Audio Transcript

[00:00:00]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. For hundreds of ideas, free experiments and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. And now, here’s your host, Ben Newsome.

[00:00:20]
Ben Newsome: Welcome again for another Fizzics Ed Podcast. Glad to have you, no matter where around this world of ours you are. I hope you’re doing well as today we get to hear from an amazing person who’s leading a global programme. Sukruti Narayanan, she is the founder of the AIMERS Foundation, which is all about looking at robotics, artificial intelligence, science entrepreneurship, and media, so people don’t just participate, but they really help shape our future.

[00:00:43]
Ben Newsome: Now here’s the thing. She’s also head of global partnerships for Mission ShakthiSAT, which is a lunar mission being powered by 12,000 girls from across the globe in 108 nations. Wow. And this is an amazing chat to hear about what she’s doing, why she’s doing it, and how you can be involved. Let’s hear more.

[00:01:01]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re all about science, ed tech and more. To see 100 fun free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S and click 100 free experiments.

[00:01:21]
Sukruti Narayanan: Well, what keeps me busy these days is I head an all-female led lunar space mission. It is called Mission ShakthiSAT where we are empowering 12,000 girls from 108 countries across the world. So we give them free training on how to build satellites for 120 hours, and that’s what I do.

[00:01:42]
Ben Newsome: That’s not a small what you do. How did you start getting involved in this?

[00:01:48]
Sukruti Narayanan: Well, I would say I have to thank this country because my journey started as an engineer, electrical electronics engineer who used to code robots back in 2008 and 9. Back in India, people ask, “What do you do?” I say, “It’s a quadbot and hexbot that I code.” And then they’re like, “Okay, immediately what is that?” And it’s like four-leg robot, six-leg robot. And they’re like, “Suk, you’re building a toy. Why don’t you buy it from the toy store?”

[00:02:22]
Sukruti Narayanan: I’m like, well, yeah, how else do I explain? So coming from there, when I was 22, I co-founded a not-for-profit called Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Foundation. Well, that has led me to this path where back in India we reached about half a million students at that point of time, say by 2017, in five years since its inception, where I felt electronics for boys and embroidery for girls—come on, we could do much better.

[00:02:54]
Ben Newsome: Yes we can. We absolutely can do more. And wow, 108 countries, 12,000 girls on Mission ShakthiSAT. There’ll be some people who are absolutely already going, “Yes, I know about this project, this is awesome and I want to get involved,” and there’ll be others that have only just heard about it now. So what is the mission? Where is this spacecraft going and why?

[00:03:17]
Sukruti Narayanan: Why? I can tell you it’s a very simple reason: because we have less than 20% of women representing space tech. And when we talk about leadership, it is less than 3 or 4%. And we want more people. Especially we feel there is a very thin line difference between a missile and a rocket. And we need more women coming forward because there is a very high level of compassion.

[00:03:45]
Sukruti Narayanan: And when we have one woman, one girl involved, immediately the response from that child is, “How do I involve more girls? How do I take this to my country? How do I take it to my city, to my town?” And again we feel space is for all, and we need to give that opportunity. And I know it is 12,000 girls now and it’s only girls, but what I feel is we should not tip the table to the other side. So our next mission will be Boys for Mars, but this one is only for girls.

[00:04:21]
Ben Newsome: Oh, that’s fantastic. And being able to surround yourself by an amazing team, a group of engineers and educators to be able to pull this together. So, righto, so 12,000 girls—I mean, with that many backgrounds across all those different countries—how do you coordinate such a project like that?

[00:04:38]
Sukruti Narayanan: I would say it is not possible without the ambassadors who are involved. So we have 108 ambassadors for our mission. And what makes it very interesting is there is no money involved. So normally people are like, “Suk, there is no money, who is going to work?” But when there is no money involved, we all take pride in making this work.

[00:05:04]
Sukruti Narayanan: So I work at 2:00 AM and 3:00 AM without getting a single, okay, forget dollar, it’s not even a single cent that we get. But I feel so good about myself because I don’t know the face of these 12,000 girls who are going to be part of this mission, still I work hard. I want to make this world a better place and we all, all the single ambassadors are driven with this passion.

[00:05:29]
Sukruti Narayanan: So we have this passion like, “Yes, let’s make it count for the girls,” because I think technology will not be a problem going forward, but it is your level of compassion, the level of happy, that human intelligence, emotional quotient, that will make a huge difference going forward because, with internet, with everything, yeah, we all have access.

[00:05:51]
Ben Newsome: This reminds me, I’ve got a really good friend, Ted Tagami. I know you’ve met Ted. He has always talked about, well, we always talk about return of investment, ROI, and it’s very hard-nosed business stuff. And he goes, “What about return on education?” which I just love. So Ted, if you’re listening in mate, I do quote that, I do love what you said there.

[00:06:12]
Ben Newsome: And it’s true. I mean, we can do an effort for a transactional amount, but eventually those transactions move to somewhere else and you’re still left with yourself. So you’ve got to feel good about what you’re doing and clearly what you’re doing, you’ve got to feel very good. That’s neat. It’s really cool.

[00:06:27]
Sukruti Narayanan: Actually, Ben, to be honest, my journey has started with a not-for-profit and I was 21, 22 when I got into this sector. And when we say not-for-profit, there is not much respect. I feel things are changing now because immediately you have people giving their two cents that Suk, well you need fuel, you need money to run the show. That is very true, we are not denying that. And not-for-profit doesn’t mean there is no money involved, right?

