September 2020 – The KGP Chronicle

Internationalization Post NEP 2020

Global Experts to Deliberate on India as the Global Destination for Higher Education post-NEP 2020

IIT Kharagpur Alumni Foundation (India) in partnership with IIT Kharagpur is organizing an International Webinar on October 9-10, 2020, titled ‘India: The Global Destination for Higher Education (Post NEP 2020 Scenario)’. The webinar which will witness deliberations from eminent academic experts and administrators from India and abroad will set the platform for the development of policy recommendations towards the internationalization of Indian higher educational institutions in the light of the New Education Policy 2020. The panel discussions will include ‘Status of Government Institutions in Attracting Foreign Students’, ‘Contribution of Private Sector Institutions in Attracting Foreign Students’, ‘Global Alliances: Gaps and Bridging Them’ and ‘What Makes India as a Preferred Destination for HE post-NEP 2020’.

The event will be graced by Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Hon’ble Minister of Education as the Chief Guest, Shri Amit Khare, Secretary, Dept. of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Govt. of India as the Guest of Honour. Prof Virendra Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur is the Patron, Commander VK Jaitly, Board Member; IIT Bhuvaneswar is the Webinar Chairman and Rajah Venkat is the Convenor of the International Webinar. Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE will be a special guest.

The Webinar is co-sponsored by PanIIT India, PanIIT USA and IIT Kharagpur Foundation of USA. Varadarajan Seshamani, Ron Gupta, Krishen Dhar, Sundy Srinivasan from these organisations are the key organisers.

A large number of Directors of IITs, IIMs, IIITs, NITs and VCs of Government and Private Universities will be attending these brainstorming sessions. Eminent academicians from top foreign universities like Prof. Pradeep Khosla, Chancellor, University of California San Diego; Prof. Prabhat Hajela, Provost, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Prof. Geeta Mehta from Columbia University; Prof. Prith Banerjee, Former Dean, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University will be sharing the gaps that need to be bridged for the Indian universities and colleges to attract foreign students from across the world. Foreign consulate representations actively engaged in international education facilitation are also expected to participate.

Click on this link to Register NOW: https://sites.google.com/view/webinarsep20

Talking about the prospect Prof. Virendra Tewari, Director IIT Kharagpur said, “Academics across the nation are hopeful about the positive changes which NEP 2020 would introduce in the Indian education system across all levels. A key area where we are expecting a significant change is in the flow of inbound and outbound international students.”

A crucial area to be deliberated in the webinar is the new dynamics that would come to play in the higher education scenario in the post-pandemic world including logistics of international travel, cost of international healthcare, stay etc.

Cdr V K Jaitly who conceptualized the initiative in 2017 and is chairing the Webinar feels strongly about the annual outflow of foreign reserves to the extent of USD 16 billion towards the cost of foreign education of about 2.5 lakhs Indian students studying abroad.

“We feel that the time has come when the mindset of Indians to go abroad for even lesser-known universities in the name of higher education will drastically reduce particularly when we talk of Atmanirbhar Bharat in various sectors,” he added.

In addition to the foreign reserves outflow, the country further experiences a loss of intellectual property and a high-quality talent pool in academia and industry adding to the economic burden. Several of the foreign universities have been thriving on Indian academics, researchers and students. India however, has the potential to earn about $ 20 billion every year from the Education Sector.

“India has very few foreign students when compared to the USA, UK, China, France, Australia etc. We are way behind and have a long way to go. We feel that the top 10% of Indian Universities and Colleges both Government and Private can attract foreign students from all over the world,” added Cdr Jaitly.

The two-day Webinar will assess the current status and draft a roadmap to arrest talent streaming out of India and attracting the students globally to Indian universities for pursuing higher education.

“In addition to improving our infrastructure, syllabi and quality of the academics, we may have to launch an outreach program throughout the world,” remarked Webinar Convenor Rajah Venkat.

