12 Feb 2022 Vigyan Jyoti Program
- Recently the second phase of Vigyan Jyoti program has been started which will cover 100 districts. Vigyan Jyoti program was launched by the Department of Science & Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology.
- Apart from this, DST is actively working to bring gender equality in Science and Technology (S&T) through various women centric programmes.
Key Features of Vigyan Jyoti Program:
- It aims to address the under-representation of women in various fields of Science-Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in the country.
- As a first step, ‘Vigyan Jyoti’ was started in the year 2019-20 at the school level, in which meritorious girl students of classes 9-12 are being encouraged to take up STEM courses in higher education and make a career in it.
- Vigyan Jyoti envisages to encourage meritorious girls from school level i.e. class IX which will continue till PhD level so that girls can make career in their under-represented fields like Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) be encouraged.
- Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS), an autonomous organization of the Ministry of Education, is the implementation partner of Vigyan Jyoti. NVS has a network of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) in more than 600 districts of India.
Other Related Government Initiatives:
- Mahila Scientist Scheme: To help women with break in career.
- Indo-US Fellowship for Women in STEM Program: Under this, women scientists can work in research laboratories in the US.
- Consolidation of University Research for Innovation and Excellence in Women’s Universities (Curie) Program: To improve R&D infrastructure and establish state-of-the-art research facilities for excellence in science and technology in women’s universities.
- Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI) Programme: Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI) will create an overall charter and framework for assessing gender equality in STEM.
- The new education policy and science, technology and innovation policy can use the demographic dividend to drive rapid progress in a short period of time to help increase the number of women in the STEM sector.
- In addition, DST has also set up Artificial Intelligence (AI) laboratories in women’s universities with the goal of promoting AI innovations and preparing skilled manpower for AI-based jobs in the future.
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