- As a part of the on-going five-day Indian Science Congress, Rashtriya Kishore Vaigyanik Sammelan(Children Science Congress) was inaugurated on January 4, 2019 in Jalandhar by Nobel Laureates Avram Hershko from Israel and F.Duncan M.Haldane from USA.
- While inaugurating the Congress, Avram Hershko called children as the future of scientific India and was sure that some of them may be making some important discoveries which will prove to be good for mankind, and may also win them Nobel Prize someday.
- Appreciating the progress that India has done over the years Prof. Duncan Hardane said that India has to be a part of the technological development of the future. Prof Duncan advised young students to learn mathematics irrespective of the jobs they are going to take up.
- In his presidential address, General President of Indian Science Congress Association, Shri Manoj Kumar Chakrabarti thanked NCST (DST) for organising competitions between the students for the last few years. He said that now it is realised that more and more students should take Science & Technology as their career. Our country has a large number of human resources. In the coming 25 years our population will be dominated by the age group of 17-28 years and majority of this age group should be attracted to Science & Technology as their career. The contribution will ultimately help our country to compete with other nations. We have progressed very well in almost all areas of Science & technology but in this competition to increase pace of progress, we need to be innovative and we should have large number of scientists and technologists who should focus towards capacity building in terms of trained human resources.
- Rashtriya Kishore Vaigyanik Sammelan (RKVS) is an important part of Indian Science Congress as it focuses on raising the bar of research and innovation in science in our country. The main objective of the RKVS is to provide a platform to the budding scientists to showcase their research work and projects being developed by them.The event will consist of invited talks by renowned scientists and various competitions such as science exhibitions, scientific quizzes. Workshops are being conducted to give the students hands on experience. About 120 projects made by students and finalised by DST are being showcased and students will have the opportunity to listen and interact with the Young Scientists and Nobel Laureates. Students from all parts of the country are participating in this event. Expert lectures, including lectures through video conferences, by eminent scientists will be held every day during the course of three days of Children Science Congress.
- In another event Secretary Department of Science And Technology, Prof. Ashutosh Sharma in his plenary lecture spoke at length about the directions and drivers of future technologies. Motivating a large gathering of young students the Secretary said that today’s world requires not only depth but spread of knowledge and said that learning from nature is essential as it is a very rich mine of science and technological innovations. “Convergence, inter-disciplinary approach and innovation will define the coming years in Science and Technology and the bottleneck is not the technology but lack of ideas “, said Prof. Sharma in his plenary address.