Low Carbon Paradigm
Whilst traditional outreach programs have involved the sending out of personnel to remote universities and colleges, the ISCC will seek to develop a new low-carbon paradigm approach to outreach. Our vision involves the use of digital technology to transform outreach, where we can “digitally transport” students to the cutting-edge laboratories and Universities in the consortium. This will involve the use of Virtual Reality and 360 interactive videos where students can meet and interact within the digital twin versions of the member laboratories. In this manner, we will reduce the time lost in travelling of both the member network and greatly increase the numbers of students that can take part in laboratory and training visits. Our vision of this is global – we believe that every student, be it in India or the UK, should be able to take part in these programs wherever they are in the world.
Send Headsets Not People
As well as traditional content training, we seek to train all scientists in both nations to comparable levels. We believe that access to equipment should not be a limiting factor when it comes to scientific training. Our education motto is “send headsets, not people” as we believe that the sustainable goal of the ISCC is not just in our technology, but in all our approaches across the network. Our passionate approach to this has led us to revisit the way in which we can reach students in lower income groups, where using digital technology, we can access students in ways which were previously unimaginable. Our dream is to digitally transport a student instantaneously from remote areas of India and the UK to our laboratories where we can run training sessions in real time using digital versions of our laboratories and interact in the same way we would normally.
Virtual Reality Training
To achieve this, we will take advantage of Virtual Reality based training, digitizing modern equipment and making it accessible in Virtual Reality so that students of both nations, receive comparative training in modern scientific techniques and are able to easily transition into advanced laboratories. Technology will also involve the use of google glass based analogues, so that users can also take advantage of lower cost variants, meaning that our approach is readily scalable.