Click on this link to Register NOW: https://sites.google.com/view/webinarsep20

If you have any great ideas to make “India, the Global Destination for Higher Education”, please send them to us on email id: hec@paniit.org but limited to 200 words along with your photograph and a very brief profile not exceeding 50 words and we shall include the selected ones in our Recommendations Document that will be submitted to the Education Minister of GOI.

Media Coverage:

The New Indian Express UNI

Media Contact:

Commander VK Jaitly,

Email: jaitly.iit@gmail.com, Mobile: +91 9811777904

Register: https://sites.google.com/view/webinarsep20

Moment of Pride

It is a moment of pride for IIT Kharagpur with two back-to-back honours for the Institute’s faculty member and alumnus.

Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee, Associate Professor at the Dept. of Geology and Geophysics and the School of Environmental Science and Engineering has been selected for the prestigious award ‘Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) Prize’ for the year 2020 in Earth Atmosphere Ocean and Planetary Sciences.

It is a rare distinction conferred upon scientists who have demonstrated exceptional potential in science and technology. The award will be presented in the presence of the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, who holds the chair of the President of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research.

Dr. Mukherjee’s work in the area of groundwater exploration for suitable and sustainable drinking water sources has been widely acknowledged, nationally and internationally. Recently his research group developed an AI prediction model for detecting Arsenic in groundwater in the Gangetic delta. The work finds mention in communications by the Jal Jeevan Mission. His research areas include

Arsenic and other contaminants fate and transport: global-scale to laboratory-scale; Interaction of groundwater with sea and river water; Groundwater recharge and estimation; Groundwater evolution (flow and chemistry) of large sedimentary basins; Groundwater exploration, management and remediation; Urban Geoscience. Faculty Profile

Adding to the celebrations is the star alumnus of IIT Kharagpur Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google and Alphabet. This ’93 batch Silver Medalist (Dept. of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering) has been named among the 100 most influential people of 2020 by the Time magazine.

He used his natural gifts and strong work ethic to rise through the ranks of Google (now Alphabet) by leading many of their most successful products, such as Drive, Gmail and Maps, cites Time magazine. Citation

James Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase writes about Pichai, “The challenges Sundar faces in his role are among the most important of our time—issues of innovation, privacy, regulation and competition. But his analytical, humble and inclusive leadership will position Google to meet the moment. These are traits the world could use a lot more of in these times.”

Full Story: https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2020/5888419/sundar-pichai/

IIT KGP Study Proposes Pandemic Waste Management Policy

IIT Kharagpur Study Proposes Solid Waste Management Policy to Counter Environmental Crisis during Pandemic

Covid-19 is impacting our daily lives in an unprecedented way, with one of the major impacts being on waste management programs across the world. While reduced economic activities due to COVID-19 have certainly made air and water cleaner as per many reports, change in the dynamics of plastic, food, and biomedical waste generation has however stirred the woes of solid waste management.

A recent study by IIT Kharagpur researchers has led to the formulation of a set of environmental recommendations for solid waste management under the pandemic situation. The researchers have explored the challenges faced by the solid waste management sector, typically cases in biomedical waste, plastic waste, and food waste management, during the pandemic and the underlying opportunities to fill existing loopholes in the system. [Download Paper]

The study led by Prof. Brajesh Kr. Dubey and his research group at IIT Kharagpur’s Dept. of Civil Engineering, has laid emphasis on the avenues of circular economy, sustainable technologies and development of green business models by analyzing the economic prospects in the post-pandemic world.

“It should be well understood that the mess created by the COVID-19 crisis should not be solved at the expense of solving the longer-term issue of the climate crisis. The post-COVID-19 world would need a systems-level approach on a global scale to address the issue of solid waste management and protect our environment through economic stimulus with low carbon footprint,” said Dubey.

The study recommends the adoption of new technologies in solid waste management by means of socially viable designs scoring high on environmental and economic feasibility. Incentive policy could be introduced for adopting homogenous plastics, eco-friendly bioplastics, biodegradable materials with higher recyclability. This would enable the standardization of plastic products and packaging leading to economic recycling models. AI-powered sustainable technologies can be deployed to manage efficient sorting and recycling of waste. This shall be further supported by means of the ‘refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle’ mantra of the circular economy.

