Why you should attend ISF 2026
Scroll
.png)
Hear World Leaders in Science - Including Nobel Laureates
Meet Subhanshu Shukla - India’s Newest Space Hero
Watch an Original Theatre Drama Chronicling India's Space Journey
Meet the Mind Behind Transformers - Ashish Vaswani
Play Sci-Fi & AI Games - Win Prizes Worth ₹2 Lakhs
Rethink Your Assumptions About Reality Through a Quantum Perspective
Explore Science Exhibitions, Art, Theatre & Interactive Installations
Witness Science Presented Like You've Never Seen Before
Speakers
.png)
Abhay
Karandikar
.png)
Shivkumar
Kalyanaraman
Shubhanshu
shukla
Astronaut
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)
First ISRO astronaut to visit the International Space Station
Venki
Ramakrishnan
Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry
Ashish
Vaswani
Co-founder and CEO
Essential AI
Creator of Transformers that powers ChatGPT and beyond
Nikku
Madhusudhan
Professor of Astrophysics and Exoplanetary Science
University of Cambridge
Mind finding life on other planet
Eshan
Chattopadhyay
Associate Professor
Cornell University
Godel Prize Winner for Random Computation!
Marcia C.
Barbosa
Professor of astrophysics and Exoplanetary Science
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
L’Oréal Laureate who decoded water’s secrets
550+
Speakers
450+
Events
1,00,000+
Attendees
Over the past 6 editions
India Science Festival has seen
IMPACT
Registration For India Science Festival 2026
Heading 3
Complete your Registration
Abhay
Karandikar
Shivkumar
Kalyanaraman
First ISRO astronaut to visit the International Space Station
Shubhanshu
shukla
Astronaut
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)
Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry
Venki
Ramakrishnan
Creator of Transformers that powers ChatGPT and beyond
Ashish
Vaswani
Co-founder and CEO
Essential AI
Mind finding life on other planet
Nikku
Madhusudhan
Professor of Astrophysics and Exoplanetary Science
University of Cambridge
Godel Prize Winner for Random Computation!
Eshan
Chattopadhyay
Associate Professor
Cornell University
L’Oréal Laureate who decoded water’s secrets
Marcia C.
Barbosa
Professor of astrophysics and Exoplanetary Science
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Speakers
Schedule
Venues
Horizon Theatre (Auditorium)
Curiosity Field
(Kho Kho Ground)
Cosmos Hall
(Smt. Indrani Balan Science Activity Centre)
Wonder Space (Amphitheatre)
EXPERT TALK
Ctrl+Alt+Ethics: Navigating AI Without Losing Your Way
Nolita Coelho (Vice President - Product, Paperpal at Cactus)
EXPERT TALK
Building Future Innovators for India: Where Science, Society, and Scale Converge
Payal Rajpal (Director, Robotex India)
GAMES
Experiments for kids (TIFR Mumbai)
PANEL DISCUSSION
Launch, Land, Lead: India's Space Odyssey
Prof. Yashwant Gupta (Director, NCRA-TIFR)
Srinath Ravichandran (Co-Founder, Agnikul Cosmos)
Dr. Srimathy Kesan (Founder, SpaceKidz)
Dhruba Chakrabarti (Founder, WhyCosmos)
GAMES
Grand Show
Science Activity Centre, IISER Pune
PANEL DISCUSSION
Good Data, Great Stories: Bringing Research to Public Understanding
Shane Rydquist (Associate Vice President, Cactus Communications)
Dr. Karishma Kaushik (Science Communication Expert)
Prof. Arnab Bhattacharya (Director, HBCSE)
Prof. GV Pavan Kumar (Professor, IISER Pune)
PANEL DISCUSSION
Filling India's Lacunae of Non-Fiction Science Books
Dr. Vineeth Venugopal (Postdoctoral Researcher, MIT Boston)
Dr. Keshav Aggarwal (Assistant Professor, IIT, Bombay)
Nikhil Gulati (Writer, Illustrator)
Dr. Jahnavi Phalkey (Founding Director, Science Gallery Bengaluru)
Book Prelaunch + Paper Plane Contest
UNRULY
Karthik Venkatesh (Executive Editor, Penguin Random House India)
