Curiosity Conference 2026

Kushal Sacheti, an alumnus of IIT Kanpur, is the Founder & CEO of Galaxy USA Inc. and the Centre for Curiosity, NY. He supported the Curiosity Lab at IIT Gandhinagar in many ways and remained deeply committed to helping it grow and evolve. He was a visionary entrepreneur, philanthropist, and enthusiast for liberal arts education in IITs.

Curiosity drives human inquiry and shapes how people learn, create, and solve problems across art, science, and technology. It draws individuals toward uncertainty and sustains engagement with complex ideas. This conference highlights the Confluence of Art, Science, Technology, and Curiosity is a space in which disciplinary boundaries blur and methods and interpretive frames move fluidly between fields. This “confluence zone” enables new forms of reasoning and representation. The liberal arts offer interpretive depth, science provides structured investigation, and technology expands human capability through material and computational tools. Curiosity connects these domains by guiding inquiry and enabling shifts in understanding.

The intersection of Art–Sci–Tech already defines contemporary practice. Artistic research draws on scientific imaging, computation, and data visualisation. Scholars in the liberal arts and practicing artists engage with digital archives, algorithmic tools, and interactive media. Scientists employ narrative, metaphors, and visual composition to convey complex ideas. Technologists draw from design, performance, and storytelling to prototype interfaces and build new systems.
Curiosity fuels these exchanges by motivating experimentation and enabling close engagement with unfamiliar materials and perspectives.

The conference invites participants to examine these crossings, share insights from practice, and research, and reflect on how curiosity shapes discovery, creativity, and problem-solving within an interconnected Art–Sci–Tech landscape.

Why this theme now?

As environmental, social, and technological challenges intensify, curiosity is essential for flexible thinking. The liberal arts, contemporary art practices, science, and technology increasingly overlap in how problems are defined and approached. This theme brings these intersections into focus and invites new conversations on how curiosity shapes meaningful work.

Purpose and Scope

Explore the intersection of Art–Sci–Tech, a space where diverse disciplines engage in dialogue on curiosity and innovation.
Examine how the liberal arts, fine and contemporary arts, science, and technology draw from forms of curious inquiry.
Demonstrate how curiosity can inform new educational, research, and public-facing approaches.
Highlight connections between curiosity, innovation, pedagogy, cultural expression, and social change.

Major Themes

Intersections of Art–Sci–Tech – Hybrid practices that merge analytical, creative, scientific, and technological thinking.

Curiosity & Education – How curiosity shapes learning within schools, universities, and informal contexts, and how integrative art-liberal arts-sci-tech approaches support deeper understanding.
Curiosity Research – How curiosity interacts with cognition, emotion, memory, attention, decision-making, and creative problem-solving.
Curiosity & Social-Behaviour Change – How curiosity supports public engagement, community participation, empathy-building, and shifts in social norms.
Curiosity in Fine Arts, Contemporary Arts, and the Liberal Arts – How artistic and humanistic inquiry invites exploration, ambiguity, interpretation, and new forms of meaning-making.
Curiosity & Cognition – Interdisciplinary research on how curiosity functions in the brain and how it can be cultivated.

Call for Contributions

Papers, work-in-progress reports, and posters across all themes.
Creative practice submissions (visual, literary, performative, narrative, and interactive works).
Research demonstrations and tech-based exhibits.
Workshops on curiosity-driven making, inquiry, and reflection.
Panels that bring together practitioners from academia, industry, education, arts, humanities, and community sectors.
Researchers, educators, practicing fine artists (traditional and contemporary), liberal arts scholars, technologists, designers, students, community practitioners, and policy-makers interested in curiosity, interdisciplinary inquiry, creative technologies, and integrative pedagogy.

Click below to read the guidelines and submit your entry for the Conference

This Conference is an excellent opportunity to showcase your ideas, concepts, artistic expressions, thought experiments, alternative possibilities, prototypes, or research in a poster format and engage with a vibrant community of educators, teachers, researchers, artists, and practitioners. You are welcome to write an abstract to showcase any of the above themes.