“A typical example could be food waste management. Local production and consumption of food along with recycling and reuse leads to the reduction of food waste generation and recycling of food waste. Such models need to be introduced in overall solid waste management as well along with spreading awareness about the concept,” remarked researcher Hari Bhakta Sharma.

Another area the study has focused on is the involvement of human resources in waste management. The researchers advocate for the provision of critical status to sanitation workers due to the risk involved in their work during a pandemic situation. This would involve supporting the educational and healthcare needs of their family members as well. Workers handling biomedical wastes also need to be trained adequately of international standards. Awareness needs to be created by means of universally accepted color-coded segregation of biomedical waste for proper classification of infectious waste, preventing excessive waste generation.

The researchers believe increasing public visibility through media and other platforms could indirectly bring behavioral and attitudinal changes in society. However, they also prioritized the need for inclusion of waste management in the disaster management protocol including response measures and operational guidelines. The study has been published in the international journal of ‘Resources, Conservation & Recycling’

Cite Paper: Sharma et al., 2020, H.B. Sharma, K. Vanapalli, V.R.S. Cheela, V.P. Ranjan, A.K. Jaglan, B. Dubey, Sudha Goel, J. Bhattacharya,

Challenges, opportunities, and innovations for effective solid waste management during and post COVID-9 pandemic

Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 2020 (2020), 10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105052

Download Paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105052

Media Coverage:

Outlook	Careers 360	Yahoo News
Republic World	NDTV	The North East Today

Contact:

Project: Prof. Brajesh Kumar Dubey, Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, E: bkdubey@civil.iitkgp.ac.in

Media: Shreyoshi Ghosh, Executive Officer, E: shreyoshi@adm.iitkgp.ac.in

For news about IIT Kharagpur visit: https://kgpchronicle.iitkgp.ac.in

Director speaks at IIT BHU NEP Webinar

Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University), Varanasi and Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, New Delhi jointly organized a webinar recently titled “Role of Indian Institutes of Technology in Implementation of National Education Policy 2020: Challenges and Opportunities”. [Watch Live].

Here is a report by Prof. P.K.Mishra from IIT(BHU) Varanasi, convenor of the webinar.

The Chief Guest of the program was Prof. Virendra Kumar Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur, Chairperson of the event was Prof. P.K.Jain, Director, IIT(BHU) Varanasi, Keynote Speaker was Shri. Atul Kothari, National Secretary, Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, New Delhi and Guest of Honour was Prof. Trilok Nath Singh, Vice-Chancellor, Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth, Varanasi and Shri. R.P.Singh, Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Bhuvneshwar.

Prof. Pradeep Kumar Mishra welcomed all the distinguished guests and introduced the speakers to all the panelists of the Webinar. Prof. P.K.Jain, Director, IIT (BHU) stated the purpose of the program and put forth his views about the New Education Policy 2020. Prof. Jain stated that IIT(BHU) Varanasi has made a committee to implement the NEP 2020. He emphasized the vision of Malaviya ji and said that in the current scenario also the same vision of a multi-disciplinary hypothesis is needed. He further emphasized that an action plan should be drafted from this webinar and shared with all.

Prof. Trilok Nath Singh, Vice-Chancellor, Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth, Varanasi elaborated about the salient features of the New Education Policy 2020 and stated that this policy rotates around the teachers. Shri. R.P.Singh, Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Bhuvneshwar shared his valuable experiences with the members. He emphasized the inter-disciplinary action and said that one should not stick to the only a single subject but also try to explore other subjects as well, this has also been emphasized in NEP 2020 also.

