More than 7500 students attend e-SAITED 2021 at SAI International

Bhubaneswar: SAI International Education Group hosted the 5th edition of one of India’s biggest K-12 Science and Technology fests SAITED 2021, virtually on Saturday, September 11, 2021 with the theme “The Journey To Infinity and Beyond”. This was a day-long, student driven event managed by the students of classes XI and XII from the science stream with handholding support from mentors. The teams were divided into six corporate structured groups each with a different portfolio and headed by a Director. There was a Marketing team, a Finance team, an Advertising team, IT team, Logistic team and Research team. The annual event gave the students a mega platform to discuss and showcase their ideas, experiences, observations and findings through various activities.

This year’s event hosted over 7500 students from 300+ schools across India and overseas showcasing more than 120 projects at the Science exhibition. Schools from Odisha Adarsha Vidyalaya Sangathan were a part of this mega event along with the National Progressive schools of India and Round Square Schools from India and abroad.

The brainchild of the Founder-Chairman, SAI International Education Group, Late Dr. Bijaya Kumar Sahoo, SAITED started in the year 2016 is now India’s largest school-based science and technology festival.

The annual mega event SAITED was divided into two segments, one included science based activities, workshops, competitions. The other was TED Talks, MED Talks in which experts in the field of Science, technology and medicines gave valuable inputs to the students. Activities like Tech Fair – Science and Technology were exhibited on the theme ‘Sustainable Development Goals 2030’.The other activities were TED Q – Science Quiz, Science Debate, Science Acapella, If I were, JAM, Science Up Comedy, Arguably the Best, Trash to Treasure, Mathemaze that involved solving mathematical puzzles and riddles to navigate a maze, workshops on Aeromodelling, Virtual Reality, Robotics Coding, Forensic Science & Moon Walking, and Fun Games with myriad of interesting science-based games also gave a unique blend of fun with learning.

e-SAITED aimed to promote STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths), orient, educate, and prepare school students towards becoming future innovators, researchers, consultants, and designers in their preferred field. Students got an opportunity to present their ideas and research works based on the theme and obtained valuable advice to strengthen their work.

In the past,SAITED had been graced by eminent personalities like British Research Scientist, Presenter, Author Prof. Lewis Dartnell, Space Scientist and NASA Astronaut, Dr. Jack D. Fischer and others.

eSAITED 2021 was graced by international and national luminaries that included Prof. Michael D. Smith, Professor of Information Technology and Marketing at Carnegie Mellon University from USA, Dr. Karen Yeates co-Founder and co-Director of the Queen’s University School of Medicine Office of Global Health, Canada, Dr. Prasant Mohapatra, the Vice-Chancellor at the University of California, Davis, USA who addressed the students in the inaugural session.

Dr. Muffazal Lakdawala, Director and world renowned bariatric surgeon, of Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital spoke on the topic “Lessons learnt from a surgeons Life”, and in his own words he said “More than obesity people have been suffering from diabetes and India is the 3rd country in the world which has the maximum people who are obese, consciously we need to inculcate good healthy eating and living habit.

Dr. Kunal Sarkar the Senior Vice Chairman, Director and Head of Cardiac Surgery at Medica Super specialty Hospital, addressed the assemblage during the Med talk and spoke on the topic “Is Health a luxury or necessity? A service or a commodity?” Dr Sarkar spoke vividly about the necessity of having good health especially during the pandemic and how the young students can take care of their own health. In his words, “The philosophy of my life is to passionately work towards the betterment, even if I need to continue my work endlessly, still I will feel a lot more could have been done, let us all work towards our wellbeing and lead a disease free life.

Addressing the students at eSAITED 2021 Dr. Silpi Sahoo, Chairperson, SAI International Education Group said ”There are five components to raise the innovation index of our nation; as a nation we need more of research, problem solving, enquiry, creativity and innovation, use of high technology, entrepreneurial leadership and hence it is now the responsibility of the educational institutions to train the children in that direction to realize the dream of the nation”.

The event gave the students an excellent opportunity to interact with luminaries from the field of research, engineering, medicine, health and technology from across the globe and the pursuit of scientific knowledge. The event finally culminated with a Stand-Up Comedy performance by a renowned Comedian Kumar Varun, for participants to enjoy and unwind themselves from the months of hard work put in by them.