Education

Congregating the minds of tomorrow
Daily Star-Drishty-Bank Asia Science
Festival 2010

Himel Chowdhury

The rain brought relief from the searing heat as intrigued students gathered around doing intelligent things, talking with an eagerness to know, showing glimpses of scientific intellects.

In the third Daily Star-Bank Asia-Drishty science festival held at Ispahani Public School & College on October 14-15, Drishty Chittagong, a major educational and cultural organisation, organised the two day long programme in an effort to make students interested in science.

The inaugural session took place at the Ispahani School auditorium where the principal Mahbubul Alam Chowdhury inaugurated the event. Also present among the guests were Prof Md Alauddin, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Chittagong University, Prof Syed Ahsanul Parvez, Chairman of Marketing Department, CU, Safia Gazi Rahman, Principal of Sunshine Grammar School, Amir Ali Chowdhury, founder Advisor of Drishty Chittagong. The session was chaired by Masud Bakul, President of Drishty.

Later in the day, there was a workshop on Genetic engineering, DNA and Biotechnology. Adnan Mannan, Lecturer of Genetic Engineering Department, University of Chittagong, conducted the workshop, followed by lectures from Dr. Dwapayan Sikdar, Associate Professor of Biochemistry Dept, CU and Mostak Ibn Ayub, Lecturer of Genetic Engineering Department, DU. Then students from USTC, CU and DU carried out various experiments of gene isolation.
After the workshop, there was a Wikipedia photo contest.

The second day of the festival was inaugurated by the chief guest Dr Afsarul Ameen, minister of Primary and Mass Communication Education. The other special guests were Raisul Haq Bahar, Chittagong bureau chief of Daily Star, Md Roshangir Bachu, area manager of Bank Asia, Shahjada Mohiuddin, director of Agrani Bank Ltd.

About 1200 students from different institutions participated in the festival. There were 34 schools, 11 colleges, and 10 universites in total. The displaying of science projects started with more than 200 innovations from the different schools, colleges and universities. There were many popular projects like the Robotic Arm, Domestic Biogas Plant, Acid rain emission, Mobile sensor, Packaging system for industry, Reutilization of paper waste, Biotech use of tannery waste, Transdermal patch, IPS.Interested students swarmed around to learn about the projects.

Then there were the Science and Bio Olympiads. Students of primary and junior secondary groups participated in the Science Olympiad.Participants of the secondary and higher secondary faced the challenging Bio Olympiad.

There was also a round of extempore speech where over 50 participants from schools and colleges competed. When the competitions were over, some light entertaining events were arranged.A fun, model debate was held which was more like a tug-of-war between boys and girls over the attraction of science education in the schools. Later there was a simple cultural programme performed by the students of Ispahani.

The sun orbited to the west sky and it was time for the closing session and the thrilling prize giving. A grand reception was given to the revered Genetic Engineer Dr Haseena Khan, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department of Dhaka University. She inspired the students and spoke about Biofuel.

Finally, the winners of the competitions were announced. In the science projects, the champions of school level were jointly Ispahani Public School and Cant. Public School. For the universities, University of Chittagong, Dept of Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology became champion in Biological Science and Int. Islamic University of Chittagong, Dept of Electrical Engineering became champion in Physical Science.

Chittagong Online limited was the co-sponsor of the programme. Judges for the competition were- Dr. Haseena Khan(DU),Dr. Md. Arifuzzaman (USTC), A.M.Abu Ahmed (GEB,CU),Dr. Sajal Chandra Banik(Mechanical Eng. Dept., CUET), Soumitra Palit (Lecturer, IUB),Engineer Aniruddho Barua(CEO,COL),Dr. Masud Rana,Mustak Ibn Ayub(DU), Mahdi Moosa(DU).

M. Nasirul Hoque, city Editor of the Daily Suprobhat Bangladesh attended as the guest of honour in the ending ceremony along with Khorshedul Alam Quaderi, General Secretary of Bangladesh Economics Society, Chittagong chapter. Adnan Mannan, Joint Secretary of Drishty conducted the programme presided over by Masud Bakul, President of Drishty. At the end of the day, the science festival was a tremendous success for everyone.

(Writer is a Debater, Drishty, Chittagong)