable women academicians to fast-track the commercialisation of their technologies, whereas POWER Mobility Grant will provide travel support for women scientists, engineers, and technologists to gain international research exposure. 

Nearly 200 women scientists, researchers, academicians, industry professionals, entrepreneurs, students, and postdoctoral fellows from across the country participated in the two-day conclave, and gave insights into their lives as leaders, innovators, communicators, and facilitators. 

Prof Sandeep Verma, Secretary, SERB inaugurated the conclave with Prof Amit Prashant, Officiating Director, IITGN and announced the new verticals under SERB’s POWER (Promoting Opportunities for Women in Exploratory Research) scheme. 

Dr Archana Sharma, Senior Scientist and Senior Advisor for Relations with International Organisations, CERN, Geneva, who was also part of the team that Higgs Boson, popularly known as the “God Particle” in 2012. She inspired the participants by sharing her experiences of working at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), the world’s largest particle physics laboratory. She talked about the ambitious curiosity driven physics research carried out at CERN that impacts millions of lives. 

Encouraging young women researchers to read about their role models and how they carved their path by overcoming all the challenges, she said, “Challenges will always be there, but we have to find ways out of it, learn from our failures, and keep moving. Articulate your dreams very well, hook on to what you want to do, and never stop because each one of us can do it.” 

Read more: 

• NIT Rourkela awarded for promoting research on millet processing 
• IIT Jodhpur sets up one-of-its kind Civil & Infrastructure Engg Dept 
• AKTU to set up 3 centres of excellence