Science isn’t a luxury — it’s a way to understand and navigate the world,” says Somdatta Karak, biologist and science communicator. In this interview, she recounts her journey from Teach For India to spearheading pioneering outreach programmes at CSIR-CCMB. From empowering underrepresented students through projects such as Milo CCMB and Project Abhilasha to constructing mentorship bridges between scientists and learners, Somdatta presents an unassailable argument for inclusive, experiential, and value-based science education in India.
1. Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your work with science communication and how it aligns with your broader goals in science education?
I am primarily trained as a biologist But I have also been a Teach for India fellow. Combining my expertise in science and education, and my current primary focus is exploring how science communication can be made more experiential and hands-on. The space I work in lies at the intersection of science education and science communication. During my time as a Teach For India fellow from 2014 to 2016, I observed that the education system in our country largely emphasises employable skills such as literacy and numeracy. Unfortunately, science is often viewed as a subject of luxury within many communities. As a biologist, this perspective doesn’t sit well with me. I’m curious about biology. It helps us make sense of the living world around us. With rapid advancements in biotechnology and medicine, it’s crucial that people not only stay informed but also learn how to ask the right questions, understand the applications of scientific developments, and make informed decisions about their use. Additionally, there are important safety considerations that must be understood when handling such technologies.
I feel passionate about bridging this gap by helping people access the complexities in science and technologies.
2. What do you think are the key challenges science educators face today, particularly in India?
My work is not in primary education or what teachers typically teach in schools. But science communication can fall within the framework of education. Simplistically, one can think of education in a rubric with three buckets.
The three buckets of education are: improving rigour, access to knowledge, and implementation of values.
Science communication can help improve outcomes in all these three buckets for an educator. It creates the possibility for one to know more than what the textbooks say (which often covers what is already established) at one’s own pace and comfort. It is not for the sake of degrees but for fostering one’s curiosity or intrinsic need for understanding matters deeply.
3. In your experience, how can partnerships between research institutions and educational organisations enhance science learning? How do you think science education in India can be more inclusive and accessible to diverse student populations, including those from underrepresented communities?
CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) has a 15-year-old programme called the Young Innovators Program, an initiative where 200 – 300 students from schools in Hyderabad and beyond write a test each year, and we select 25 students to visit and work at CCMB. But we have also noticed that it’s mostly students from more-privileged socio – economic backgrounds who are the ones who get selected.
So, keeping the aspirations of students from the lesser-privileged backgrounds at the center, a new programme called Milo CCMB was started. It first started in collaboration with TSWREIS — Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society. and spread to tribal welfare schools run by the state government. This work has been funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, and later on by CSIR. We first made the students familiar with CCMB’s work through these videos and interaction with scientists working in these areas online. We made videos on topics not only based on CCMB’s expertise but also relatable to the lives of socially backward students who come from discussions on caste and races are common, belong to agrarian communities and have aspirations to make it big. We conducted seven sessions where we shared one video each month, facilitated online discussions with scientists through Q&A sessions, and conducted an online test. Based on the results, we selected 30 students to visit CCMB for 4 – 5 days. We conducted this programme for two consecutive years. It was designed keeping students’ goals and aspirations in mind to provide access to institutions like CCMB.
Social welfare colleges also requested videos showing how scientists work in real labs, rather than animated content. The videos were prepared with a unique angle based on experiments relevant to their curriculum, showing lab work and technical skills. We need to focus on how these programmes can be taken further.
I think the best-positioned entities in India are science institutions and scientists, where science communicators can highlight the utility of studying science as scientists, students, and members of the life sciences community.
4. Can you share a few examples of successful initiatives or collaborations with educators that have had a meaningful impact on science education?
We observed that some of the students from the Milo CCMB program started getting selected for the Young Innovators Program. It was a great outcome, and we understood that the Milo CCMB program was able to train students to qualify for such programmes. Other CSIR institutes are beginning to participate in similar programmes, and the parent body, CSIR is creating the structures for those. These are steps towards running such programmes more sustainably.
CCMB also made a mobile science exhibition called the Gene-Health Connect. Set in a bus, it has been going around schools and colleges in the state of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in the last two years. It has been very successful because it explains genes and genetic diseases — topics that are prescribed in the syllabi but are much too abstract for many teachers and students to feel comfortable with the topic. The interactive models in the exhibit helped in easing that.
Colleges have also now started to think about becoming more self-sufficient with respect to scientific lab setups and equipment utility. We should see to it how to support them in their growth.
These steps help the science communicators dedicate their time to come up with novel offerings for educational spaces while the established programmes should be undertaken by the teachers/educators in schools and colleges or beyond the traditional learning spaces.
5. What role do you believe mentorship plays in science education, and how can institutions better foster mentorship programmes for aspiring scientists and educators?
Before COVID, I tried running a programme at CCMB called Project Abhilasha. One of the observations that led to this initiative was that college students in Hyderabad were not interested in doing science research. These students didn’t know how to follow a career in science. We ran the programme for two years — reaching out to certain colleges, selecting specific groups of students, and pairing them with PhD students of CCMB.
The PhD students helped them navigate scientific literature. Academic papers are extremely inaccessible to these students — the language is very technical, and they didn’t know how to read them. The PhD students guided them on how to read scientific papers, similar to how one reads a newspaper. This also provided undergraduate students the opportunity to build friendships with CCMB’s PhD students.
It was extremely intensive work. And in this process, I appreciated the need for more popular science articles for young minds. I realised the need to build forums for people from different backgrounds to contribute and collaborate at the science communication interface. We can utilise the support of young people to build enough opportunities and content around them so they know about science, get excited, and feel inspired to meet scientists. We have CCMB’s Shadow Scientist programme where we invited interested students to pitch their interest, work for a week in a lab, and if they were able to impress the lab and were clear about why they wanted to be there, they were welcomed. It is interesting to note that students came from different cities.
I really want young people to look at science with excitement, navigating through their interests instead of learning it only for the sake of employment.
6. Looking ahead, what changes or improvements do you envision in the way research institutions engage with and contribute to science education in India?
Science education is the easier part that most scientists relate to. Many of them have the sentiment of better science communication, giving back to society, and inspiring the next generation of young scientists.
Most labs have started organising open days. Thanks to CSIR, CCMB has a structured programme to communicate with students, such as JIGYASA, which provides scientists the opportunity to collaborate with such initiatives.
Many scientists have started to work more actively with media, newspapers, and communicators for science communication and outreach, or for publicity, which I feel is a progress. All these help in talking about science and technology in its various facets of curiosity to utility on more accessible platforms.