Chief Guest at the occasion Prof. V.K.Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur shared his views about the implementation of National Education Policy 2020 at Kharagpur. He emphasized the need for dynamic pedagogy keeping in mind the need for students coming from diverse linguistic backgrounds, competitiveness. To address their varied needs IIT Kharagpur offers flexible curricula and relaxation in degree completion period. Further elective and specialization courses such as the science of happiness, quality and reliability, leadership, classical and folk arts have also been introduced in addition to trending courses in financial engineering, entrepreneurship, management, IP law, healthcare etc. Prof. Tewari mentioned about the “do it yourself” lab where students can build products in a large range of engineering disciplines in accordance to the interest of students. The multidisciplinary educational experience at IIT Kharagpur would prove to be highly effective to implement NEP 2020, he said. [Watch Live]

The dignitaries from various IITs and other fields such as Dr. Satyam Priyadarsy, Managing Director, India Centre Technology Fellow, Halliburton, USA, Prof. Rintu Banerjee from IIT Kharagpur, Prof. Varadraj Bapat and Prof. Krishnamurthi Ramasubramanium from IIT Bombay, Dr. Neetesh Purohit, IIIT Allahabad, Prof. Virender Kumar Vijay from IIT Delhi, Prof. K. Darun Kumar Singh from IIT Guwahati, Prof. Shishir Sinha from IIT Roorkee, Prof. A.K.Tripathi from IIT(BHU), Dr. Awalendra Kumar Thakur from IIT Patna and others shared their views with respect to challenges and opportunities arise out of implementation of NEP 2020.

Keynote Speaker at the occasion, Mr. Atul Kothari, National Secretary, Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, New Delhi, praised the views of all the distinguished guests and panelists and gave the blessing for the webinar. He said that now the time has come to match the present education system with traditional Indian knowledge for the holistic development of the student and country as a whole. The education approach should be integrated with many subjects instead of a few. He also emphasized that there should be an equal focus on agriculture, technique, and ‘aatmanirbharta’.

At the end of the program, Prof. Ravi Prakash Tiwari gave a vote of thanks to the distinguished guests, panelists and participants. He also said that a similar type of program will be organized from time to time and expected participation from all the guests.

AI to Detect How Safe is Your Drinking Water

Researchers from IIT Kharagpur have developed an AI-based prediction model for detecting Arsenic pollution in drinking water

Arsenic has been a menace in Eastern India especially along the banks of the Ganga for almost two decades now, putting millions of people at severe health risk. Researchers have been studying the distribution patterns of the contaminated groundwater for years to develop a large-scale ecological and environmental framework addressing this challenge in the region. For the first time, a breakthrough has been achieved. A group of researchers from IIT Kharagpur has successfully predicted the distribution of groundwater arsenic and human health risk in the affected areas using AI algorithms on environmental and geological and human usage parameters.

The researchers have delineated the high and low arsenic zones across the entire delta using artificial intelligence and quantify the number of people exposed. This study has led to the development of probabilistic models of arsenic occurrence, exposure and human health risk assessment within the delta region. The model shows a strong association of ‘surficial aquitard thickness’ and ‘groundwater-fed irrigation’ to regional-scale As-hazard.

Among the worst affected zones are the districts of Nadia (93%) and Murshidabad (82%). The study has been recently published in the international journal Science of The Total Environment. [Download Paper]

“Our AI models predict the occurrence of high arsenic in groundwater across more than half of the Ganges River delta, covering more than 25% area extent in each of the 19 out of 25 administrative zones in West Bengal. A total of 30.3 million people are estimated to be exposed to severely high As-hazard within the Ganges river delta,” said lead author Madhumita Chakraborty at IIT Kharagpur’s Dept. of Geology and Geophysics.

While the predictive model framework would prove to be vital typically for the identification of drinking water sources in arsenic affected areas of West Bengal, it can be used in other parts of the country, which are also suffering from severe groundwater pollutants, said the researchers.

“Eventually, all this information forms the baseline knowledge for the recently initiated Jal Jeevan Mission of the Government of India. The mission is based on providing safe drinking water to every household of the country within 2024 and the outcome of this provides the information for the location of safe groundwater, which is the primary source of drinking water for most of India,” opined Prof. Abhijit Mukherjee from the Dept. of Geology and Geophysics who is leading the research.

It is to be noted that Eastern India and Bangladesh, which source more than 80% of its drinking water from groundwater sources, are coping with this issue of naturally-sourced arsenic mass poisoning. The studies conducted until now were unable to offer an effective model for policy decisions due to the delineation of the local extent and geochemical mechanisms for arsenic pollution.

