Chief guest for the function, Finance-cum-Education Secretary V K Singh, interacted with the participants after the inaugural ceremony. The SLEPC is organised under the INSPIRE Awards Scheme of Department of Science and Technology.

As many as 240 models and projects have been exhibited by the students of various government and private schools of Chandigarh, who have received Rs 5,000 from Union Ministry of Science and Technology for preparing their projects.

Aatishya Sharma, Class VII student of Delhi Public School said, “My model is a ‘prototype of human transport vehicle for unknown terrains’. I have worked on it for almost two months and my parents were a great support. I enjoyed working on this model.”

Shubham, another student said, “There are many models depicting the use of solar and wind energy, and projects showing Chandigarh as an eco or solar city. My own model is on ‘generating electricity from molten salt’. All the students have tried to give their best through their models.”

“The main objective of INSPIRE is to communicate to the youth the creative pursuit of science and attract talent to the study of science at an early stage and build the required human resource pool,” said Dr Surender S Dahiya, Director of SIE.