Srinagar, Aug 26 (IANS): To nurture an innovative mind-set among high school students of J&K, the Atal Innovation Mission and NITI Aayog will establishing more than 500 Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs), an official statement said.

ATL is the flagship initiative of the AIM launched by Centre to nurture an innovative mindset amongst high school students across India.

The objectives of the AIM are to create and promote an ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship across the country via interventions at school, university, research institutions, MSME and industry levels.

The programmes of AIM cover 34 states and Union Territories with the goal of leveraging India's demographic dividend by inspiring greater participation in the innovation ecosystem.

Recently an AIM team led by Mission Director, Dr Chintan Vaishnav inspected the Atal Tinkering Labs in J&K during which creative students displayed their innovative models and briefed about challenges they faced while working on these innovations.

He said the AIM is establishing more than 500 labs in J&K schools in the next few years to promote innovative and creative mind-set among J&K student, with the aim to encourage young minds in the field, and challenge students to become producers of products themselves instead of consumers.

The government has directed School Education Department to promote scientific temper among the students in areas such as machine learning and artificial intelligence by proactively engaging them in various experiments and scientific activities.

They have also been asked to fix timelines for setting up the laboratories and to emphasise on nomination of trainers or champions to run the labs against suitable incentives.