About Us

At VigyanShaala, we equip youth with quality STEM skills through project-based learning to enable social and transformational change. Our goal is to facilitate the creation of innovative, youth lead ecosystems for mentoring and STEM skilling at the community level.

 

Work with Us

Join as a Guru
Join as a Mentor
Join as a STEM Champion
For Institutes & Colleges

Join Our Movement

VigyanShaala believes in the Philosophy of Citizen Science . We desire people from diverse communities that are committed to the reason for which they would like to join our movement. If you are committed, open to learn-unlearn-relearn and sharing, then we will provide a platform for you to follow your passion. A 2-3 hours/week commitment continuously for a period of at least 3-4 months is a bare minimum requirement which further depends on the level of contribution.

We have innumerable avenues and methods for contribution and are confident of matching your aspirations. Listed below are the “Zones” where you could place yourself in and contribute the way you aspire.

Join as a Guru

Requirements and Time commitments:  In this role we are typically looking for experienced researchers (10+ years). Typically they are Professors, Scientists in Labs, Scientists/Engineers working in STEM in Private Companies.Please refer to our Approach/Our Model page to understand the critical role a Guru plays in society.

One of the major roles of a Guru is to mentor Masters and PhD students to further their Research Careers or Industrial Careers at the same time provide them support with their academics. Each PhD student will be given a 10-Hour Coaching session from you spread over 5 months (One Call Each Fortnight). It is recommended that a Guru coaches at least 2-Students at one time. The Career Opportunities and Exposure of the students pursuing higher education is alarmingly low. This demotivates many students in pursuing STEM and has a trickle-down effect, which is critical to solve and can only be done by experienced STEM professionals.

The model is very similar to the ‘Tutor’ model that is prevalent in top universities such as the University of Cambridge. We understand this might be new to you, however full support will be provided by us in this endeavour and make this job much easier and very fulfilling. You will be surprised how giving what you feel is trivial is actually ‘Gold’ to the students you will mentor. So if you are on the fence or have any doubts please call us.

 

  1. Worked for 10+ years in R&D or Design/Manufacturing. Minimum Qualification is Bachelor’s Degree in STEM from a Top-Tier Institute/University with 15+ years of experience. Preferred is Master’s Degree in STEM from a Top Tier-Institute/University or above.
  2. Have typically mentored, guided or placed Masters/Bachelors Students in STEM to further their studies or careers in Academia or Industry.
  3. Willingness to Take-Out-Time for at least 2 Hours a week. This will include 1-1.5 Hours of talking to Students that you will mentor and another 1 hour preparation for the mentoring sessions. Preparation typically includes Content Pulling and assimilation, networking assistance and follow-up, provide strategy for career building.
  4. If you are able to take out more time, then we it would be a great pleasure to have you perform few experiments in our labs or schools and motivate school children. Such sessions typically have 2-3 Gurus speaking.!

 

What do you get out of it :

  1. We give you a platform for you to mentor students. You will spread the knowledge you use on a daily basis to gain immense self-satisfaction on a daily basis. Our platform will make this a easier seamless performance.
  2. We will give you access to students who are committed to the cause of STEMC. They are students from top tier universities, who are passionate to perform workshops and spread Scientific Temper, themselves mentor a few students and are the cream of students in India performing ‘Citizen Science’.
  3. You get access to VS labs, where you could come and perform experiments and design experiments yourself.

Please do write to us if you think you are interested by completing this contact form. Please do write in the subject “Be a Guru”.

Join as a Mentor

Requirements and Time commitments: This is one of the key role in the VigyanShaala ecosystem. We are looking for highly committed and motivated personnel who are keen in making a difference or would like to give back to the community. This is a non-negotiable 1-Year minimum lock-in commitment.

