Pune institutes to mark National Science Day with open labs, exhibitions

PUNE: Scientific institutions across the district will celebrate National Science Day on Saturday with an extensive lineup of public lectures, exhibitions, outreach programmes and interactive demonstrations, and will open their laboratories and research spaces to students, teachers and citizens.

The day commemorates physicist CV Raman's discovery of the Raman Effect in 1928. This year's celebrations centre on the national theme, "Women in Science: Catalyzing Viksit Bharat."


IISER Pune will host a full-day campus programme featuring talks by leading women scientists, highlighting both research achievements and professional journeys, said a statement from the institute.

Visitors can participate in interactive science shows, mathematics demonstrations, science toy sessions, puzzle activities, astronomy observations and a science quiz. A live online quiz titled "The Mysteries of the Universe" will also be streamed through the institute's Science Activity Centre.

The institute and Pimpri Chinchwad Science Park will conduct a three-day outreach programme from Friday to March 1 at Kalpakghar Community Tinkering Centre, featuring a weather hackathon, STEM exhibitions, art installations, tinkering demonstrations and science film screenings.

At Khodad near Narayangaon, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), operated by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics under Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, will organise its annual exhibition on Saturday and Sunday. It is one of the country's largest public science exhibitions and attracts nearly 25,000 visitors annually.

Highlights include live experiments by TIFR scientists, an "Ask an Astronomer" interaction, radio astronomy films and exhibits by premier institutions including National Institute of Virology, IITM Pune and ISRO's National Remote Sensing Centre.

Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) will host an open campus day featuring facility tours, demonstrations, solar telescope viewing and interactive sessions linked to astronomy missions such as AstroSat, LIGO-India and Aditya-L1.