Collaborative Excellence: Our Members and Partnership Network

Manthan has been in association with DRILS for the past 4 years for internship programmes. Dr Reddy’s Institute of Life Sciences (DRILS) is a not for profit Research Institute with a mission to be the preferred research partner to the Pharma and Life Sciences industry. DRILS focuses on original research and advancement of relevant skills, with emphasis on solution-oriented interdisciplinary research both for solving unmet needs as well as process innovation. The Institute has been set up on a public private partnership model by Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, the Government of Telangana, and the University of Hyderabad and is governed by a Board of Directors comprising eminent scientists and visionaries.

The selection process usually starts at the end of March with students given an opportunity to write an essay for the selection. The selected students then have to undergo 4 week training under the guidance of Dr Kiranam Chatti and Dr Aarti Sevilimedu. This research internship programme (with certificate) has enabled students to get hands-on research experience under the guidance of Dr Kiranam Chatti and Dr Aarti Sevilimedu.

The first half of the 4-week internship focussed on teaching students the fundamentals of scientific research and how to use the various research tools and databases to conduct genetic research. During the second half, students worked in groups on a capstone project which was presented to a panel of DRILS scientists, Manthan teachers and their peers at the end of the internship. Our students who have done this internship in the past have gone on to some of the top universities in the world.

The IC3 movement aims to bring college and career counselling to every school. Since 2017, Manthan has attended every IC3 annual conference where we meet face-to-face with university representatives from 20+ countries. Manthan is one of the few schools in Hyderabad which has been selected as a host school for the 2022 conference. Additionally, our counsellor and Head of Academics have presented at 3 annual conferences and 2 regional conferences. Our counsellor is also a volunteer faculty member at the IC3 institute that trains new counsellors.

The IACAC is an organisation whose mission is to facilitate global interaction among counsellors and higher education institutions in support of secondary students transitioning to higher education. Manthan has been a member of IACAC since 2019. Our counselling team attends the annual conference to meet with admissions officers from the leading universities in the world (Princeton, Stanford, Cambridge, etc.) and keep abreast of the latest trends in college admissions.

Each year, the LV Prasad Eye Institute’s Rehabilitation Center provides a number of volunteer opportunities for our students over the summer. These include audio recording, creating tactile learning materials and assisting with a summer camp for differently abled children. A month before summer, we take our 10th-12th grade students to the Institute, where they are given a tour of the medical centre (where they get to understand more about the various machines used in the diagnoses and treatments of different eye diseases) as well as the rehabilitation centre (where they learn the various forms of rehabilitation support the institute offers). This is usually an eye opening and empathy-building experience for the students, as they do get to interact with a number of children and young adults who are visually challenged, as well as some visually challenged adults who themselves are workers at the rehab centre.

Established in 1987, L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), a World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Prevention of Blindness, is a comprehensive eye health facility. The Institute has ten active arms to its areas of operations: Clinical Services, Education, Research, Vision Rehabilitation, Rural and Community Eye Health, Eye Banking, Advocacy and Policy Planning, Capacity Building, Innovation and Product Development. LVPEI is managed by two not-for-profit entities – Hyderabad Eye Institute (HEI) and Hyderabad Eye Research Foundation (HERF).

The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) conducts the Young Innovator’s Programme (YIP) every year for school children of classes VIII to X.

This provides children to get an opportunity to closely interact with scientists, researchers and Ph D students at CCMB. They gain first-hand experience of research work for a period of two weeks and see how scientists carry out work and what apparatus they use in detail. The subject matter of the lectures consists of topics such as the central dogma of life (protein synthesis), an explanation of Mendelian inheritance, population genetics, etc. In the labs, children get to observe several procedures including DNA isolation, protein crystallography, etc. They also learn how scientists choose models for experiments, the basics of conservation, etc. thus covering almost the entire spectrum of biological science.

Manthan is part of the 50 cohort schools partnering with University of Queensland, Australia, to build a Pan India virtual student incubator network – QLabs. Our 11th and 12th grade students were one of the QLabs finalists in 2021 where they pitched their idea of Care4kin, a support system with a human touch, to care for near and dear ones in a humane way, when they require it.

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) is one of the premier centres of scientific research in India that works at the very cutting edge of world science, bringing visibility and international recognition to scientific efforts in India. To facilitate a greater role in world science and technology, TIFR has started a new campus in Hyderabad. Research efforts were initiated through the Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences at TIFR, Hyderabad.

At TIFRH, outreach efforts are taken very seriously, whether it is in organising a series of popular talks by scientists who are leaders in their fields, called Sawaal-Jawaab, or in-visits by school and college students to their facility. High school students of Manthan visited the facility, as a part of the TIFR outreach programme, and had the opportunity to see the labs and instruments used in the research being conducted there. They were able to learn the principles of working for electron microscopes, Gel electrophoresis, RNA detection to assay stress responses in cells of Drosophila melanogaster, epitaxial thin film growth, and nanofabrication techniques.

TIFR organised a talk on Interdisciplinary approach in Sciences for teachers and students of Manthan in October, 2019. A session for students on Cell and Molecular Biology was also conducted in November. Various projects such as “assembling and monitoring climate changes through a Weather monitoring system”, “understanding the genetics and mutation using Drosophila fruit fly”, and preparing a portable microscope called Foldscope out of paper have been initiated with Manthan by TIFR and work is in progress to implement them in the future.

TestRocker Inc. USA, partners with leading international schools around the world. They work with students from Grades 7 to 12 following the IB curriculum. Their expertise is in preparing students for PSAT/ SAT/ ACT which are standardised tests used in the US and some other countries.

Manthan has partnered with TestRocker since 2021 to provide our students with test preparation for these tests including complimentary diagnostic tests and one-on-one consultations.

Families enrolling in TestRocker learning programmes receive real-time progress reports for their students. Manthan also receives progress reports for each student and gets to review them with the academic advisors at TestRocker.

Collegeboard is the organisation that administers tests such as the SAT, PSAT and AP. These are exams largely used for admissions to US universities and select universities around the world. Manthan has been a test centre for some of these exams since 2019.