VigyanShaala – Social Entrepreneurship

Active

VigyanShaala

Equipping youth with quality STEM education & skills through project based learning & mentoring

Headquarters

Maharashtra

Thematic area

Education

Region(s) of work

Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, The Government of NCT of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal

Company Size

Sub-Theme(s)

Children and Youth, Technology

About the Organization

“VigyanShaala envisions a world where everyone has the opportunity to create a better world through science. It aims to make quality STEM education accessible to the most marginalised communities across India and is on a mission to enable the innovators of tomorrow to achieve their dreams by bringing science, technology, and learning to their doorstep today. Their guided training, mentoring and projects based learning helps youth acquire critical 21st century skills and prepare them for the technology-focused workforce of the future. VigyanShaala has so far conducted over 50 workshops engaging with 10,000+ Students from school, undergraduate levels and 500+ teachers with exciting hand-on experiments across the breadth of India.”

Active Founder(s)

Darshana Joshi Darshana is the founder and CEO of VigyanShaala. A passionate Physicist, mentor and social entrepreneur, Darshana is committed to recalibrating the gender balance in STEM disciplines. She is keenly interested in designing pedagogical tools to promote interdisciplinary thinking and problem solving among youth particularly addressing problems at the interface of Physics, Chemistry and Biological sciences. She holds a BSc in Physics from Miranda House, University of Delhi and a Master's in Materials Science from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, followed by a PhD in Physics from the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK. For her doctoral work she was awarded the prestigious Schlumberger Foundation's Faculty for the Future Fellowship for women from developing countries. Towards the end of her PhD she became the first Indian women to be elected the President of Graduate Union, the primary representative body of postgraduate students at the University of Cambridge and also served as a trustee of the University.

Dr. Vijay Venugopalan Dr. Vijay Venugopalan is a Physicist turned Social Entrepreneur and is the Co-Founder of VigyanShaala. He is driven to create real life impact through science and innovation. He has over 10 years’ research experience in Devices Fabrication and Characterization and Clean Room Fabrication of Solar Cells, Field Effect Transistors, Photo-Detectors, and Chemical Sensors. Following years of experience across leading research institutes in India, he was awarded the Marie Curie Fellowship from European Commission to pursue his PhD in Physics at the Politechnico Di Milano and worked as a research fellow at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Milan. Upon completion of his PhD, Vijay worked as a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge and as a post-doctoral fellow at the Cambridge Display Technology. He has several published papers and patents and has keen interest in promotion of critical and design thinking among youth and implementing citizen science projects through makerspaces.