[00:07:01]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, I mean, you need to, well, by definition, you need to fuel a rocket to get something to space. Someone’s got to build the materials and someone had to put some time into it for sure. My headspace around this is I’m really interested in social entrepreneurship. I mean, it gets bandied around a little bit, but the reality is that you can run a great organisation and still do good. Turns out they are not mutually opposed, they really aren’t.

[00:07:26]
Sukruti Narayanan: Right. So that is, I’ve been encountering people who always say, “Suk, this is important.” So this mission actually has given a sense of purpose and dignity for me, not only for me, for everyone involved. Because you asked how do I work with 108 countries, how do we manage things? Yes, we run around the clock and it’s simple. We don’t need one-hour long conversations, just a text saying, “Suk, I need this.”

[00:07:54]
Sukruti Narayanan: Sometimes when I look at my mobile, I don’t want to look at my mobile at all because there are like 50-plus messages always in the inbox. So I would tell my ambassadors, if there is anything really pressing, just give me a call because I would know that is really important. And we’re having fun, I think that’s the most important thing. And being in Australia, I feel that’s a great privilege for me because it is like this micro-macro side of things.

[00:08:21]
Sukruti Narayanan: For Afghanistan, for example, I… it’s very hard to have girls from Afghanistan to be part of our mission because after sixth grade they are not allowed to go to school. They do not have access to internet, the things are not great. And the more I work with other countries, know more about the problems, I feel wow, what we are going through is nothing. We have so much to do for them.

[00:08:46]
Ben Newsome: And what’s extraordinary is that if that’s your norm, being so potentially oppressed and all those things where you can’t have—if that’s your norm, that’s what you know. That’s kind of wild and you’re right. I mean, you can speak with a kid in Sydney or Melbourne, they can say, “I’m also oppressed.” It’s like, well, differently, and probably not to that extent. This is true.

[00:09:06]
Ben Newsome: Right, so you’ve got these girls right across the world and they’re going to launch Mission ShakthiSAT, which is an extraordinary mission. What sort of barrier is this for—do they randomly stumble upon what you’re doing? What ages are they? Are they coming from the school sector? Are they coming from the individual? How are they coming into your world?

[00:09:24]
Sukruti Narayanan: Very interesting question. Ideally, we should have girls coming from schools. So 14 to 18 is the age group where we want girls being part of the mission. Grade eight, nine, 10 is what we’re choosing. And you might ask, well, when we say up to 18, they might be in uni. But we are considering that in many countries in under-developed nation or developing nations, education is not a linear progression. We have dropouts, there are so many factors, right?

[00:09:56]
Sukruti Narayanan: So we are working with grade eight, nine, 10 students. And we started this October, September 2024. And interestingly, the students coming—so with so many nations involved, yes, we have a very straightforward process where we send it to the different education departments in a country. We have students enrolling through their schools from the educational department. Easy.

[00:10:26]
Sukruti Narayanan: And I would say I wouldn’t be talking about the mission if the process was that straightforward everywhere. And I’m so grateful for the process being a little challenging in different parts, because one of the challenges is there are countries where internet is such a luxury. Children do not have access to internet. So we were like, “Okay, what are we going to do?” Well, we send the PDF content and they can print that as books.

[00:10:57]
Sukruti Narayanan: So that is one possible thing. And Singtel, Singtel is a parent company for Airtel and they’ve been giving packets of data. So we’re finding interesting ways of giving internet access to these students. They go to a particular uni and they get access, they have projector and they have internet access.

[00:11:20]
Sukruti Narayanan: Well, in Australia, I would say it has taken quite some time, but I’m so grateful because this actually led me to thinking the whole system is decentralised because we do have various programmes. And again I would give all the respect to people who are doing amazing work both in the government sector and public sectors because there are so many programmes coming out there.

[00:11:49]
Sukruti Narayanan: And when I sent it to the ministers, I have a few of close councillors who are my friends. They are like, “Suk, there are so many problems in earth in my council. Parking problem, this fine, that fine, you know what, and you’re talking about sending people to other planets.” They’re like, “Complete your law degree and come and help me here.” And I’ll be like, “Hmm, well, that’s a nice perspective.”

[00:12:16]
Sukruti Narayanan: But with Australia we have about 140 girls, and we’ve reached them through community organisations. So it’s not through schools. And now interestingly I have schools coming forward and we’re going to have more girls. And well, with Mission ShakthiSAT we’ll have an exclusive programme happening in Australia, so yeah, we’re looking forward for that.

[00:12:40]
Sukruti Narayanan: But we have children from community organisations and I’m calling for students from homeschool, from homeschooling network, because I think nothing should be a barrier for a child to get free access to programmes like this and we’re making it happen.

[00:13:00]
Ben Newsome: Ah, it’s fantastic that you’ve effectively provided a structure, a scaffold for this to be able to happen, which is amazing. And actually I know that there’d be teachers listening on in thinking exactly what do we do with such an extraordinary mission? So is this something where teachers or homeschoolers might be looking to embed in their curriculum? Or is it something that’s seen as extracurricular, or is it a blend of both?

[00:13:25]
Ben Newsome: Because from my mind, I’m thinking about STEM in its purest form as solving problems with stuff. And usually a few people together solving the problems with the stuff. And in this case you’re talking about avionics and spectrum analyser, everything that comes with an actual real mission. So how does this fit from a formal educator through to an informal community group? How can they all sort of play together?

