In its 5^th edition, the IndiaBioscience Outreach Grants (IOG) has been awarded to grassroot ideas addressing niche problems. The awardees cover six teams of early career scientists passionate about the impact of their research work and the ones stepping out of their work zones to address socio-scientific issues. Five teams have been awarded the grant for the first time and one team has received an extension grant. 

Two projects were selected to educate and create awareness regarding local biodiversity and its status. Upasna Chetri and Basundhara Chetri from the Royal Global University and Sikkim University, respectively will talk about the near-threatened Himalayan salamander newt to the public. The newt, a resident of the northeastern Himalayan foothills, is threatened by habitat destruction and illegal pet trade. The awardees aim to address this problem by engaging the public to create awareness and urgency for its conservation. Chetri says, ​“This grant fuels my commitment to preserving biodiversity, ensuring this unique species has a fighting chance for survival in its native ecosystem”. She adds,

This grant empowers me to educate, engage, and inspire local communities to act against habitat loss and pollution threats. 

Ananya Mukherjee and Achyut Kumar Banerjee from the Azim Premji University, Bhopal, plan to create engaging board games for school students that gamify the genuine efforts of the Bhojtal lake restoration. Students will learn how the health of a lake is impacted by human activities and what can be done to grow a biodiverse lake. The project is an innovation in biodiversity awareness and pedagogy, as the awardees wish to include teachers from marginalised communities, who might benefit from this teaching tool. Mukherjee is optimistic about this opportunity, ​“We hope to make Bhopal a focus of science outreach, usually reserved for tier 1 cities.”

In addition to an attack on biodiversity, anthropogenic activities have threatened crop health and, consequently, food security. Amey Redkar at National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) draws from his expertise in plant-microbe interaction to inspire students to design tough crops resistant to climate change. His teammates Rupsy Khurana, Science Communication and Outreach Lead, NCBS, and Vidha Srivastava, graduate student at NCBS, support this theme of inspiring innovation in agriculture. The team plans to communicate the plant-microbiome interaction and its modulation in response to climatic stress by creating a comic book and a tour of their lab. 

Redkar says, ​“We aim to provide an informative journey into the often-overlooked, invisible relationships between plants and microbes. We hope to bring the wonders of plant-microbial interactions to appreciate how plants fight against harmful microbes. We expect our project to spark curiosity and appreciation for these unseen connections.”

Continuing the initiatives on mental health awareness, the screening committee has awarded Arun Kumar Upadhyay, Indian Institute of Technology Bhilai, and his team to disseminate information on postpartum depression and anxiety. Upadhyay stepped out of his familiar area of work and collaborated with a physician, Amrita Singh, All India Institute of Medical Sciences Nagpur, and Somya Mishra, MIT World Peace University, and Isha Parlikar, freelance science illustrator, to address a much needed and often ignored concern in the mental health space. 

Their multilingual material would reach the audience as an illustrated magazine and digital resources. This aims to fill the gap about this clinical issue, especially in cities where it might be largely ignored. Upadhyay says, 

Approximately 10 – 15% of women face physiological, psychological, emotional, and social challenges upon giving birth. We plan to highlight and normalise the challenges they face as a first step towards awareness about postpartum depression and anxiety.

Aswathy Raveendran, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, and Ipsa Jain, science communication expert, plan to provide a glimpse of research life to school and college students. They will be harnessing the experience of doctoral students to tell stories about what it means to be a young scientist. The stories will present close first-hand accounts of days in the life of young scientists, their passions, aspirations, and difficulties. The outreach material will be boundless — with expectations of comics and illustrations as storytelling medium. 

The team hopes to thus engage doctoral students to dabble in storytelling through workshops and webinars. This interaction could also serve as an opportunity for doctoral students to engage in digital networking. Raveendran says, ​“Our view also includes empowering doctoral students with creative tools to discuss their craft”.

The IOG grant continues to support scientists in their outreach ideas for 5 years now. More often than not, these grants have been an inspiring medley of scientists and science communicators with a spark for addressing social issues. Extension grant awardee, Pankaj Koparde, MIT-WPU, Pune, appreciates the collaborative freedom that the grant has provided. Koparde and Arjit Jere’s People of Nature podcast series of approximately 20 episodes featured some exciting perspectives from conservation front lines. Koparde is proud of his podcast guests, 

Our guests were women scientists, people belonging to under-represented groups such as tribal community, economically marginalised, the LGBTQIA+ community, and those working in remote areas. 

With support from the extension grant, the team plans to include a more extensive community by featuring regional stories in vernacular languages in the coming year.