The major role of the Mentor is to ‘Deep-Mentor’ Undergraduate students who are typically studying BSc/BTech. A whole mentoring curriculum is developed and you will be expected to attend few days training session on how to go about it. This is an overall mentoring: Examples include mentoring them in basic computer skills such as excel, tracking their academic progress, pushing and preparing them to find summer internships even if in your own place of work, helping them in developing experiments in the VS lab etc. You will also be expected to be deeply involved in the projects the Undergraduate Mentees will perform in the VS-labs, help them when they are stuck, give them few directions the projects can lead to obtain interesting results and if possible also get involved yourself in the making. This is typically 3-4 hours/week requirement, along with attending training sessions and at least perform 1 workshop with a mentee in a school, college or marketplace.

If you are from an DST/DAE/DBT institute, we are willing to offer this as a curriculum where you can gain credits for the mentoring. This could take some time so please do contact us to check the possibility.

  1. PhDs from top tier institutes or universities studying STEMC. In exceptional cases where prior record shows student is motivated to contribute, we will consider Masters Students from such universities (since balancing academic load with heavy mentoring is usually challenging)
  2. Scientists or Engineers working with Industries (<10 Year experience) who are extremely committed to contribute to STEM in society and creating the future STEM leaders of tomorrow.
  3. Excitement in doing projects and sharing your experiences with the public. You would have to actively support the Under-Graduates in completing their projects, guiding their projects towards unique directions just like in a research lab so as to get to new and novel results.
  4. We would like if you are able to perform outreach experiments and share them with the public: Put up stalls in Malls or Market Places or in schools and perform scientific experiments.

What do you get out of it :

  1. We give you a platform for you to mentor students. The platform is still in its nascent stages and an attempt to move it completely online is being made. Remember these are Undergraduate students from Under-Privileged backgrounds: So the knowledge you use on a daily basis and take for granted is absolutely priceless to them. Just sharing and guiding will give you immense self-satisfaction on a daily basis.
  2. You will learn to develop to improve you soft skills. Most researchers we find lack in these soft-skills. Which better opportunity that this, with a complete support system we will help you build this soft skill of networking, mentoring, guiding students, public speaking and running projects in a lab.
  3. You will be given access (10-Hour) to a Guru, who will help you in deciding your next steps in your career and life in general. As you mentor, so will be you be mentored.
  4. VigyanShaala Online Content: On how to write CVs, How to Write SOPs, how to network, career counselling documentation, access to a few academic societies and more.
  5. VigyanShaala Mentoring Certificate: This is given out only to a few. Over time we would like to build this as a Gold Standard to Demonstrate Top-Notch mentoring skills, leadership skills in leading a team a lab, communicating with the society, public speaking, man-management and more.
  6. You get access to VS labs, where you could come and perform experiments and design experiments yourself.

Please do write to us if you think you are interested by completing this contact form. Please do write in the subject “Be a Mentor”.

Join as a STEM Champion

Requirements and Time commitments:

You are typically from a Underprivileged Background or from a Tier-2 Tier-3 town pursuing an Undergraduate degree in STEM. Your academic performance is reasonable (above 50%) and your motivation to pursue Quality higher studies in STEM is very high. You must dream to study and work in the top leading places in the world. If you are motivated enough, we can show you how to get there.You are motivated to share what you learn with the community and are willing to travel to at least 1 school every week and conduct 1 experimental session.

We require a group of at least 5 students from the same academic batch from the same college to consider talking to the college authorities. We will then provide a entrance exam and screen the best students. We will set up a very basic lab in your college and help you grow it in a project-based learning setup. Your lab will grow over time in a very similar manner to how a lab in the University of Cambridge or IIT-Mumbai grows.

