January 3 - 6, 2025
Mumbai, India
epiSTEME 10 is jointly organized by HBCSE along with the Mathematics Teachers’ Association (India)
epiSTEME 10 is jointly organized by HBCSE along with the Mathematics Teachers’ Association (India)
Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University and Leiden University
Adjunct Professor, TIFR, IIT Bombay and University of Hyderabad
Prof. Bhargava is recognized internationally as one of the foremost mathematicians of our times and one of the leading experts in number theory, a branch of mathematics in which he has made several pioneering breakthroughs. His research includes foundational contributions to arithmetic statistics and to the theory of quadratic and higher degree forms, number fields, class groups, and ranks of elliptic curves.
Bhargava is the recipient of numerous awards for his mathematical contributions, including the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize and the Clay Research Award in 2005, the AMS Cole Prize in Number Theory in 2008, the Fermat Prize and the Infosys Prize in 2012, the Fields Medal in 2014 and the Padma Bhushan in 2015. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2017) as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society (2019).
Bhargava is also well-known for his contributions to the public popularization of mathematics, and held the first Distinguished Chair for the Public Dissemination of Mathematics at the National Museum of Mathematics in New York in 2018. He is the co-chairperson of the National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC) that is tasked with developing school syllabi for Classes 3 to 12 in line with India's National Education Policy 2020.
Professor, Department of Chemistry Education
University of Potsdam
Amitabh Banerji grew up in Berlin. He studied chemistry and computer science for teaching at grammar schools and completed his legal clerkship at the Herder-Gymnasium in Berlin Charlottenburg. From 2009 to 2012 he received his doctorate in the working group of Prof. Michael Tausch at the University of Wuppertal on the experimental-didactic indexing of organic light-emitting diodes. He then worked for two years as a lecturer and specialist coordinator at the Junior University of Wuppertal. In 2014 he joined as an Assistant Professor for chemistry education at the University of Cologne. Since 2019, Banerji has been a University Professor in Chemistry Education at the University of Potsdam where his research focuses on Curriculum Innovation & Research-Based-Implementation and Digital Tools in Science Education in Chemistry.
He has won several awards including the "Highly Commended" Project (OLEDs) at the European Science On Stage Festival, Debrecen (Hungary) and Brandenburger Innovationspreis Cluster Kunststoffe & Chemie 2021 awarded by the Minister of Commerce and Energy in Brandenburg for the project boXperiment.
Distinguished Professor of Physics
University of Pittsburgh
Chandralekha Singh is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Founding Director of the Discipline-based Science Education Research Center (dB-SERC) at the University of Pittsburgh. She obtained her Ph.D. in theoretical condensed matter physics from the University of California Santa Barbara and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, before joining the University of Pittsburgh. She has been conducting research in physics education for more than two decades. She co-led the US team to the International Conference on Women in Physics in Birmingham UK in 2017. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Association of Physics Teacher. More information about her can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/professorsinghswebpage/
Director, National Centre for Biological Sciences
Professor of Biology, IISER Pune
Honorary Professor, Ashoka University.
Shashi did his undergraduate and post-graduate studies at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, India and Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Shashi specializes in Genetics, Molecular Biology, Evolutionary biology, and cancer biology. He is known for his studies on how various organs are positioned precise locations in our body and the precise control mechanisms by which our organs grow to specific size. An outcome of his work has implications to understand cancer, which is a disease caused by the uncontrolled growth of body cells. For the past 7 years, he is working very closely with clinicians on ways to improve outcomes of cancer treatment.
Shashi is a SSB Prize Awardee, an elected fellow all three Science Academies of India, an elected member of European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). Prof Shashidhara has served in the past as Vice-President of Indian National Science Academy (INSA) and Secretary General of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS). During 2019-2023, he served as President of IUBS.
Shashi has also been involved in the promotion of science and science education. He has facilitated training of more than 10,000 school and undergraduate teachers in India on inquiry-based teaching and learning. At IUBS, he is closely involved in policy research on global change and zoonosis. Shashi conceived and initiated the TROPICSU project of IUBS, which is an international project on Climate Change Education.
Teaching Professor
IIT Gandhinagar
Manish Jain spends most of his time investigating the science behind simple (and complex) toys and is passionate about sharing his insights and excitement with people. He is an Associate Teaching Professor at IIT Gandhinagar, and heads CCL whose goal is to bring back the gleam in the eyes of students and children. Before founding CCL, Manish worked at IUCAA’s Science Centre in Pune, with Padma Shri Arvind Gupta. In his previous avatar, he spent 19 years in the area of chip design at Synopsys (Bangalore & Mountain View), serving as a Director of R&D. Manish has a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur (1993) and has also finished a few courses at Stanford University.