Upasana Sarraju (ISBF Fellow)
PANEL DISCUSSION
Random, but Not Really: A Conversation About Applied Mathematics
Dr. Vishal Vasan (Associate Professor, ICTS-TIFR)
Udayan Kanade (CEO, Oneirix Labs)
Prof. Amit Apte (Professor, IISER Pune)
WORKSHOP
Just-A-Minute (JAM)
Nukkad Theory
WORKSHOP
Carbon Capture Champions: Ancient Art meets Climate Science
Dr. Pialy Ghanekar (Founder, Cell Savvy Group)
EXPERT TALK
Graduate Training Through Academia - Industry Collaboration
Prof. Arvind Gupta (Professor, University of Toronto)
EXPERT TALK
The Engines of Truth are Stalling: The Decline of the Western University and the Opportunities for India
Dr. Thomas Barlow (Director, Barlow Advisory)
EXPERT TALK
Revealing Secrets of Our Mysterious Universe Using Radio Eyes: The Story of Radio Astronomy
Prof. Yashwant Gupta (Director, NCRA-TIFR)
EXPERT TALK
Digital Epigraphy at the Mythic Society, Bengaluru
Udaya Kumar (Honorary Director, The Mythic Society)
EXPERT TALK
Prof. Maneesha Inamdar (Director, InStem)
PERFORMANCE
SparkX: Startup Pitching Event
Invention Engine
PANEL DISCUSSION
Systems That Think: Mathematical Insights meet AI Engineering
Prof. Nick Jones (Professor, Imperial College London)
Dr. Srinath Sridhar (Assistant Professor, Brown University)
Prof. Debdeep Mukhopadhyay (Institute Chair Professor, IIT Kharagpur)
Dr. Neil Gaikwad (Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and MIT alumnus)
Prof. Anand Kulkarni (Professor and Associate Director at MIT WPU)
PANEL DISCUSSION
Next Generation of Semiconductor Innovators
Prof. Anshuman Nag (Professor, IISER Pune)
Ritu Sodhi (Fellow, SemiX IIT Bombay)
Dr. Ashish Arora (Assistant Professor, IISER Pune)
EXPERT TALK
Collaborative Robots: IHFC's Vision for Seamless Human-Machine Synergy
Dr. Rashmi Tripathi (IHFC, IIT Delhi)
EXPERT TALK
Can plants help feed the world by 2050?
Dr. Jani R Bolla (Royal Society University Research Fellow, Oxford University)
PANEL DISCUSSION
Cracking the Olympiad's Code - India's Champions
Prof. Surhud More (Professor, IUCAA)
Dr. Neerja Dashaputre (Principal Technical Officer - Education, IISER Pune)
Dr. Mayuri Rege (Assistant Professor, HBCSE)
Ananya Ranade (TIFR Mumbai)
Rajit Gupta (IIT Bombay)
PANEL DISCUSSION
The Last Mile of Innovation: From Labs to Markets
Dr. Rashmi Tripathi (IHFC, IIT Delhi)
Ritu Sodhi (Fellow, SemiX IIT Bombay)
Dr. Priya Nagaraj (CEO, Pune Knowledge Cluster)
Kunal Upadhyay (Co-founder, IIMA Ventures)
EXPERT TALK
Vijay Jerome, Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO), Digital & IT, Bajaj Auto Ltd.
EXPERT TALK
Randomness in Computing: Why Do We Care and Where Can We Get It
Dr. Eshan Chattopadhyay (Associate Professor, Cornell University)
PANEL DISCUSSION
From Model to Market: Building Scalable AI Startups in India
Dr. Manish Gupta (Senior Director, Google Deepmind)
Omkar V Narikar (CTO, Desible.AI)
Anirudh Bhardwaj (CTO, Recur Club)
Maya Sherman (Head of Tech & Innovation, Embassy of Israel)
Shailendra Jha (Co-founder, Change Engine)
EXPERT TALK
What's next in AI? Spatial Intelligence & World Models
Dr. Srinath Sridhar (Assistant Professor, Brown University)
FIRESIDE CHAT
Dr. Shivkumar Kalyanaraman (CEO, ANRF)
Sheel Kapoor (CEO, FAST India)
EXPERT TALK
“Every Contact Leaves a Trace”: Microarchitecture Leakages in Modern Computing Systems
Prof. Debdeep Mukhopadhyay (Institute Chair Professor, IIT Kharagpur)
PANEL DISCUSSION
Building India's Quantum Edge
Prof. Arun K. Pati (Director, QTECI)
Prof. Umakant D. Rapol (Professor, IISER Pune)
Dr. Bhaskar Kanseri (Associate Professor, IIT Delhi)
Dr. Sreejith G. J. (Associate Professor, IISER Pune)
EXPERT TALK
Science of War
Lt Gen Dr. Subrata Saha (Former DCOAS and Member National Security Advisory Board.)
