Organizers
Prof. Sunil K. Khare
Director
IISER Kolkata
Prof. Debasish Haldar
Chairman, DCS
IISER Kolkata
Patrons
Convenor
Prof. Alakesh Bisai
IISER Kolkata
Prof. Amlan K. Roy
IISER Kolkata
Prof. Debabrata Mukherjee
IISER Kolkata
Co-Convenors
India made significant progress in science and technology since independence. Recent achievements in Science, Technology and Innovation have been quite unprecedented. India is placed in 3rd among countries in scientific publication as per National Science Foundation (NSF) database. The country has featured within the top 50 innovative economies globally (at 46th rank), as per Global Innovation Index (GII). It has also reached 3rd Position in term of number of PhDs in science and engineering, in terms of size of Higher Education System as well as in terms of number of Startups. It made considerable progress in terms of quality of research output, number of resident patents and number of women participating in the R&D in recent years. Despite making a good progress in STI, the transfer of scientific knowledge and its benefits to society remains an area of concern. Thus, apart from deploying more resources on human and social development, building a strong connection between science and society assumes significance. One way could be through the transfer of scientific knowledge in achieving social goals which could be formalised through guidelines on “Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR)”.
The main aim of SSR guidelines is to harness the potential that is latent in the country’s scientific community to strengthen science and society linkages, on a voluntary basis, so as to make the S&T ecosystem vibrant. This primarily involves bridging science-society, science-science and society-science gaps, thereby bringing trust, partnership and responsibility of science at an accelerated pace towards achieving social goals.
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This specifically implies:
• Science-society connect: Facilitating inclusive and sustainable development by transferring the benefits of scientific work to meet existing and emerging societal needs.
• Science-science connect: Creating an enabling environment for the sharing of ideas and resources within the knowledge ecosystem.
• Society-science connect: Collaborating with communities to identify their needs and problems and develop scientific and technological solutions. The age-old approach of Lab to Land (L2) would be replaced by a new-age approach of Land (Experience) to Lab (Expertise) to Land (Applications) (L3).
• Cultural change: Inculcating social responsibility among the individuals and institutions practicing science; creating awareness about SSR within society; and infusing scientific temperament into day-to-day social existence and interaction. SSR is aimed at creating an effective ecosystem for optimum use of existing assets in order to empower the less endowed, marginalized and exploited sections of society by enhancing their capability, capacity and latent potential.
