PRIME CAFÉ-PLUS 2024

A unique mentorship-driven educational program for building presentation skills of young science students was initiated by AIST, Japan in 2022. Called CAFÉ-PLUS (Classroom for Advanced & Frontier Education - Presentation Learning for Young Students), this year it enrolled 44 contestants internationally and a team of 20 mentors (from AIST and other institutes in Japan, India, Indonesia and Korea). Twenty-two selected contestants were trained by mentors (1:1) for successive 3 rounds involving presentations on topics geared for different audiences (including funding agencies, Industry collaborations and high-school students). Competition of online presentations and on-spot evaluations through which 22, 8, 5 contestants were promoted to next rounds were marked by motivation, energy, positivity and networking. Final three winners were (i) Satoe OBUCHI, AIST, JAPAN and (ii) Bintee, IIT-Guwahati, INDIA; shared the first prize (iii) Anjana SAJEEV, IIT-Guwahati, India; received the second prize.