Women in Engineering, Science and Technology (WEST)

About Women in Engineering, Science and Technology

• Research: Under Women in Engineering, Science and Technology initiative, I-STEM will provide a separate platform to women researchers, scientists, and technologists for pursuing research in basic or applied sciences in frontier areas of science and engineering.
• Access to support: Women will be given access to R&D facilities and R&D software platforms (COMSOL, MATLAB, LABVIEW, AUTOCAD) through the I-STEM portal.
• Career opportunities: Women joining WEST program can explore opportunities to become stakeholders in various domains and pursue careers at various levels such as technicians, technologists, scientists, and entrepreneurs.
  • Opportunities include operating scientific equipment and maintaining them, to designing and manufacturing them.

Significance of Women in Engineering, Science and Technology

• Women representation: The initiative will help in improving the representation of women in science and technology related streams.
• Fill gap in existing infrastructure: The initiative will fill crucial gaps in the R&D infrastructure of the country by training women to fill the positions.
  • Women with STEM background will be skilled to become lab technicians and maintenance engineers.
• Reintroduction to stream: The initiative will also help bring women back into S&T domains after a career break.
• Promote entrepreneurship: Under the initiative, support provided to S&T startups by women entrepreneurs by I-STEM will be enhanced.
  • Women can become consultants for the operation and maintenance of sophisticated equipment/instruments.

I-STEM:

• I-STEM is a national web portal used for sharing research equipment/facilities. It acts as an umbrella platform under which many programmes for promoting collaborations in R&D and technological innovation take place.
• Initiative: It is an initiative of Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India and is part of Prime Minister Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) mission.

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