Department of Biology
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Dr. Sami Raut is an associate professor of biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). In the past, she has served as an Interim Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs at the Graduate School and Global Affairs and currently serves as a director of joint degree program – Genetics and Genomics with the School of Medicine and College of Arts and Sciences. She holds a PhD in Environmental Toxicology from UAB. She has taught majors and non-majors’ students for nearly 15 years. After embracing realms of scientific teaching, she immersed herself in several biology education research projects. This led to mentoring of nearly 40 undergraduate students and several master’s students at UAB. She has won several awards for her teaching and mentoring endeavors. Her primary area of research includes enhancing science literacy in societal topics of interest including climate change, sustainability, evolution, and vaccine hesitancy.
Dean HBCSE Faculty & National Coordinator, NIUS
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education - TIFR
Prof. Savita Ladage, has done her Masters in Analytical chemistry and Ph. D. in Chemistry Education. Her primary research interests are chemistry lab education at undergraduate (UG) level and conceptual pitfalls in chemistry. She is involved with various Chemistry education research and developmental activities, and programmes associated with the same. She closely interacts with chemistry teachers, especially those teaching at UG level, to orient them about research based innovative teaching-learning practices. Prof. Savita Ladage has chemistry/chemistry education related publications in terms of papers in peer reviewed national and international journals, pedagogical articles, book chapters and books. She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Journal of Chemical Education (JCE), an ACS publication. She has also served as Co-opted member of International Steering Chemistry(ISC) for International Chemistry Olympiads (IChOs) on several occasions.
At HBCSE, she has been associated with two major key impact programmes for more than two decades, namely, the Indian National Chemistry Olympiad (INChO) programme and National Initiative on Undergraduate Science (NIUS)programme in Chemistry. The former leads to selection of Indian teams for the IChOs whereas the latter conducts chemistry/chemistry education activities for motivated UG students and teachers teaching chemistry at UG level across India respectively.
For her contributions to the field of Chemistry education, Prof. Savita Ladage was awarded the Nyholm Prize for Education by Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), UK, in the year 2023.
Professor in Physics with specialization in PER, Head of PER
Head of the Astronomy and Fundamental Physics Unit
Uppsala University
Sweden
Urban Eriksson is a full professor at Uppsala University in Sweden. Uppsala University is the largest and oldest university in Sweden. He works at the department of Physics and Astronomy where he leads the research division on physics and astronomy education research. He is also deputy Head of department and Head och the Astronomy and fundamental physics unit. Prof. Eriksson is also instigator and chair of the biannual Astronomy Education Conferences (astroeducon.org) and instigator and Editor for the international Astronomy Education Journal (astroedjournal.org). He has been engaged in the IAU Commission C1 as vice President and leader for the working group for Astronomy Education Research and Methods.
Prof. Eriksson has a background in physics and astronomy but also in teacher education and has spent +30 years in educating students in all teachers programs about physics and astronomy. During this period he turned to physics and astronomy education research (PAER) and got his PhD in 2014. After a Postdoc at Lund University he developed his research and formed and led a PAER group at Lund University, Sweden, as associate professor, before getting the present position as full professor at Uppsala University, where he leads the research by the division, with colleagues, postdocs and PhD students. The division's four main focus areas are 1) Developing the theoretical framework for teaching and learning called Social Semiotics, 2) Investigating upper-division physics students reasoning and problem solving skills, 3) Embodiment in physics and astronomy education and, 4) AI in teaching and learning in physics and astronomy.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721 US
virtual
Vicente Talanquer is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the UA. His research focuses on undergraduate chemistry education. He has published over 150 peer reviewed and invited papers where he has explored the conceptual difficulties that students face when learning chemistry and the effect of different teaching strategies on student understanding. He has also investigated prospective science teachers’ reasoning and practices. Dr. Talanquer has applied the results of his educational research to the development of innovative curricula for undergraduate chemistry education.
He has received various awards during his academic career, including the James Flack Norris Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Teaching of Chemistry by American Chemical Society, and the Educational Research Award by the Council of Scientific Society Presidents. In 2015, he was named Arizona Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation. In 2019, Dr. Talanquer received the Education Research Award from the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, and he has recently been awarded the 2021 ACS Award for Achievement in Research for the Teaching & Learning of Chemistry.