ACCELERATE VIGYAN SCHEME

Focus: GS-III Science and Technology

Accelerate Vigyan (AV) Scheme: Why in news?

• The Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) has launched a new scheme called ‘Accelerate Vigyan’ (AV), to provide a single platform for research internships, capacity building programs, and workshops across the country.
  The AV will work on mission mode, particularly with respect to its component dealing with consolidation / aggregation of all major scientific events in the country.
• An Inter-Ministerial Overseeing Committee (IMOC) involving all the scientific ministries/departments and a few others has been constituted for the purpose of supporting SERB in implementing the AV scheme in a successful manner.
• In a nutshell, the AV platform is expected to be a game changer for developing career paths and providing support to catalogue the development of skilled man-power.

Aims of the AV Scheme

• The primary objective of this inter-ministerial scheme is to give more thrust on encouraging high-end scientific research and preparing scientific manpower, which can lead to research careers and knowledge-based economy.

The aim is to expand the research base in the country, with three broad goals –

1. Consolidation / aggregation of all scientific training programs,
2. Initiating High-end Orientation Workshops and
3. Creating opportunities for Research Internships.

AV will initiate and strengthen mechanisms of identifying research potential, mentoring, training and hands-on workshop on a national scale.

• The scheme also seeks to garner the social responsibility of the scientific community in the country.

Components of AV

ABHYAAS

• AV has already called for applications under its ‘ABHYAAS’ component for the Winter Season.
• ABHYAAS programme is an attempt to boost research and development in the country by enabling and grooming potential PG/PhD students by means of developing their research skills in selected areas across different disciplines or fields.

ABHYAAS has 2 components

1. KARYASHALA- High-End Workshops
2. VRITIKA- Research Internship.

SAMOOHAN

Mission ‘SAMOOHAN’ aims to encourage, aggregate and consolidate all scientific interactions in the country under one common roof.

SAMOOHAN also has 2 components

1. SAYONJIKA- an open-ended program to catalogue the capacity building activities in science and technology.
2. SANGOSTI- a pre-existing program of SERB