[00:13:51]
Sukruti Narayanan: It’s an interesting question because to answer that, I would say it’s a blend of both because it was not an easy task to come up with this curriculum. There were about 20 industry experts. So we have the curriculum built by rocket scientists from Alabama, from Purdue and we had Aatmanirbhar Trust, so we had Dr Shitij Mall, who is the driving force. He and his team have come together.

[00:14:23]
Sukruti Narayanan: We have Sharmila Devi who is aerospace engineer herself. And we have people from Airbus, from Argentina Space Agency, from ISRO. And interestingly, Ben, our 120 hours of curriculum has been vetted by IN-SPACe in India. So we’ve got their signature saying yes, I think that was a big huge milestone it happened two weeks ago.

[00:14:52]
Sukruti Narayanan: So what it means is we will be taking this curriculum to all the schools back in India, and every child would learn. So when we say why we felt this is a dream, audacious dream of Dr Srimathy Kesan—she’s the founder behind this huge mission—and what we felt was when we say space, the common people immediately think, “Well, I either become an astronaut or a rocket physicist.”

[00:15:18]
Sukruti Narayanan: That’s it. But there are millions of other job opportunities in this sector and we can’t blame them because they do not have the exposure. And interestingly on that note, I have—well, yes, it is official so I could tell this out—I have VarahaSat, which is an Australian built satellite. So I have the engineering model of VarahaSat at my home.

[00:15:45]
Sukruti Narayanan: People would be wondering, “Well, it should be in museum. What does it do in your home?” Well, I’m being a spokesperson for VarahaSat taking it to the communities. So I had an interesting interview with SBS two days ago. And immediately when I say I’m taking a satellite with me, people ask, “Well, it’s long and pointed, Suk, how are you going to take it? How do you manage?”

[00:16:08]
Sukruti Narayanan: Then I had to say, “Well, long and pointed are rockets. They are a launch pad to drop the satellites in whichever, yeah, GEO, MEO or LEO that it needs to go.” And then I have to say what are these locations. It is an interesting conversation and the common people are super excited because they’ve never seen a satellite.

[00:16:32]
Sukruti Narayanan: And normally when we say satellite and to see all this they either have to go to a museum or it is there in the laboratories. But people are very much excited. I have so many volunteers coming on board just because they are like, “Suk, when I was a kid I always wanted to be part of this, but it was very expensive, we couldn’t afford it, and you’re bringing it to children for free. So we are happy to volunteer. We are happy to be a part of it. We want to take it to as many kids as we can.” So I think yeah.

[00:17:04]
Ben Newsome: This is fantastic. I mean a lot of this work in space education is about democratising space and its access. I mean, the reality is that the space industry does affect every single industry on the planet, whether we like it or not or even realise it or not. It just does. But that doesn’t deal with the access point.

[00:17:21]
Ben Newsome: And this sort of work does, at least getting kids to understand that yes, they can be involved in missions, they can suggest their ideas and maybe learn from real engineers who are doing it for real. That’s a solid thing to be able to say, “I’ve been involved in this,” especially at the age of 15 or 16 years old. You’re in Afghanistan or whatever country you are, all of a sudden you’re involved in a global mission to space. That’s pretty wild.

[00:17:46]
Sukruti Narayanan: And what is even more wilder is we have one child from each of these 108 countries travelling to India August 23rd this year, hosted by the President of India. And these children are going to see satellites from four different countries. Interestingly, Australia is one of them. The Macquarie Uni has bagged this opportunity where we have Latvia Space Agency, Greece Space Agency, Macquarie Uni, and a consortium between Purdue and Alabama University. So these four satellites are going to travel to India.

[00:18:27]
Sukruti Narayanan: And we have 27 students—well, 27 countries forming a team, learning about what these satellites exactly do, the Ham radio circuitry, the PCB designing, they would be soldering, and they would learn how to integrate test. So what we see is these 27 kids who would form a team and learn about this, it is not just the technology that they’re learning, but they will also understand what are the constraints, you know, what are the odds they are beating and, you know, it’s not really easy to travel to another country.

[00:18:59]
Sukruti Narayanan: And what is the exact scenario that they see in their country and how are they beating those odds? Because a well-developed nation, if a child is going to know about, “Oh, so you don’t have basic internet? Oh, seriously? And you’re still not complaining? Oh, that’s exciting!” Okay, so they will have lot of takeaways.

[00:19:19]
Sukruti Narayanan: And for a child who knows, “What? You get free internet? Oh, okay. You actually fight, you fight for an iPad? Is that what you—okay. I thought we would ask for food and we would cry for the basic necessities.” So this child will understand how they have to develop their nation, what are the progress that they have to see in their nation, how are they going to bring about—so it is not just a technology interchange, but it’s going to be a cultural and more than anything, Ben, what we envision is 15 years down the line,

[00:19:51]
Sukruti Narayanan: we’re very sure that these children would be leaders in their countries. We don’t know, maybe 20 years down the line they’re going to be, they might be a minister for a particular portfolio, they might be an engineer or a scientist, they might have startups, we never know. But definitely they’re going to be leaders. And we want them calling each other and say, “Hey, the situation in my country is not great. We need your help and we need to send allies for that.”