Submission Guidelines

Speakers ●●●

Sukant Saran

Exhibited Artist/Physicist, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai

Sukant Saran embodies the philosophical convergence of theoretical physics and abstract sculpture, driven by a deep curiosity to translate universal laws into tangible form. Trained as a physicist, his practice rejects literal scientific illustration, instead creating "conceptual meldings of art and the laws of physics" using clay and form as technological vessels. His non-diagrammatic, abstract sculptures, like those exhibited at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), transform invisible scientific concepts into felt, expressive objects. This process—where scientific rigor informs the structure and sculpting provides the expressive medium—invites audiences to experience the inherent beauty and complexity of reality, fueling a renewed intellectual inquiry at the core of the A-S-T spectrum.

Shailesh Br
Contemporary Artist, CERN, Geneva & ICTS, Bengaluru

Shailesh Br makes the invisible structures of Big Science legible to a global audience. Selected for the prestigious Connect India residency hosted by Arts at CERN and ICTS, he leverages the vast Technological infrastructure and data of high-energy physics as artistic inputs. His contemporary Art practice translates complex theoretical explorations into critically acclaimed installations, exhibited globally at venues like Frieze Seoul and the Daejeon Museum of Art. Shailesh’s work facilitates a crucial dialogue, humanizing the highly specialized domain of particle physics and underscoring the cultural significance of high-level scientific missions.

Jenia Mukherjee
Interdisciplinary Researcher, IIT Kharagpur

Jenia Mukherjee, an interdisciplinary researcher at IIT Kharagpur, specializes in Environmental Humanities (Science), focusing on complex socio-ecological settings like the Sundarbans Delta. She co-developed the 'ethno-graphy' method, which integrates rigorous social research with visualization Techniques. Through the AQUAMUSE initiative, Mukherjee utilizes Arts-based pedagogies as a critical methodology to capture plural accounts of environmental events. Her work is driven by a curiosity to uncover community resilience, using creative Art tools as a functional Technology for ethical data collection and dissemination to advance water and socio-environmental justice.

Pratyasha Nath
Interdisciplinary Researcher, IIT Kharagpur

Pratyasha Nath, based at IIT Kharagpur, focuses on the crucial role of visualization Techniques within interdisciplinary Science research, particularly in vulnerable fluidscapes. As a collaborator on the 'ethno-graphy' method and the AQUAMUSE initiative, Nath instrumentalizes the Visual Arts to move beyond traditional quantitative limitations. She deploys drawing and community engagement methods as a Technology for ethical data capture, translating rigorous qualitative research into compelling socio-ecological narratives. Her work ensures that the Artistic process acts as a necessary tool for capturing the deeply human experience of precarity, thereby advancing on-the-ground narratives for environmental justice.

Arvind Sundar
Artist-in-Residence, Hampi Art Lab

Arvind Sundar’s practice establishes a formal methodology for exploring the visual syntax of rigorous Mathematical Systems (Science). His Art—focused on geometry, grids, repetition, and sacred geometry—is a systematic analysis of structure. Sundar uses the principles of Algorithmic Repetition (Technology) as the governing rule for aesthetic production. As an Artist-in-Residence at the Hampi Art Lab and an exhibitor at the India Art Fair 2024, his work demonstrates that logical analysis is a powerful generative force, revealing the inherent order and beauty embedded within universal mathematical patterns.

Kaushik Ghosh

Medical & Scientific Photographer/Educator, PGIMER Chandigarh

Kaushik Ghosh strategically fuses clinical Medicine (Science) with visual Communication (Art) for humanitarian advocacy. Driven by ethical curiosity, his work sheds light on critical issues in Global Health, including gender, equity, and climate. He pioneered Asia’s first B.Sc. program in Medical and Scientific Photography at PGIMER Chandigarh, institutionalizing this hybrid domain. His practice uses high-precision photography Technology to transform complex clinical data and public health campaigns (like vaccination drives) into empathetic, policy-driving narratives, reinforcing the role of visual Technology in promoting systemic, positive social change.

