IIT Bombay trains rural girl students in making Robot, FM radio, Drones

IIT Bombay students will mentor and follow up with them via online platforms. Every quarter, we will conduct online meets with the students, teachers and parents.

As many as 160 girl students from 40 schools located in rural parts of Maharashtra, Bihar and Odisha accompanied by their science and math teachers have joined IIT Bombay to understand career and higher education opportunities in the area of Science and Technology

As a part of the IIT Bombay outreach activity, the institute is introducing a new program – WiSE (Women in Science Engineering from Rural Parts of India) under the leadership of Prof. Rajesh Zele from the Department of Electrical Engineering.

Through the initiative, it is trying to reach out to girls studying in ninth grade from rural parts of India and get them excited about STEM. The institute will be mentoring them over the long term and helping them make wise decisions about their future and career choices.

“We are keeping the teachers and parents involved throughout the process as it is vital for the long-term success of the program,” states a statement from IIT Bombay.

The girls will be staying at IIT Bombay to get a feel of campus life for a week. Each girl went through exciting hands-on BMP (Break-Make-Program it) experiences using the kits developed at aiCAS Lab, IIT Bombay. They gradually went from building a simple light bulb circuit to a complex FM radio. Next, they built various sensor and actuator circuits controlled by a simple microprocessor, thus introducing them to programming.

The girls built a remote-controlled Rover Robot from scratch. This involved mechanical as well as electronic engineering creating a lot of excitement among the girls. The grand finale was building a small drone which each girl got to fly. Seeing the euphoria on the girls’ faces as they got to fly the drones that they built with their own hands was truly priceless.

Each girl got to experience Virtual Reality (VR) using a state-of-the-art VR headset. At the end of the day, the girls learnt how to solve the Rubik’s Cube from one of India’s top speedcubers. A majority of the girls were able to solve the cube within five minutes.

To ensure the long-term success of the girls, IIT Bombay students will mentor and follow up with them via online platforms. Every quarter, we will conduct online meets with the students, teachers and parents. All the technical kits used by the girls throughout the program will be provided to the parent schools so that the girls can create a local impact.

The WiSE program will be conducted annually with different schools from rural parts to fulfil the ambitions of the National Education Policy (NEP) to curtail the dropout rates of Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Groups (SEDGs). This program was sponsored by IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, Tecnimont Pvt. Ltd., Eastman and IIT Bombay Institute of Eminence (IOE) Outreach Initiative.

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