[00:20:21]
Ben Newsome: Which is really powerful because we often talk about empowerment of our youth, but our youth are stuck in silos anyway. And so this is really breaking, by definition, a global project breaks down every single country barrier around, which is fantastic. So it’s really about creating a platform for them to go. And funny as you were saying 15 years from now, I looked down on the bottom right of my computer screen, okay, it’s 2026. I’m time-stamping this particular chat as we talk, thinking, wow, well we’ve got four years give or take towards the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

[00:20:53]
Ben Newsome: They are a thing and they’re important, but they can feel intangible to the kid in Western New South Wales, the kid in Southern Fiji, the kid in Northern Canada. With their resources and their networks and it can feel a little bit—excuse me as my voice goes—it feels a little bit difficult for kids to be able to actually get involved in something that can make a difference for their community, maybe broader or oh my gosh, the world? Well, that’s a big call for little old me in a town. But with a platform and the network they can do it. And this is what this is about.

[00:21:28]
Sukruti Narayanan: Totally, totally. Because that is what even we as ambassadors, we are tapping on things. Because how will I find someone from, how will I work with someone from Solomon Islands and Kiribati? I have not heard of so many places. And I feel working with Samoa Islands, Malta, and it is really exciting because with UK, we’re running a series now because AIMERS Foundation has been appointed to run the global fundraiser for all the 108 countries.

[00:22:04]
Sukruti Narayanan: So we are having interviews with our ambassadors and what we feel is everyone gets stuck because we feel, well, you know, we have people asking, “You need fuel, you need money to do this,” and we are like, “Okay, I need money, but when will you get money?” Only when you do the work. When you work is—you know, it is like a chicken and egg situation and we are just stuck there.

[00:22:26]
Sukruti Narayanan: And well, you know, we thought with this mission all we need is $1 from every single person that we speak with. By the way, I’m going to send the donation link to you to collect $1 from you, Ben.

[00:22:35]
Ben Newsome: Sounds good.

[00:22:36]
Sukruti Narayanan: Because we feel the moment you say, “Hey, you know, give me $100,000 or whatever,” well, corporate, well they are ready to give a mil as well, a million, two million. And in return, definitely they need something. So mostly, you know, how it works is if they’re going to give their marketing expense or you know, whatever, they’re going to ask for the data.

[00:23:00]
Sukruti Narayanan: And we’re very particular, we are not going to share the data of any—so how this started is with European nations, we have the GDPR, they are very strict with their GDPRs.

[00:23:11]
Ben Newsome: Highly.

[00:23:12]
Sukruti Narayanan: Yeah, and I’m like, okay, why is it only with European nations? Should be everywhere. And I’m like, okay, what do we do? I remember creating 108 Google Forms individually. And what is even more crazier is each form has individual links. So without mixing that up, I had to look for the right link and send it to the corresponding ambassador. And I’m like, Suk, what are you even doing? But I felt no, it is important.

[00:23:43]
Sukruti Narayanan: And that is when I realised, oh, I have this crazy amount of energy. And it has saved my marriage many times because I focus on these tasks rather than wondering why my husband is rolling his eyes or why he’s sighing heavily. So I’m like, yeah, it’s good, good karma.

[00:23:59]
Ben Newsome: Well, when someone’s impact-driven as long as the partner gets it, you have a very interesting and wonderful life. That’s for sure. That’s the case. That’s really cool. I mean and yes, I would say yes, energy to create 108 forms and send them off to ambassadors and set up 12,000 students worldwide and some 20-odd engineers on a panel and to drive funding as well, it takes some effort for sure.

[00:24:26]
Ben Newsome: And by the way, of course by nature of this particular chat, we’ve got people in schools all the way through to people in corporate and so on. So I mean yes, people can get behind this and some people have deeper pockets than others, but either way, letting people know that this is a real mission that’s actually going to be happening is also part of it as well. And I want people to understand that if you can’t get your class involved for whatever shape or form, you might know someone who can.

[00:24:45]
Sukruti Narayanan: Absolutely. And what I also see is Ben, yes, not everyone is excited about building a satellite or learning about it, right? Because what if a child thinks, this is too much for me, I don’t like maths, I don’t like physics? Well, I tell them, you don’t have to be part of the mathematical and you know, you don’t have to get into the Newtonian physics in that case. Just understand the basics because we need space journalists, we need science journalists.

[00:25:14]
Sukruti Narayanan: Because as much as we say space technology is turning out to be a multi-trillion dollar industry, but with the narrative that goes out, we have less than 3% of journalists having science as their background.

[00:25:28]
Ben Newsome: G’day, it’s Ben here. I hope you’re enjoying this particular chat and guess what, there’s so much more you can do with your science teaching. Head on over to fizzicseducation.com.au. There are complete and comprehensive teaching units that you can get your hands on. If you click on the top you will find there are a whole bunch of scope and sequences, cross-curricular teaching ideas, hundreds of printable experiments and activities, videos, risk assessments, marking rubrics, you name it.

[00:25:54]
Ben Newsome: It’s all there and it’s all linked to the curriculum and it’s something that you can implement right now. Head on over to fizzicseducation.com.au and check out what’s on offer.

[00:26:05]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, that’s challenging considering that they do shape public discourse and they’ve got quite the job to do. I mean, I certainly can’t comment on music theory because I’m not the greatest musician in the world. But if I had a bit of background in it, it would probably be a little bit better, right? So it is challenging because yes, there is science communication in its purest form, but science journalism, you really have to be true to the science and to the people who are involved in it.

