The 5^th edition of India International Science Festival was announced in the presence of Dr Shekhar C Mande, Secretary, DSIR and Director General CSIR, Sitendu Mandal, Dr K Muraleedharan, Director CSIR-CGCRI and other eminent delegates.

India International Science Festival is an annual event jointly organized by Science and Technology and other related ministries and departments of the Government of India and Vijnanan Bharati with the sole aim of providing an exposure to the students to real science.

The theme this year for the science convention is RISEN- Research, Innovation, Science, Empowering, Nation.

The first and second edition of IISF was organized in New Delhi, the third edition in Chennai and the fourth was organized in Lucknow.

The reason why Kolkata was selected for this edition of IISF was because of the fact that this year CSIR wanted to go eastward. Kolkata has the required infrastructure and the maximum number of autonomous institutions, thereby making it an apt place to host this science convention.

This year 28 programs will be organized with more than 12000 participants from India and abroad.

Nav Bharat Nirman, Agricultural Scientist Meet, Progressive Farmers Meet, Women Empowerment and Scientist Meet and others are some of the events that will be held in this science convention.

The effort of film makers will be recognized and great motivation will be provided to develop scientific innovative content using the audio-visual medium. The content will promote science and technology. As part of the program, Indian and foreign science films will be screened.

IISF 2019 will begin from 5^th November and continue till 8^th November. The event will be held at venues like Biswa Bangla Convention Centre, Science City, Bose Institute, SRFTI, CSIR-IICB, Salt Lake and CSIR-IICB-Jadavpur.

Priyanka Dutta