The Department of Science & Technology (DST) in collaboration with IBM India has announced two DST initiatives--Vigyan Jyoti and Engage with Science (Vigyan Prasar), on October 8, 2020. Vigyan Jyothi is an initiative by DST that focuses in solving the multidimensional problems faced by the women community in representing Engineering and Technology streams by building confidence. The program aims to increase the number of girls enrolled in these streams by one-third in a span of 5 years.

The program was launched by DST in 2019. It provides scholarship; visit to nearby scientific institutions, science camps, lecturers from eminent women scientists, and career counseling to inspire girl students to pursue higher education and career in STEM fields. 58 districts in India with a participation of 2900 students have been implemented by Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV) and are to be expanded in the future.As a way to cultivate excitement and inspiration, women tech experts from IBM will interact with girl students. This will increase the women contribution to tech field. The Vigyan Prasar, is an interactive platform that will be built on top of the India Science Over-The-Top (OTT) platform to encourage and inspire high school students to pursue Science & Technology (S&T) for a career.

The work of IBM is to include student workshops, seminars, and leverage its expertise to mentor the students. The platform will make students interact, participate and get involved with the sampling and active consumption of S&T content, including Cloud, Big Data, etc. through the usage of gamification tools and AI/ML components. Engage- with-science programs provide active recognition and glorification in the school premises. DST secretary professor Ashutosh Sharma and Sandip Patel MD IBM I/SA were the representatives from the respective organizations. These  programs satisfies the need of hour to promote gender diversity in STEM education, paving way for girl students studying from grade 9 to 12 to STEM based degrees and focusing them to pursue careers in STEM fields.

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