[00:26:30]
Sukruti Narayanan: Right. And I think it’s a line of questioning as well, right? Because we were all told—so we are starting a new series with AIMERS where what curiosity looks like. Because we say, hey it’s important for individuals to be curious, right? Curiosity is the mother of invention. But I feel people do not know what a curiosity looks like. We don’t have guts to ask, like, you know, what questions do I ask? Where do I start? I think that’s an important thing more than anything. What questions do I ask? Where do I start? How does curiosity look like?

[00:27:08]
Ben Newsome: Mine is usually a pause, a random look to the sky, and a wonder if. I wonder if and then you try something. One thing that can happen though is with curiosity is that you can have unbounded amounts of curiosity and completely held back by fear.

[00:27:26]
Ben Newsome: So we can have a heap of curiosity, but if it’s all sitting on paper, you don’t really do much apart from ruminate. Which is hard. Maybe delivery and design of your curiosity and going down a certain path is useful, perhaps with some guidance and some guard rails. You don’t want to be curious and put your hand where it shouldn’t be, but at the same point, if you don’t do anything and just think, it’s kind of hard that produces an inertia that you may not want.

[00:27:56]
Sukruti Narayanan: Right, right. So I think yeah, as you rightly pointed, it is the right guidance that is required and we need people like yourself helping the next gen. Okay, where do I start? And yeah, don’t go too far and you need the answers, you need to build that momentum because everything is kinetic energy, right? Everything is inertia. Whether you’re sitting or you’re moving, so you have to decide which one you choose.

[00:28:24]
Ben Newsome: I choose the one that’s moving where possible. I believe in that absolutely. And actually here’s the thing, when you get moving and you produce a programme like this, a lot of people get on board. I know in Australia in amongst all the people you’ve assembled, Professor Scott Sleap is involved, we’ve got Veena Nair involved, people who they’ve got Prime Minister’s Science Teaching Prizes for a reason. They’re very good at what they do and which means it’s well guided. There are your guard rails to be able to produce some solid pedagogy.

[00:28:51]
Sukruti Narayanan: I am very grateful for having an extraordinary advisory team. Because I’ve been breaking my head for quite a while now because well, when I moved to this country nine years ago, I don’t have local experience for sure. Because back in India I had the then President of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, as my inspiration, his scientific advisor was in an advisory committee mentoring us and well, I received the Young Visionary Award, you name it, I had it.

[00:29:21]
Sukruti Narayanan: And when I came here, it was a little, “Great, Suk, but you don’t have local experience.” I’m like, “Okay, where do I start?” I ended up acting in a movie completely shot in Australia. I ended up doing phone banking and door knocking for Unions New South Wales. And I’m like, “No, this is not for me.” I ended up working as a telesales consultant.

[00:29:43]
Sukruti Narayanan: Well, it’s a BPO job. People hated it back at home, but yeah, I became a sales coach for a telco company and from a floor which had zero sales in just three and a half days I was able to bring 503 sales. And I was asked to repeat and rinse the process and that got me thinking, “No, I’m not here to sell phone plans.” What am I doing?

[00:30:08]
Sukruti Narayanan: Then I moved to a media company. I was a director for public relations where we were there in three world record books. It was amazing. And then again I thought when I was asked to repeat the same thing like with celebrities, I felt, well, this is not what I’m meant to be doing.

[00:30:23]
Sukruti Narayanan: So it took eight good years for me to come here and having people like yourself, like Professor Scott Sleap, Veena Nair, we have Professor Iver Cairns, yeah, you know, he’s our space-tech advisor, and amazing people across the board.

[00:30:43]
Sukruti Narayanan: I have the former Chief Election Commissioner of India who was responsible for rolling out the Electronic Voting Machines, EVMs it’s called. And these people, and I also have the former joint secretary of Lok Sabha. So having my tribe back from India, like who I know for over 15 years now, they joining us and having new set of people. This actually gives me lot of confidence that we are going in the right path.

[00:31:13]
Sukruti Narayanan: Because I’m so grateful for all the gaps and all the challenges that I faced in the initial days because without which I will not know the exact pain points. So now I feel AIMERS is about giving dignity to all the technologists. I don’t want the teenagers working for just Maccas and Domino’s, rather we’ve signed up with five space-tech companies where they’re giving job opportunities.

[00:31:39]
Sukruti Narayanan: Actually I can name them. We have HEX20, we have Orbit8, we have Earth AI Space, we have BAAS Rocketry, and we have Softlabs. So we have these five companies on board now like where we are breaking down the job opportunities into bite-sized, doable task banks. So that process is going on at the moment. So we have a huge team helping us with that.

[00:32:03]
Sukruti Narayanan: And I feel all this is making us feel good that yeah, you know, we want the next gen—yes, they learn about satellite making, fantastic—but what next? What I feel is it’s not like you give wings for them to fly and clip your wings saying, “Well, yeah, you’ve been given the right to dream, we don’t know what next.” I think that’s quite unfair.

[00:32:27]
Sukruti Narayanan: So we felt, well, you’ve completed your 120 hours, oh good, come on board, just start working for the tech companies. And also we feel we have people with double masters. And interestingly they’ve earned masters from Australia, from Australian universities, but they have been told as well that you don’t have local experience.

[00:32:54]
Sukruti Narayanan: So I feel AIMERS would be a platform not just for teenagers, but any migrant engineer and anybody who needs that first opportunity in tech space. So well, you know, by end of the day, 14th, I think two days ago, 14th of March, I ran a workshop for AI for Seniors. I took our satellite, our VarahaSat, the beauty was there as well.

