Springs and molecules: What do they have in common? How can we use computers as a microscope? Can computers be made as fast as brains? Alpha-Go: Can computers beat the human brain?
These and many such questions will be answered by IIT Delhi professors during the second lecture accompanied by an interaction session to be organised under the Institute’s academic outreach initiative ‘SciTech Spins’ for school students.
The forthcoming lecture titled “Learning to Learn Through Modeling” will be presented by Prof. Divya Nayar from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Prof. N M Anoop Krishnan from the Department of Civil Engineering and School of Artificial Intelligence, IIT Delhi on October 23, 2021. The 2nd lecture will also be live streamed on the Institute’s YouTube channel (https://youtu.be/6mR-iTueZ2A).
Giving a glimpse of the second lecture, Prof. Divya Nayar and Prof. Anoop Krishnan said, “Often it is difficult to perform experiments under certain extreme conditions, such as for studying processes occurring in deep sea, at high altitudes or at high temperatures. Sometimes there is a need to substantiate and understand the experimental findings, for instance, why oil never mixes with water, but common salt does? Sometimes new predictions are necessary for designing experiments such as if one knows beforehand that mixing two materials will produce a new material with improved properties, one can design novel experiments. A computer can act as an effective tool in understanding all the above ideas without actually performing the experiments! The lecture will discuss how one can model, simulate and predict real-life phenomena by making use of powerful computers.”
The first lecture under the SciTech Spins initiative was organised on September 11, 2021. The lecture titled ‘Design Thinking – A Powerful Tool for Problem Solving’ received an overwhelming response from school students from across the country. The students who were nominated by their respective schools participated with great enthusiasm and interest.
Pushkar Jain, a class 11th Kendriya Vidyalaya student, said, “Design thinking can help me to manage my routine. And I can use the ideas in my future projects also. I like creativity so this session has created an interest in me for design thinking.”
Other participants also joined in to say that the lecture on design thinking was very useful in analysing and reacting to everyday situations.
IIT Delhi will give e-certificates to all registered students attending SciTech Spins and invite them for ‘Open House’, an annual intellectual fest that provides an ideal platform for school students to connect with some of the leading researchers in the field of Science and Technology.
Schools wishing to nominate their students for SciTech Spins may reach out to the Institute through Associate Dean, Academic Outreach & New Initiatives, IIT Delhi- adoni@iitd.ac.in; acadoutreach@iitd.ac.in