  1. You will have to perform 1 workshop per week (3-4 a month) in schools, market places, melas or malls. You will be trained on the workshops. This is a critical requirement. After the workshop you will have to share your experiences in the COOOL STEM Game Platform.
  2. You will have to start ‘Making’ your own projects in the VigyanShaala lab in your college. Be ready to cut, paste, grow, break, make-break circuits, mi chemicals and more which are not in your syllabus. You will have to adopt one project every few months and get it working to completion and move on the next. You will have to learn to make hypothesis, plan projects, record measurements, make conclusions and present and share with everybody. All of your projects need to be recorded in COOOL STEM Games. A lot of your performance depends on your ability to perform projects independently.
  3. You will be Given Basic Academic Requirements for you to complete: For example you will have to complete a course or MS Excel (Advanced) and Python or R in the first year of the fellowship. You will have to clear the concepts of scientific-temper and history of science for example. There are other such pointers that are required. There are basic tools that will help you become a better researcher.
  4. You will have to maintain an improving academic score. We do understand that Marks do not always show a sign of competency: However decreasing marks or very low marks is always of concern.
  5. You will be expected to attend at least 1 Summer Internship of a minimum of 45 days before the start of the 3rd Internships in leading Research Institutes or Industries is a compulsory requirement. VigyanShaala will assist you in this endeavour.
  6. You will be coached in training session on life skills: You will be expected to live a healthy and balanced life. The mentor will keep track of your physical activities and lifestyle. Yoga and Basic Meditation skills will be taught to you.

 

 

What do you get out of it :

We will change your life. The Question is are up to it.? This will be one big ride for you. You will be mentored by highly accomplished students, you will perform weekly workshops in schools and local areas, you will perform full time projects in labs, you will attend internships in top labs of the country, you will be set up to become a leader of STEM in your community so you will be quite famous and draw a lot of attention from school children and parent alike. All of this and much more going on side by side with the normal academics. So the question is are you up for this fantastic ride?

Please do write to us if you think you and your group of students in your college (8-10 of them) are interested and motivated to achieve all of the above. Please write in the subject “STEM Champion Group:”.

For Institutes & Colleges

We work with Colleges and Institutes to start Open Community Science & Technology Spaces in their Campus. This is to foster a culture of citizen science. We have a few guidelines and requirements to collaborate with institutes:

  1. Most of our labs will be based in a college or institute. As a result we require a lab space to be provided by the institute for a lock-in period of at least 6 years that will be exclusively used for this purpose only.
  2. Starting up financial resources and materials provided by the college along withtheir running costs. VigyanShaala will assist in setting up labs, provide quality mentors,provide its own experimental materials to be housed in the lab. Details and costs of this can vary for different Colleges/Institutes, and can discussed further.
  3. At least 2 dedicated and committed staff member from the hosting college who are interested in this venture and are willing to spend 5-8 hours a week in the lab doing projects, nurturing students doing their projects.
  4. Commitments that these labs will be accessible to schools and college students in the vicinity. We aspire this lab to be a community nodal point for STEM where students from school and college create novel and exciting projects with the help of the mentors.
  5. We would expect the college to 1. Provide a full time staff for VigyanShaala to take care of the lab and whom we shall train OR 2. A dedicated staff of the college who will take charge of the lab and with whom VS and its partners will do a tech transfer with. Ideally we would like to have 3 staff and 10 students for a tech-transfer model.

Our motive is to heavily impact the culture of the colleges and institutes that we work with. We work with partner with decades of experience and have learnt that it usually takes a few years to observe large changes and lot of effort is required. It is not very difficult though and can be done with effort and persistence. Hence we require serious commitment from the institutes and colleges we collaborate with, to make tangible changes. Please submit the contact form with subject “Start a VigyanShaala Lab:”.

Career:

We are always looking for motivated and talented people to join us. Please submit the contact form with the Subject “Career:” followed by the role would like to perform with us.

Did not find what you had in mind or Not sure yet as how to Join ?

Not sure how to join the movement Or have other things you have on your mind, like content development, or join in on a workshop etc.? Please feel free to write to us. Contact Using the Form below with the Subject “Other:” and complete the subject with your idea.

We welcome committed people who can spare at least 2-4 hours a week for a minimum sustained period of 1 month. We will try and keep you excited .!

Join us and together we will make a difference every day