[00:33:18]
Sukruti Narayanan: And people were like, “Oh, Suk, seriously, it’s so beautiful!” And it was a simple exercise of presenting a problem statement of planning a holiday with these seniors. And the way they engaged was incredible, they loved it.

[00:33:36]
Sukruti Narayanan: So I feel technology will keep evolving, it will take various shapes and forms and names. But the spirit of humanity, the spirit of including everyone in the dialogue should remain there. And today you might call it AI, tomorrow you might call it anything, so yeah, doesn’t matter. But we need all because that is going to create great success.

[00:34:00]
Ben Newsome: My thought has always been that the tools are just there, technology is a tool, use the tool, your choice. But it’s there. And then for good or ill is what you make it. And hopefully these kids learn that their 120 hours they do of the work they can absolutely apply their knowledge and their skills and the current tools, whether it’s 15 years away from now or not, they can then use it and apply it in a good way.

[00:34:25]
Ben Newsome: How would you advise other groups who are looking to make serious impact? Because I mean often this question comes up for a lot of the guests on this where often think about advice for teachers or advice for students or advice for XYZ. In this case you really have, you’ve pulled together a whole bunch of nations around a very clear programme. It’s a little bit messy at the sides because you’re still pulling it all together, the things, but it’s very clearly on its way.

[00:34:52]
Ben Newsome: If someone has an extraordinary vision and they want to make something really work and it requires to go beyond their borders and to build a great big team of ambassadors and to be able to create networks that don’t exist yet, my gosh that’s quite a lift. So I mean it’s really hard to say here are my five steps, off you go. But what would you initially say that they’ve got to do?

[00:35:13]
Sukruti Narayanan: I would say work hard. There is no substitute for hard work and you have to do the heavy lifting. If you’re going to expect that yes, you know, you will have a great team, but if you’re going to expect them to do all the heavy lifting where you know you just fold your hands and think, “Okay, what’s happening next?” it’s never going to happen.

[00:35:33]
Sukruti Narayanan: Because I feel you do your 100%, you give your 200%. And you have your teams feeling, “Oh yeah, you know, I wanted to help you with this, I wanted you to meet this person or do this,” and that will help the next jump. But if you’re going to wait, “Well, you tell me who I should meet and I’ll just wait here,” it’s never going to happen. And maybe it might happen, but honestly Ben, I feel opportunities are everywhere.

[00:36:02]
Sukruti Narayanan: It is how you create it. Like when people say, “Oh we don’t have opportunities,” I’m like, “No, it is everywhere. You just take a deep breath.” Because until I had VarahaSat in my hand, I never expected. I’m like, “Okay, every day I look at it, I’m like, oh my god, you know, this is with me, I have to do justice.” So I’m thinking of very interesting ways that I never thought I would do.

[00:36:25]
Sukruti Narayanan: So I’m getting a free venue with Hornsby Council, I’m getting a free venue with Blacktown. So now I’m like, okay, you know, let me activate my other contacts and interestingly it is working. So all I would say is LinkedIn is a great tool. That is how we identified our ambassadors of other countries. And people are ready to help.

[00:36:47]
Sukruti Narayanan: Don’t ask them like huge favours. You know, it’s just like keep it very simple. And we all have very limited time, that we agree. But what’s the priority? We have to define our priorities and LinkedIn is there. That is the best tool because people are watching our work.

[00:37:08]
Sukruti Narayanan: If you want to connect with people, you tag them, and interestingly they message me, they direct message me saying, “Suk, this is an incredible project that you’re working on.” So you know, don’t underestimate the power of public relations and marketing. Well, that is my post-graduation, my majors was with public relations and journalism. And I’m so grateful for that because being a technologist with this background, I think it’s very unique and it is the need of the hour.

[00:37:42]
Sukruti Narayanan: By the way, on 18th, yeah, on Wednesday, I am taking a session on PR for space tech companies. So yeah, in the network whoever is watching, if this goes out by 18th, please do join the session.

[00:37:57]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely, I mean you don’t want to create the world’s most best thing ever and put it in a box and then no one knows about it. That doesn’t help.

[00:38:07]
Sukruti Narayanan: Exactly. I know I think there’s a thin line where you know, people think well I should not be blowing my trumpet, you know, they want someone else to talk about it. But it’s not going to happen. You have to put your hands forward and now literally, you know, wherever I see, they call me this poster girl or they call me the space lady because they see me with the yellow jacket.

[00:38:31]
Sukruti Narayanan: I’m not wearing yellow jacket now because people are like yeah. And interestingly, when I go to conferences—I was at the INDO PAC—and I had a friend of mine just tapping and say, “Yeah I thought so! You know, from a distance it was a yellow jacket and I was 80% sure that should have been you.” And I was like, “Okay.”

[00:38:51]
Sukruti Narayanan: So you know we’re creating that brand. This might look very small but to work with 108 countries it requires consistency. Consistency is one thing that is very important. And people, I feel there are three different types of people. Once you give an idea, they just jump on board. They don’t know what they’re doing but they just jump on board.

[00:39:13]
Sukruti Narayanan: I can count myself on that because I think, “No, this is great.” And I have so much energy and the more you give, the more you get as well. So I’m completely in to be crazy. And you have the other group where they are like, “Okay, you show me a little success and I’ll follow.” And you have the third group where they fully see, “Yes, it’s successful, I’ll join the next iteration,” and they would go full all out.

