Through its endeavour to popularise science and provide career guidance in vernacular languages for government school students, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras announced today, March 15, that it hopes to reach an additional 50,000 students in seven states by the year 2026.

This free outreach programme aims to encourage youngsters to pursue jobs in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields. As many as 9,193 rural and government schools in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal have received 3,20,702 books from the institute, says the institute in an official press release.

This initiative is being coordinated by Prof V Srinivas Chakravarthy, Department of Biotechnology, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, IIT Madras. Prof Srinivasa Chakravarthy has also written/translated about 70 popular science books into Telugu mainly targeting high school children.

The key activities in this initiative include:

• Translation of popular Science books into vernacular languages and distributing them to government school students
  

• Provide career guidance to students in vernacular languages
  

• Motivate students to pursue careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) through science experiments and inspirational sessions

Schools and students who are interested in participating can register here.