Chennai: When it comes to promoting arts, there are a lot of events that happen across Chennai which offer space for budding singers, painters and photographers to exhibit their talents. But what if there is a platform, that does the same to budding engineers or scientists? Even better, what if engineers or scientists, who are themselves doing well in their career, come forward to talk about their experience to aspiring youngsters?
This is what Cambrionics Life Science does. It is a community of amateur biologists, tinkerers and science-lovers. They also call themselves Tony Starks and Bruce Banners. Started by six passionate youngsters – Sudharsan, Sai Ganesh, Vasantha Kumar, Raghul, Maheshwaran and Godwin – they have banded together to take science beyond the walls of laboratory.
Speaking to News Today, one of the founders, Sudharsan, said, “It began when we were in our third year of college. We organised an event where we took this initiative to take care of genetically affected kids. We spent a day with them. We named it Cambrionics. We always had this urge to promote genetic and life science. We felt that Cambrionics should address the problems in the scientific community that no one else in India does.”
They organise two major events: Teaching Alternate Biological Sciences (T A B S), and Curiosity – Let’s Talk Science.
In T A B S, they provide research-based learning opportunities through the use of live organisms such as zebra fish and drosophila. It is designed to excite middle school kids about science, learning, and to give them a feel for what it is like to be a scientist. The team feels that a day with zebra fish can teach more much science than the children would have learnt the entire year.
Likewise, Curiosity – Let’s Talk Science is another exciting event the youngsters organise. It is a non-profitable science programme that aims to communicate contemporary scientific developments to the public, biologists, and young scientific minds in an interesting and engaging way by bringing eminent scientists to the local cafés in Chennai. It is designed in a way that will help the young minds have friendly interaction with the scientists.
“It isn’t a formal event,” explains Sai Ganesh. “Anyone can join us. The scientists or engineers who come talk about how they started their career and offer tips. Aspiring students will find such interaction motivating,” he points out.
How do they fund their events? “Right from college, we have been struggling to find a space to organise our events,” says Sudharsan. “We started this entirely with our own pocket money. Sometimes we sell small goodies to earn a little.”
Why do they do this? “When we started this, we wanted to address the problems faced by engineering or science students,” says Sudharsan. “As we started addressing them, we found that many people were also facing such problems. We have this urge to do something for the scientific community in India. We feel that there are a lot of changes that need to be made in our education system. This pushes us to keep going forward,” he adds.
The team also launched The Genetic Files – a collection of tiny tales on genetic disorders. The team wrote tiny tales on various disorders and genetic awareness as a whole. For details visit, www.cambrionics.com