[00:39:39]
Sukruti Narayanan: And I think we need all the different types of people. So what I see is it’s all about human connections and public relations. So what we do when we reach, when we approach someone saying, “Hey, this is a great idea,” and when people say, “Well, I don’t think it’s great,” or “You know why are you wasting your time,” we immediately block them or either we accept that okay, maybe I should not be doing that and we discard our thoughts, or we just block them, we don’t talk to them at all.

[00:40:08]
Sukruti Narayanan: I think no, just be in touch with people because at that point of time, maybe that’s what they from their experience, that’s what they shared. But few months, you know when you keep rolling on with the project, I actually see so many of them, like I make it a point to put a WhatsApp story, WhatsApp status and a Facebook reel, Insta reels.

[00:40:32]
Sukruti Narayanan: I have people randomly like, you know, “Suk, this is incredible, I know you approached me long time ago,” and I don’t remind them. They just come back saying, “I know you spoke about this long time ago, it’s great to see you’ve done this progress. I want to help.” And interestingly I have people messaging me, “I want to donate, I want to contribute.”

[00:40:51]
Sukruti Narayanan: And all I tell them is, “Don’t donate more, like $5 max will do, but please spread the word.” That is very important because we want everyone to feel, you know, we want to create lots of philanthropists. And maybe out of guilt I know they’re reaching out saying, “Ah come on, you know, we should have helped you in early stages but we couldn’t.”

[00:41:01]
Sukruti Narayanan: Sometimes Ben I think I’m getting some award on 21st for the Women’s Day. And I actually keep telling, “Don’t, you know, give me that award, don’t give me that laurel and make me a scapegoat. No, it’s all like, you know, it’s every single one of us need to play our part. It’s not you say, Suk, you’re incredible.” I’m like, “Okay, I know where it’s going. I want you all to play your part too.”

[00:41:30]
Sukruti Narayanan: Because spreading the word using your socials, everything has become democratised these days. We all have internet, you know, it’s up to us. You know, we could become an influencer. It needs that discipline and that dedication. You could do anything you want. See, 108 countries, you could pull it together. You’re a nobody, you can still do it.

[00:41:51]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, I’m a big fan of that 1%. What’s your 1%? 1% more. 1% more. The Kaizen principle I believe from Japan.

[00:42:00]
Sukruti Narayanan: Atomic habits! Yeah. Just keep doing it. You’ll get there.

[00:42:05]
Ben Newsome: And understand there’ll always be detractors no matter what you do. In fact, your detractors list will grow just as much as your supporters, the more you get out in the world, no matter what you do. People come with their own preconceived notions and ideas about what you might be doing and that comes with their own emotional baggage and that’s up to them. In the meantime, just go about what you’re doing and as long as you’re doing it with impact and sincerity, you’re okay.

[00:42:27]
Sukruti Narayanan: Yes. And I have to mention your incredible work Ben because I went through your website and how beautifully you mentioned, you know I’ve seen your 15 years old videos and all that. I don’t see much difference though, but honestly I didn’t notice that because the quality of content that you deliver and the passion with which you do.

[00:42:53]
Sukruti Narayanan: Because when I met you you were like, “Do you know the Double Diamond Suk?” I’m like, “No I don’t know this concept.” You just took that tissue paper, sorry the, you know, the menu cards at the restaurant, you just put it together. I’m like, “Wow, look at him.” So you are one of them, one of the very few who could bring science to life with anything and everything around you and I think that is a great gift.

[00:43:18]
Sukruti Narayanan: And I’m so privileged, I feel really blessed to have you on board as an advisor for STEAM pillar. Because you know what best? Because I feel surrounding yourself with the people who have already done it and who have the same vision. See by end of the day if our heart is not at the same place, then no matter how much each one of us have achieved, it really doesn’t make sense.

[00:43:42]
Sukruti Narayanan: We want to make the lives of students easy and we want to give access to every single one of them. Whether children are from rural areas, no postcodes, you know postcodes should really not matter. And homeschoolers, you know, I was surprised to know there are about 22,000 homeschoolers in New South Wales.

[00:43:57]
Ben Newsome: Yeah absolutely. Homeschoolers in New South Wales it’s growing in Australia.

[00:44:03]
Sukruti Narayanan: Right. And to be honest I want to homeschool my daughter as well, she’s two and a half now. And I remember we have Facebook groups and yeah, I’ve sent requests like about four years ago. People were like, “Seriously, why would you do that?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I feel homeschooling is a great idea.”

[00:44:27]
Sukruti Narayanan: And even you know, I want to invite everyone, why would we leave? Because I do see programmes these days it goes through schools. So even when I raise my hand for a very beautiful satellite observatory programme, they were like, “Which school are you from?” I said, “No I’m from AIMERS Foundation.” We were raising money at that time. So I was like, “I’m from the foundation,” and they’re like, “No we go only through schools.”

[00:44:50]
Sukruti Narayanan: I’m like, “There are so many…” Just for an Indian Punjabi festival it’s called Teeyan Da Mela, can you guess how many women come together just one day event?

[00:45:00]
Ben Newsome: Okay that’s unfair. It could be huge numbers.

[00:45:04]
Sukruti Narayanan: It was like close to 4000 women. Just one event in Blacktown! So it’s women who just come and go and it is a lot of people. We’ve hired the entire basketball, like the whole court from start to end, and I took science at that event.

[00:45:23]
Sukruti Narayanan: I took a foam board of astronaut moon landing with the face cut, and people were wearing their Indian attire and still they were, you know, popping their face inside and yeah, you know, everyone loves science. We have to make it more fun.