HIGHLIGHT
Shubhanshu Shukla (Group Captain and Test Pilot with IAF)
EXPERT TALK
Building AI That Powers and Protects the Digital Workplace
Dr. Girija Narlikar (Director of Engineering, Google)
FIRESIDE CHAT
Dr. Ashish Vaswani (Co-founder and CEO, Essential AI)
Varun Agarwal (Founder, FAST India)
PERFORMANCE
The Best of Unbounded Science (BoUnSc)
EXPERT TALK
Water: From the Ice Age to the Nanoscience
Prof. Marcia Cristina Bernardes Barbosa (Professor, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul)
EXPERT TALK
Azadi in the age of AI
Dr. Kush Varshney (IBM Fellow at Thomas J. Watson Research Centre)
HIGHLIGHT
Inauguration of India Science Festival 2026
PANEL DISCUSSION
Rising Minds of India: A Dialogue on Excellence
Varun Aggarwal (Founder, FAST India)
Prof. Arnab Bhattacharya (Director, HBCSE)
Prof. Surhud More (Professor, IUCAA, Pune)
Ananya Ranade (TIFR Mumbai)
Rajit Gupta (IIT Bombay)
EXPERT TALK
The Search for Life Beyond the Solar System
Prof. Nikku Madhusudhan (Professor, University of Cambridge)
DEBATE
The World is an Illusion: A Quantum Perspective
Prof. Sourav Pal (Professor, Ashoka University)
Prof. Arun K. Pati (Director, QETCI)
Dr. Ashish Arora (Assistant Professor, IISER Pune)
EXPERT TALK
AI Compass: A framework to find AI use cases that are likely to deliver highest ROI
Dr. Anuj Gupta (Founder and CEO, Gradient Advisors)
PERFORMANCE
Portrait of Living Pictures: A Neuro-Aesthetic Dance Performance
Experience art with live display of audience's neuro-physiological data
ARISA Foundation
PANEL DISCUSSION
Operation Sindoor: Steering India's Defence Strategy with Science
Lt Gen Dr. Subrata Saha (Former Deputy Chief of Army Staff)
Ashok Atluri (Chairman & Managing Director, Zen Technologies)
Shiv Aroor (Managing Editor, NDTV)
EXPERT TALK
The Transformative Power of AI and Open Challenges
Dr. Manish Gupta (Senior Director, Google Deepmind)
EXPERT TALK
India’s Deep-Tech Moment: Building What the World Thought Was Impossible
Vivek Wadhwa (CEO, Vionix Biosciences)
EXPERT TALK
WHY WE DIE? The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality
Prof. Venki Ramakrishnan (Nobel Laureate, University of Cambridge)
EXPERT TALK
Mitochondrial Mutation and Ageing: Just Slow Enough?
Prof. Nick Jones (Professor, Imperial College London)
EXPERT TALK
Advancing Precision Genome Editing: Unlocking New Frontiers in Understanding and Treating Genetic Diseases
Dr. Samagya Banskota (Assistant Professor, Boston University)
AWARD FELICITATION
S. Chandrasekhar Rising Indian Diaspora Scientist Award
Jayant and Mangala Narlikar Rising Indian Scientist in Science Communication Award
EXPERT TALK
Privacy and Security in Blockchain Based Federated Learning
Dr. Rajesh Ingle (Vice-Chancellor, DES Pune University)
EXPERT TALK
Prof. M S Santhanam (Professor, IISER Pune)
EXPERT TALK
Neurons & AI - How Neuroscience Insights Became Scalable AI Systems
Arvind Saraf (Partner, Microsoft)
PERFORMANCE
Theatre Performance: India's Space Odyssey
Swatantra Theatre
Narration by Akhilendra Mishra
MEDIA
APPEARANCE
TESTIMONIALS
Richard Wiseman
Andrew Maynard
Karishma Kaushik
Marina Joubert
V.S. Ramachandran
Director Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego
Payal Arora
Professor and Chair in Technology, Values and Global Media Cultures, Erasmus School of Philosophy
P. J. Narayanan
Professor & Director, IIT Hyderabad
Subbarao Kambhampati
Professor of Computer Science, Arizona State University