The researchers from IIT Kharagpur thus opted for AI which is now being used across the world to successfully model the distribution of groundwater contaminants.

“Such successful use of artificial intelligence in geoscience enables us to find answers and build prima-facie understanding before further detailed field-based investigation or validation. However, such regional-scale models do not completely eliminate the need for field investigation in many cases; especially for groundwater contaminants like arsenic which is known to exhibit well-to-well variability in concentration,” added Prof. Mukherjee.

Citation: Chakraborty et al. (2020). Modeling regional-scale groundwater arsenic hazard in the transboundary Ganges River Delta, India and Bangladesh: Infusing physically-based model with machine learning. Science of The Total Environment. Volume 748, 15 December 2020, 141107 [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141107]

Media Coverage:

Economic Times (CIO)	Hindustan Times	News 18
Jagran Josh	Edex Live	New Indian Express
Outlook	The Week	ABP Education
NDTV		Tribune

Research Information: Prof. Abhijit Mukherjee, abhijit@gg.iitkgp.ac.in

Institute Information: Prof. B N Singh, Registrar, registrar@hijli.iitkgp.ac.in

Media Outreach: Shreyoshi Ghosh, shreyoshi@adm.iitkgp.ac.in; media@iitkgp.ac.in

INAE Honours

The Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) has honoured four faculty members from IIT Kharagpur for their contributions in various fields of Engineering.

Prof. M M Ghangrekar, Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Prof. Sudip Mishra, Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering and Prof. Soumitra Paul, Professor, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering have been elected as Fellows of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), by the Governing Council at its recent meeting. Further, Dr Pawan Goyal, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, has been selected for the INAE Young Engineer Award 2020.

Prof. M M Ghangrekar

Prof. Ghangrekar who is heading the School of Environmental Science & Engineering and Head, P.K. Sinha Centre for Bioenergy and Renewables, is a stalwart in the areas of Water & Wastewater Treatment and Recycling, Anaerobic Wastewater Treatment, Bioelectrochemical processes, MFC, MDC, and Waste to Energy. His wastewater treatment plant is all set to start test operations and convert sewage water generated in the campus into reusable water typically for washing, cleaning, gardening, toilet use etc and even for potable use. Further, he has developed a bio-toilet which can run recycle wastewater and also convert waste into energy.

Prof. Sudip Misra

Swan is a regal creature but at IIT Kharagpur’s Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, it has found a new meaning – Smart Wireless Applications & Networking. SWAN is a group of researchers working with the research mentorship of Prof. Sudip Misra. The SWAN group focuses on research in smart systems enabling network technologies, especially, Ad-Hoc Networks, Sensor Networks, WiFi, WiMAX, Smart Grid Communications, Nano-communication Networks, Internet of Things, Software Defined Networks, and Big Data Networking. Some key products developed by Prof. Mishra and his research group include AgriSens: Sensor-Based Networking System for Improved Water Management of Irrigated Crops, AmbuSens: Ubiquitous Healthcare Monitoring for the Connected Era, Generic Wireless Sensor Network Kit v1.0, Physiological Wireless Sensor Network Kit, Agricultural Wireless Sensor Network Kit, Unmanned Aerial Platforms for Agriculture, Big-Sensor-Cloud Platform, Smartphone Apps for Physical Activity Sensing over Wireless Networks and many more. [Faculty Profile, Contact]

Prof. Soumitra Paul

Prof. Paul’s research interests are in the broad area of machining, grinding and cutting tool coating. He currently leads a group of students who are working on research problems as diverse as (i) finishability of oxide ceramic plasma sprayed coatings, (ii) development of diamond reinforced tribological thick coating and finishability of such coatings, (iii) high speed grinding of ceramics and carbon fibre reinforced ceramic matrix composites, (iv) environment friendly near dry micro-machining, (v) high speed grinding of aerospace metallic materials, etc. [Faculty Profile, Contact]