Argha Manna
(Comics artist, Science Historian, and Artist-in-Residence and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Gandhinagar)

Argha Manna is a cancer researcher turned comics artist from India. He explores the historical perspectives of scientific development and social issues through the lenses of an artist and a researcher both, which bridges the gap between academic research and visual storytelling. The advent of the ongoing pandemic made him interested in the history of infectious disease research. Since the last year, he has been experimenting with Prof. Lydia Bourouiba, MIT to translate the complex science of fluid dynamics of disease transmission into comics, and developing teaching tools to bridge the knowledge gap in public domain about infectious disease transmission. Their collaborative effort has already been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine and has got featured in the Graphic Medicine-The Best of 2020 list (JAMA).

Jaison Manjaly
(Jasubhai Memorial Chair Professor, IIT Gandhinagar)

Jaison Manjaly is the Jasubhai Memorial Chair Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at IIT Gandhinagar. As the Principal Investigator of the Curiosity Lab, he leads initiatives aimed at cultivating curiosity in the classroom, believing that fostering a sense of wonder is key to transformative learning. His research spans the interconnected realms of curiosity, education, and exclusion, exploring how curiosity can drive both personal and societal progress. Jaison’s work is grounded in the belief that education should ignite a sense of inquiry, challenging existing boundaries and encouraging students to engage deeply with the world around them.

Important dates

Abstract submission dates: 31 January 2026

Selected Abstracts notified by: 15 February 2026

Submission of full posters by: 1 March 2026

Registration Fees

School Students: 1000 INR

College Students / Education Professionals: 2000 INR
School Teacher / Principal / Director: 2000 INR
Faculty and Academic Professionals: 3000 INR
Industry / Business Professionals: 5000 INR

Accommodation

A limited number of IIT Gandhinagar Guest House and Hostel accommodations are available and can be reserved by the participants.

Guest House (twin sharing) charges per room: Rs. 2000+12% GST (prior booking required)
Hostel Charges (shared accommodation) per person: Rs. 430 +12% GST (prior booking required)

For inquiries, please contact us at curiositylab@iitgn.ac.in

About Us●●●

The Curiosity Lab at IIT Gandhinagar is an interdisciplinary research centre dedicated to understanding and nurturing curiosity. Our research delves into the factors that generate, sustain, and cultivate curiosity. Beyond theoretical exploration, we strive to bridge the gap between curiosity research and education. We promote innate curiosity and inquiry-based learning in children by implementing educational interventions. We translate our research for children, educators, and researchers through public engagement and community outreach initiatives.

IIT Gandhinagar was founded in 2008 on the banks of Sabarmati River in Palaj, Gandhinagar, Gujarat. The institute promotes critical thinking and an appreciation of the interdisciplinary character of knowledge, emphasising liberal arts, project-oriented learning, design, life sciences, diversity, and globalisation. It is committed to promoting excellence in science, technology, the humanities and social sciences and developing rounded and nuanced minds. IIT Gandhinagar is ranked 18th by NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework) 2023 for Engineering.

In Collaboration With ●●●

ART at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar (IITGN) is an initiative that promotes and facilitates artistic expressions and engagements on campus. Art as a medium and practice nurtures liberal, inclusive, interdisciplinary, and futuristic values. With Art@IITGN, we envision an environment that will allow ingenuity to thrive while bridging the transference of intergenerational knowledge systems. This initiative provides spaces on campus for students and community members to experiment with art.

The Social Action and Policy Lab (SAP Lab) at IIT Gandhinagar is a leading research hub that utilizes behavioral insights (BI) to integrate social and behavioral sciences into social sector programs and state and national-level initiatives. By focusing on social and behavior change and BI systems and capacities, SAP Lab is instrumental in enhancing community engagement and strategic communication within priority areas of the Sustainable Development Goals. Through rigorous evidence-based research, the lab strives to improve the design, implementation, and overall effectiveness of public policy.

The Center for Curiosity (CfC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to exploring the science of curiosity, promoting its practice, and academic and public advancement. The CfC designs and produces curricular materials that enhance students' curiosity and promote their integration into schools and colleges. The centre's research initiatives incorporate innovative techniques and methodologies to comprehend the science and characteristics of curiosity, identify ways to stimulate it, and examine the association between curiosity and other human endeavours, such as creativity, innovation, and leadership.