[00:45:41]
Sukruti Narayanan: And I think with AIMERS our goal would be to glamourise science. Why should only your Bollywood and your cricket, you know, have so many fan followers and be glamourised? We want science to be glamourised. It’s so much fun! You brush your teeth every day, you comb your hair, you cook, there is science in everything.

[00:45:58]
Sukruti Narayanan: You take a bath. If not every day at least, you know, alternate days at least, and you have the foam lathering up and come on, science is everywhere.

[00:46:08]
Ben Newsome: It is everywhere. And actually that brings up the point there’ll be some people here who want to get involved and where you have been everywhere with all the different work that you’ve been involved with. So AIMERS Foundation has a website, besides Mission ShakthiSAT. So how do people listening into this engage their students to know more or perhaps they’re coming from a corporate or organisation background where they want to be involved in the other aspects of these programmes. Where do they have to go?

[00:46:34]
Sukruti Narayanan: So it is our website which is www.aimersfoundation.org. So we have various programmes listed in our website. So if you go click there and say you want to be involved, you actually will get emails very specific to those programmes thanks to technology.

[00:46:56]
Sukruti Narayanan: So yeah any programme. So we are introducing journals for school children. To answer your question whether you’re a corporate, you’re a parent, or you’re a school or you’re a teacher so we feel we need to include everyone as part of the ecosystem because we cannot work in you know, we can’t work very independently. We have to work with each other.

[00:47:18]
Sukruti Narayanan: Because what a student goes through, well we want teachers, we want the corporate, we want everyone knowing. You know, by end of the day we want to make our nation maybe number one in technology. So how I envision is by 2050 we want to make Australia the global innovation hub.

[00:47:43]
Sukruti Narayanan: And how we’re going to do that for under 20s, we want to give them opportunities on publishing their academic work through Maker Mark journals because we do not have student academic journals for school children. Very active we have for college and beyond. And we want to give these children the opportunities to patent their ideas.

[00:48:04]
Sukruti Narayanan: Because as much as yes, you know, writing, again when we say writing journals, it can be on any topic. It doesn’t have to be, we do have tech schools who have amazing, like I had a student giving me a 200 page report. I’m like, “Wow, this is great.” We’re looking at 1500 words and it is a starting point.

[00:48:21]
Sukruti Narayanan: Because what we feel is whether you’re going to take science or no, you need to articulate your ideas. We need to communicate very clearly and you need to structure your thoughts well. And I think this will be a great platform for you to do all that.

[00:48:36]
Sukruti Narayanan: And the next step would be you work more on this idea and you know, we want to help patent your ideas. And say we want students talking about how many startups that they’ve built, how many causes they are working for, rather than worrying about I have pimples, I have freckles, my girlfriend and boyfriend you know, it’s not working because things will change. You know, you would not even want to remember the person you are with.

[00:49:04]
Sukruti Narayanan: And we don’t want you to beat yourself up because you missed those opportunities when you were young. Because when you get older it is like your video game. You have more challenges and you know, the game gets harder, it is really interesting. It was really amazing but yeah, you know things start, you have your mortgage, you have to yeah, the cost of living going high, a lot of things are there and for you to experiment when you’re in your 30s it’ll be really hard. It’ll rock many boats in your personal life. And that’s why we are like, when you are young get this opportunity, give it a go and let’s see.

[00:49:40]
Ben Newsome: It’s a lot harder to innovate and make stuff happen when you’re on the twilight of your career versus the start because you can always pick yourself back up again and it’s a little bit harder when you’re a little bit older and you got more risks that are underneath all of what you’re doing.

[00:49:54]
Ben Newsome: So I love this, this is really fantastic. Look Suk, this has been really cool to hang out. I know that you’re going to do extraordinarily well, regardless of where you’re going. But the AIMERS Foundation is here to stay and I know that these students are going to get a lot out of this programme. Well done, and thanks very much for coming on.

[00:50:11]
Sukruti Narayanan: Thank you Ben. Let’s create magic together.

[00:50:16]
Announcer: We hope you’ve been enjoying the Fizzics Ed Podcast. We love making science make sense. Why don’t you book us for a science show or workshop in your school? If you’re outside of Australia, you can connect with us via a virtual excursion. See our website for more.

[00:50:33]
Ben Newsome: So I hope you enjoyed that chat with Suk. I certainly did. Now I know you’re going to want to find out more about the AIMERS Foundation, so head on over to the aimersfoundation.org. This is where you can find out how they are empowering kids to understand about AI, emerging fields, robotics, STEAM, media, all of this put together to be able to make an extraordinary difference for their communities.

[00:50:54]
Ben Newsome: Now I’m pretty sure you’re going to want to go find out about Mission ShakthiSAT. That’s that lunar mission where 12,000 girls from across 108 countries seriously are involved in a lunar mission. Now head on over to shakthisat.org, that’s S H A K T H I S A T dot org, and find out all about it. It’s a global space initiative and you could probably get involved.

[00:51:19]
Ben Newsome: So that’s enough for this particular episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And as usual, we have more guests coming onto the Fizzics Ed Podcast. You’ve been listening to me, Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education. This is the Fizzics Ed Podcast, and I hope to catch you another time.

[00:51:31]
Announcer: You’ve been listening to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re excited about science. Subscribe to us on iTunes to download the next episode as soon as it’s released. And don’t forget, for hundreds of ideas, free experiments, our new Be Amazing book and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S.