Prof. Pawan Goyal

In our information age, Prof. Goyal is dedicated to mining them from all across digital media. Some of the research problems include extracting and summarizing diverse opinions from online news and user-generated content, summarizing tweets in a disaster scenario for situational updates, and developing effective dialogue models. He is also actively working in the field of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics, where the focus is on developing a generic framework for solving a variety of NLP tasks such as word segmentation, morph analysis, dependency parsing, poetry to prose conversion, with a little task-specific annotated data. [Faculty Profile, Contact]

About INAE:

The Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), founded in 1987 comprises India’s most distinguished engineers, engineer-scientists and technologists covering the entire spectrum of engineering disciplines. INAE functions as an apex body and promotes the practice of engineering & technology and the related sciences for their application to solving problems of national importance. The Academy also provides a forum for futuristic planning for the country’s development requiring engineering and technological inputs and brings together specialists from such fields as may be necessary for comprehensive solutions to the needs of the country. INAE honours Indian and Foreign nationals who are elected by “peer” committees in recognition of their personal achievements in engineering which are of exceptional merit and distinctive eminence in new and developing fields of technology.

New AI Diagnostics for Lung Diseases

AI and IoT based Diagnostic Device for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases developed by IIT Kharagpur

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a common chronic respiratory disease caused by exposure to harmful gases and particulate matters, with a high health burden on the country’s healthcare services and society. For long, the medical community has been depending on patient history and clinical symptoms for disease diagnosis, which often prevents early detection of the disease and advancing of the disease adds to the medical bill through frequent hospitalizations.

Researchers at IIT Kharagpur have developed an affordable diagnostic intervention for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease based on the internet-of-things medical devices (IoT-MD) integrated with AI. [Download Journal Paper]

At the Organic Electronics Laboratory (ORELA), Department of Physics, IIT Kharagpur, Prof. Dipak Kumar Goswami and his research team have developed SenFlex.T, a smart mask synced with an android monitoring app through Bluetooth, that can continuously monitor breathing patterns, rate, heart rate, oxygen saturation level in blood. The app is connected to a cloud computing server, where artificial intelligence (AI) has been implemented to predict the severity of COPD through machine learning (ML).

“SenFlex.T can be used at home by patients without having to visit diagnostic centres as against the current practice. This will also address the critical issue of addressing COPD at an early stage and by means of advanced healthcare technology, a boon for both patients and the overall healthcare system,” explained Prof. Goswami.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease has been a top cause of death, second to only deaths due to heart diseases. In 2017 it claimed about 1 million lives in India. In October 2019, health experts, at a medical convention, confirmed that COPD claims more lives than AIDS, TB, Malaria, Diabetes all put together. The threat from COPD has become more acute under the COVID situation, with increased comorbidity rates. A recent survey confirmed that the severity and mortality rates among COPD patients to be affected by the COVID-19 virus are over 63%. Moreover, the patients affected in the COVID-19 virus, which is right now over 4 million people in India and 27 million in the world, are more susceptible to build up various lung disorder-related diseases like COPD, Asthma etc.

“It was crucial for health-tech researchers to develop a diagnostic intervention for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Spirometry, the gold standard test to diagnose obstructive airway diseases like asthma and COPD, is often avoided due to the unavailability of the equipment, difficulty in data interpretation and the cost of the tests. This challenge and the criticality strongly motivated us to develop an AI-based system, that can overcome the problem of interpreting the results and be accessible not only for the doctors but also for the patients,” said Prof. Goswami.

SenFlex.T smart mask contains a highly sensitive, flexible temperature sensor along with a Bluetooth based measuring electronics. The sensor system can continuously monitor the temperature changes of inhaled and exhaled air during breathing and record the breathing pattern. The temperature sensor has a resolution of 4.3 mK and about 25 ms response time. Further, a commercially available pulse oximeter has been integrated with the sensor system to monitor the oxygen saturation level during breathing.

The patient data is uploaded automatically to the cloud server through the mobile app (SenFlex), where it is processed by means of AIML, and reports made available on the app and for doctors’ consultation.

