About Us
HICS is an independent research, instrumentation, and learning institution in Lalitpur, Nepal. It is small and early: one director, a handful of collaborators and field partners, and a growing set of instruments we build, deploy, and use ourselves. The work is organised around a single idea — that Nepal's geography, atmosphere, seismology, and knowledge are the material of serious science, not obstacles to it.
We are built on a single organising principle: that Nepal's geography, ecology, seismology, atmosphere, and cultural knowledge are not obstacles to doing serious science — they are the material.
The questions this altitude gradient, this ecology, these communities raise are unique to this place. The method of engaging them rigorously — grounded, specific, open to scrutiny — is not. It is how science should work everywhere.
The problem we are addressing
Nepal faces a structural translational gap — a broken chain between scientific knowledge and the people, places, and questions that most need it.
Research institutions operate in isolation from students and communities. Schools operate without research infrastructure. Talented graduates leave because meaningful scientific careers require going abroad. Communities facing climate change, earthquakes, and pollution lack access to local scientific data.
HICS addresses this not by improving each broken link separately, but by building a different structure entirely:
Any point is an entry point. The same muon detector is a wonder object for a twelve-year-old and a research instrument for a physics graduate.
Vision & mission
To advance science and scientific learning through research, open instrumentation, and education deeply rooted in Nepal's geographic, ecological, and cultural realities — building the translational infrastructure that makes doing serious science in Nepal possible.
We are building toward a Nepal where:
Four domains of work
HICS works across four domains that are deliberately not separated. The same person works across them. The same instrument serves them all.
How we work
Who builds this
HICS is built by a small team of scientists, engineers, and educators with research backgrounds in dark matter phenomenology, meteor radar systems, atmospheric science, passive solar architecture, and educational technology.
The founding team combines peer-reviewed physics research, seven years of embedded community work in Nepal's high-altitude regions, and national-scale education programme delivery.
HICS is designed for others to join — as research partners, co-directors, fellows, and educators. The institution is deliberately structured to outlast any individual and to grow as more people bring their own scientific questions to it.
International scientific networks
Nepal's scientific output, legible to the international community from day one:
Partners & collaborators
HICS actively seeks new research, education, and instrumentation partners. Get in touch.
Four domains, one institution
HICS works across four domains — Research, Instrumentation, Education, and Open Knowledge — without artificially separating them. The same instruments, data, and scientific questions serve researchers, students, teachers, and communities at the same time.
Research ▸
Original and applied research in the physical and earth sciences — peer-reviewed publications, novel datasets, and contributions to global scientific networks.
Instrumentation ▸
Design, fabrication, and open-source publication of affordable scientific instruments built for Nepal's conditions. The instruments HICS builds are the instruments HICS uses.
Education ▸
Curriculum-aligned, instrument-based science education — students analyse real data from real instruments, not textbook science.
Open Knowledge ▸
Live dashboards, open datasets, an open API, and open designs — outputs that exist for the world, not only for HICS's own programmes.
Registration
The Himalayan Institute for Contextual Sciences is registered in Nepal as an independent research organisation.