New Delhi, Feb 11 : Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has inaugurated the second batch of the STEM Mentorship Programme, which aims to encourage high school girls to pursue their careers in STEM areas. The programme was celebrated on the 8th International Day for Women and Girls in Science, which is on February 11. "We want our bright young girl students from schools to experience the joy of research. They will have an opportunity to work in our laboratories and interact with a faculty mentor and research students. We hope this will help encourage more women to science and engineering and improve the diversity of the campus," IIT Delhi, Director Prof. Rangan Banerjee, said in a statement. The second batch of the STEM Mentorship Programme will consist of two phases. During the first phase, the 32 selected participants from KVs, government and private schools in Delhi will learn from online lectures and demonstrations by faculty and students of IIT Delhi on diverse STEM topics, to be held over the weekends in March and April. In the second phase, which will take place in May, participants will spend a week at IIT Delhi, visiting various labs and getting firsthand experience with cutting-edge research at the institute. The first mentorship programme for school girls was launched in December 2021 by the Office of Academic Outreach and New Initiatives, IIT Delhi. The first batch of the 10 school girls successfully completed the mentorship programme in June 2022. /IANS