Message from JKScientists

STEM for all

“JKScientists”
Nov 1 · 4 min read

https://www.jkscientists.org/home

It was a few years ago while hiking the peaks of the Black Forest (Schwarzwald), briefly away from work led me to retrospect about the “work” and “non-work” part of my life. I realized that thinking about the non-work part of my life landed me an uneasiness that remained in my mind throughout the trek. If I am to choose the most valuable moment of my non-work part, that was it! That was the moment that I thought of starting a Facebook group that would eventually shape up into a national organization representing the students, educators, scientists, technologists, and entrepreneurs of our nation — Jammu and Kashmir. I wouldn’t have put my experience in words here had I not arrived at the realization that every one of us who are involved with this group, suffered a “liberate to serve” scenario and were waiting for an initiative to do something with the “non-work” part of their life. It would have been only a dream without but for the hard work, dedication, honesty, and sincerity of the group members. Although it took us a decade to reach this level, we all feel happy that it was just in time to help the students in need.

During these difficult and challenging times, we have been thinking about what could be done to help the students, education, and science back home. In the past, we have been immensely proactive in organizing science outreach and mentorship programs but now we at JKScientists feel an urge to start new programs to cater the ever-increasing demand of new streams that which will have a huge potential to benefit the majority of the students and educational institutes in Jammu and Kashmir. Programs like “JKScientist online” where scientists go online and interact with the students of Jammu and Kashmir that will have a huge impact in the future. Obviously, for most of our programs, students need internet access which unfortunately is not available most of the time back home. We have to find novel innovative methods and, ways to overcome these challenges, and it is doable if we all work together.

Here at JKScientists, we think science and education go hand in hand. Our organization has been working relentlessly to foster Science and Education in particular STEM fields in Jammu and Kashmir.

The JKScientists started with a robust Science Outreach component. In the past, our members have visited various schools, colleges and universities to interact, to counsel and to perform hands-on activities with the students. We believe science outreach is essential to generate curiosity and interest in science. Sooner we realized a need for a mentorship program and that was put to reality through SPROUT.

SPROUT- Support Program for Research Outreach and Upskill Technology was formally started in 2017 as our official annual mentorship program. The idea of SPROUT is to guide, nourish and harness the full potential of prospective scholars and entrepreneurs. Mentees from diverse fields and educational backgrounds register with us and get connected to acclaimed researchers and scientists from all around the globe. Our strength is our dedicated, experienced and proactive mentors, who are always ready to spend days and weeks to discuss and help enthusiastic students and researchers in achieving their aspiring goals. The key to our success is a sincere and wholehearted collaboration of mentees with our committed mentors to bring the best out of them. We give an annual call for diverse mentees to register for the mentorship program, who are selected into the program through proper screening of applications. We have come across many success stories, where mentees have been selected to higher education programs (MS/Ph.D./postdoc), training programs and research assistants jobs in renowned national and international universities and research centers. We do accept sporadic requests for mentorship as well, subject to the availability of mentors. The coordination committee for SPROUT includes Insha Rasool, Khursheed Wani, Zahida Qamri, Shoaib Bukhari and Asif Bakshi, who would be responsible for the execution of the program for the 2020 session.

SPROUT coordinators can be reached on our official email programsprout@gmail.com for any queries.

Our own community of students and scholars has been highly affected by the current crisis in Kashmir. We at JKScientists started an immediate helpline to support the students by providing financial, and moral support. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the coordinators working 24x7 for these students and all the donors. Let us all pledge to make this community stronger where we care, we share and we support each other. Our nation and our society need more coordinators, volunteers, mentors, and donors and if you feel you can be a part of this nation-building in one way or the other please get in touch with us. We are mindful of the need for more balanced gender representation in the sciences, including in leadership positions at JKScientists. We are looking forward to having an equal and diverse representation of our scholars at the JKScientists organizational level. TOGETHER WE CAN!

7000 JKScientists / www.jkscientists.org/home

Syed Mubarak Hussain / mubarakhsyed@gmail.com

Anha Bhat / anhajan1@gmail.com

Asif Bakshi / bakshi909@gmail.com

Insha Rasool / hellohomegreens@gmail.com

Riyaz Shah / riyazulhaq17@gmail.com

Zahida Qamri / qamri.zahida@gmail.com

Khursheed Wani / wanikhursheed01002@gmail.com

Syed Durafshan Sakeena / dsakeena@gmail.com

Shoiab Bukhari / Shoiabb@gmail.com

Irfan Rather / erfaan21@gmail.com

Ahsanulhaq Qurashi / ahsanulhaq06@gmail.com

Pir Jeelani / pirjeelani@gmail.com

Tafheem Masudi / tafheem.masudi@outlook.com

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