IRIS national awardees honoured

New Delhi, July 23 (UNI) Six students from Mumbai were today honoured for their pioneering innovations in science.

They received certificates of excellence from Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal for their innovations developed as projects for participation at Initiative for Research and Innovation in Science (IRIS), 2006.

The awardees are: Rishin Behl (Kendriya Vidyalaya, Mankhurd, Mumbai), Vaishnavi Viswanathan (Modern English High School, Chembur, Mumbai), Rehan Netarwala and Sarvesh Nevatia (Jain Hind College, Mumbai), Tanay David Delima and Nikhil Khosla (Dhirubhai Ambani International School, Mumbai).

The other awardees-- Aavishkar Patel (National Public School, Bangalore) and Ram Raghunathan (Sishya School, Chennai)-- were not present.

They had also participated at the World's largest Science Fair-- Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), where they bagged eight awards while competing with more than 1500 students from 45 countries.

While Rishin won five awards for his project on magnetic laser siesmograph that would lead to faster detection of earthquakes, Vaishnavi Viswanathan and the team of Tanay David Delima and Nikhil Khosla won one award each for their projects on herbal termicide, and prevention of vehicular tailgating accidents, respectively. Ram Raghunathan also won an award for his computer science project.

After presenting the certificates, Mr Sibal declared IRIS 2007 open, and urged students across the country to apply their theoretical knowledge to experiment and design innovations that could benefit the human race.

IRIS 2007, which would culminate in December 2007 with the announcement of national as well as subject category and special category winners, has invited entries in ten scientific categories.

This year, participants in three categories are eligible for participation.

The first category involves participation from students in 5th to 8th standard (under the age of 13 yrs), the second category involves 9th to 12th standard (under the age of 20 yrs) and third category involves College/ PG students (under the age of 35 yrs).

IRIS is expected to touch two million students in about 25,000 schools and institutes in India by 2010.

UNI