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In partnership with the Mittal Institute, Aspiring Minds launches India Science Fest 2020, India’s largest festival on science and technology (S&T) in partnership with leading institutions from across the globe.

Facebook: India Science Fest | Twitter: @ScienceFest

The beginning of 2020 will mark a massive celebration of science and technology with the India Science Fest, which aims to bridge the gap between science and society. This extravaganza is a non-profit initiative to help youth engage with the latest in science from across the world, fueling curiosity and demystifying the scientific career path. Aspiring Minds, an Indian-born global assessments leader, is a lead organizer of the Festival in association with the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University, the primary academic partner for the event.

With the aim to be “the greatest science show in India,” India Science Fest 2020 will take place on January 11-12, 2020, in Pune. The festival will be held at the lush green campus of  IISER (Indian Institute of Science and Education), India’s leading academic institution with excellent accomplishments.

This year’s major themes are Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience, with additional focuses on life sciences, astronomy, quantum physics, and others. The festival will host discussions, exhibitions, experiments, and more on topics related to the history of science, women in science, science and the arts, and India’s place in the world of science. Several hands-on demonstrations at the festival will include artificial-intelligence-generated art, autonomous vehicles, and brain-controlled helicopters, to name a few.

The Fest will also run competitions whose winning candidates will give public flash talks and demonstrations on their thesis and science projects. Select students will get a chance to be mentored by some of the best scientists in the world.

The festival will welcome over 40 speakers from across the globe. Leading artificial intelligence experts Subbarao Kambhampati (ASU) and Milind Tambe (Harvard University), astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan (Yale), neuroscientists Venkatesh Murthy (Harvard), VS Ramachandran (UCSD) and Pawan Sinha (MIT), science policy expert Xue Lan (China), and speech recognition expert Helen Meng (Hong Kong) are among the event’s confirmed speakers. India Science Fest expects 10,000+ attendees.

Aspiring Minds is one of the few startups in India building AI-led products and publishing research in top global AI conferences. India Science Fest is the brainchild of Varun Aggarwal, co-founder and CTO of Aspiring Minds also author of a book on science policy.

“Indian science is a sleeping giant! We wish to wake it up,” says Aggarwal. “We wish to bring students, professionals, and the general public face-to-face with the world’s top scientists, to hear about the latest discoveries and see cutting-edge inventions. This will be truly disruptive and influential in ways we cannot imagine. At the least, it will enthuse people about science: how it can transform society and provide role models. Moreover, all of these scientists under a single roof for two days is a big asset. We wish to engage them in a variety of policy discussions and make connections for future collaborations.”

The various discussions at the event will help strategize the steps that India needs to take to boost its S&T and innovation agenda and continue its economic progress and social development. ISF is a way to get the public involved in the latest scientific developments and get actors in the ecosystem to discuss, collaborate, and progress together.

“Building international collaborations and connections across academia in science is vital. We also need to make science accessible to society — to show that it’s for everyone, not just the few who study it. All streams within our society can benefit from interaction with the sciences, from politics to economics to the arts,” says Venkatesh Murthy, Raymond Leo Erikson Life Sciences Professor and Chair of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, and member of the Center for Brain Science.

Other collaborators for the event include Future Skills (NASSCOM) and the Takshashila Institutions. Futureskills is a NASSCOM program that aims to reskill 2 million professionals & students in the industry in the next 5 years through interactive content on the skills of the future. The Takshashila Institution is an independent, networked think tank and public policy school based in India. The institute focuses on strategic affairs, governance and public policy.

More details about the festival can be found at: http://indiasciencefest.org/

Students can register for competitions here: http://indiasciencefest.org/participate

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About Aspiring Minds

Founded in 2008 by Himanshu Aggarwal and Varun Aggarwal, Aspiring Minds continues to innovate in the field of pre-employment and workforce assessments using artificial intelligence (AI), psychometrics, machine-learning and statistics. Blending the power of AI with the science of psychometrics optimizes the hiring process through an engaging candidate experience. Talent professionals can easily mix and match from a comprehensive portfolio of assessments. Predictive analytics identify high-performing, long-term candidates to take the guesswork out of hiring. Aspiring Minds talent assessments and video interviewing solutions are used across multiple industries including technology, BPO/RPOs, BFSI, retail, banking, manufacturing, automotive, and life sciences and are administered to 5M+ candidates annually in over 3,000 organizations globally – including 100+ in the Fortune-500. The company has offices in the United States, India and China and employees over 300 people. India Science Fest 2020 is a CSR initiative of Aspiring Minds. Aspiring Minds’ other outreach efforts include teaching AI to kids (www.datasciencekids.org) and creating an online community of AI researchers and practitioners in India (www.ml-india.org).  Learn more at https://www.aspiringminds.com/