The innovation has been reported in the international journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces [Download Paper]. The researchers have also filed a patent for the innovation and are ready for commercialization. The product cost has been estimated at about ₹ 2,500/-.

Cite Paper: ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2019, 11, 4, 4193–4202

Publication Date:December 31, 2018

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.8b19051

Media Coverage:

News 18	Careers 360	Economic Times Healthworld
Outlook	Gadgets Now	BioSpectrum
	The Week

Project Information: Prof. Dipak Goswami, dipak@phy.iitkgp.ac.in;

Institute Information: Prof. B N Singh, Registrar, registrar@hijli.iitkgp.ac.in;

Media Outreach: Shreyoshi Ghosh, shreyoshi@adm.iitkgp.ac.in

Study Reveals Southward Shift of Precipitation Extremes over South Asia

Has your monsoon experience across India changed over the years?

The reason could be blamed on shifts in the spatio-temporal pattern of monsoon. In a recent study published in Scientific Reports by Nature Publishing Group, IIT Kharagpur researchers reveal that the pattern of monsoon and daily extreme rainfall is changing in India with more extremes expected over southern India and Himalayan foothills. They further predicted a continued southward shift of precipitation extremes over South Asia.

The researchers have studied data of Indian Summer Monsoon precipitation for close to five decades, 1971 – 2017 (base period: 1930-1970). The data shows more increase in the magnitude of extreme precipitation over South India (~18.5 mm/day for the worst climate change scenario) compared to Northern and Central India (~2.7 mm/day).

“Our analysis of precipitation from the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment, indicates a southward shift of precipitation extremes over South Asia. For instance, the Arabian Sea, South India, Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia are expected to have the maximum increase to about 18.5 mm per day for an RCP8.5 scenario in mean extreme precipitation,” said lead researcher Prof. Rajib Maity from the Dept. of Civil Engineering.

Refer to the journal paper: Suman, M., Maity, R. Southward shift of precipitation extremes over south Asia: Evidences from CORDEX data. Sci Rep 10, 6452 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-63571-x

PhD student Mayank Suman, co-author added, “We based our predictions on average precipitation for the days with more than 99th percentile of daily precipitation. Our study showed a contrasting feature for North and Central India, and Tibetan Plateau with relatively less increase, to only about 2.7 mm per day for RCP8.5 scenario.”

Talking about the possible reason behind such a significant phenomenon, Prof. Maity remarked on the intensification of large-scale circulation phenomena over the tropical Indian Ocean (known as Indian Ocean Dipole) which could be leading to the contrasting trends across large regions in India. As a result of this intensification the Indian monsoon is expected to be enhanced across the country. The prediction is based on the analysis of air temperature at 850 mb and precipitable water for RCP4.5 and RCP8.5.

“Our convergence analysis along with the moisture flux show a change in the direction of the South-West Monsoon winds blowing towards the east over the Indian Ocean. This directional change will intensify the already observed precipitation contrast in future between South and North India, and cause more extreme precipitation events in countries like Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, etc.” remarked Prof. Maity

What could be the socio-economic impact of such change, particularly in the context of India?

Prof. Virendra Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur, who has extensively worked with both industrial and rural sectors opined on getting ready for the monsoonal shifts based on predicted timelines and precipitation volume.

“South Asia, as we know, despite advances in irrigation systems, is highly dependent on the monsoons. Results of this study will be useful to the designers of water infrastructure and agricultural communities, especially in the southern parts of India and Himalayan foothills, to prompt a possible change in design criteria and agricultural practices including cropping pattern,” he said.

Media Coverage:

Hindustan Times	Financial Express	Danik Jagran
Deccan Herald	Outlook	Navbharat Times
Yahoo News	Asian Age	Deccan Chronicle
Nature India	The Weather Channel

Project information: Prof. Rajib Maity, Dept. of Civil Engineering,rajib@civil.iitkgp.ac.in;

Institute Information: Prof. B N Singh, registrar@hijli.iitkgp.ac.in;

Media Outreach: Shreyoshi Ghosh, shreyoshi@adm.iitkgp.ac.in;

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