The National Young Academies from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand joined hands to organise the first-ever young academy International Poster Presentation Competition 2020. In an attempt to explore collaboration between the NYAs as well as arrange something for young students stuck in the pandemic, research students currently working in these four countries were invited to submit their research posters online. There were four disciplines: (a) Physical Sciences, (b) Life Sciences, (c) Applied Sciences and Engineering, and (d) Social Sciences, and two categories each in each discipline: Group A (undergrad, master’s and equivalent) and Group B (MTech, MPhil, PhD and equivalent). For each discipline, there was a panel of eight judges (twelve for Life Sciences) with two judges each (three for Life Sciences) from each country. The four convener judges were from the four countries each.
The competition saw a good response rate, with almost 250 submissions. After a first round of evaluation, 48 posters were short-listed for the second round. Here the participants were asked to present their posters live to the judges’ panel using web conference platforms. Scores from the two rounds were added up to make the final score, on the basis of which 24 poster submissions were awarded Best Poster, 1st Runner-Up and 2nd Runner-Up Awards with a prize money of 100, 75 and 50 US dollars, respectively. The remaining posters in the top 100 were awarded Certificates of Merit. The winners are listed here.
The Award Ceremony was held virtually on 17 October 2020. GYA Co-Chair Anindita Bhadra (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, India) and Lahcen El Youssfi (Moulay Slimane University, Morocco) for the GYA EC NYA portfolio addressed the ceremony participants, together with the presidents of both the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences, A K Azad Chowdhury, and the Indian National Science Academy, Chandrima Saha. The four NYA leads from Bangladesh (Mohammad Abdul Basith), India (Chandra Shekhar Sharma), Sri Lanka (Asanka Pallewatta), and Thailand (Sasitorn Srisawadi) also spoke. Gitanjali Yadav from the University of Cambridge, UK, joined with a presentation on ‘How to prepare an effective poster?’.