Month: April 2021

MoU with Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs for setting up an Accelerator Centre for R&D at IIT Kharagpur

MoU with Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs for setting up an Accelerator Centre for R&D at IIT Kharagpur

Highlights: The MoU will identify the proven, innovative, emerging set up of Accelerator Centre for Research & Development at IIT Kharagpur. April 22, 2021, Kharagpur, India, IIT Kharagpur and the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) have signed an MoU to set up an Accelerator Centre for Research & Development at the Institute. Under this MoU will provide innovation & incubation assistance to carry out activities like technology & product development.  The Affordable Sustainable Housing Accelerators-India (ASHA-India) initiatives under Global Housing Technology Challenge-India (GHTC-India) is one of its kind innovations. “This collaboration is aimed to support potential future technologies…
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Virtual Student Mobility Programme with U of Edinburgh for Transdisciplinary Insights on R&D Topics

Virtual Student Mobility Programme with U of Edinburgh for Transdisciplinary Insights on R&D Topics

IIT Kharagpur and The University of Edinburgh, UK have launched a virtual student mobility programme to gain insights on water-energy-food-public health from diverse perspectives, and analysis of the same with a transdisciplinary approach. The programme would facilitate capacity building and gainful research toward inclusive and sustainable development. The proposed virtual programme focuses on developing domain knowledge of the participants, particularly in the Indian context, integrating ideas and expertise through group activities on the thematic areas. Under this programme and identifying the issues, the participants will work under the mentorship of faculty members IIT Kharagpur and the University of Edinburgh, before…
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IIT Kharagpur Study Predicts River Basin-wise Agricultural Droughts-North India Shows High Vulnerability

IIT Kharagpur Study Predicts River Basin-wise Agricultural Droughts-North India Shows High Vulnerability

With inputs from Rituparna Chakraborty Highlights: The study predicts future status climate change-induced agricultural droughts across India. More intense droughts in North, North-East and Central India are expected as compared to South India. About 20 and 50% of the area in India is expected to face extreme and moderate agricultural droughts, respectively, by the end of the 21st century. Farmers in India’s north, north-east and central regions may have to be more cautious of agricultural droughts in the future - reveals IIT Kharagpur study. The data shows a geographically contrasting change in future drought patterns that indicates more intense agricultural…
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Global Launch of COVIRAP – Nucleic acid-based Point-of-Care Diagnostic Device for COVID-19 and beyond

Global Launch of COVIRAP – Nucleic acid-based Point-of-Care Diagnostic Device for COVID-19 and beyond

Highlights A generic step-wise isothermal nucleic acid-based testing technology for the rapid diagnostics of pathogenic infections including but not limited to SARS-CoV-2 in individuals. Nasal Swab/ Saliva to result from integration in about 45 minutes in a highly affordable pre-programmable portable device developed by the team, without requiring any separate facility for RNA extraction. Kit supplemented with a free smartphone app to facilitate unambiguous results interpretation and automated dissemination to the patients. The test may be performed by unskilled personnel outside the controlled lab with no intermediate manual intervention between sample loading and result dissemination. Patents filed in the India, USA,…
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MoU with NCDC to Promote Developments in Cooperatives, Agriculture and Allied Sectors

MoU with NCDC to Promote Developments in Cooperatives, Agriculture and Allied Sectors

Highlights: This MoU will promote greater collaboration towards sustainable development in cooperatives, agriculture and allied sectors It will involve advancement of training, action research, studies, policy analysis, policy advice, consultancy, monitoring, evaluation, system development and technology development. It will provide support towards Formation and Promotion of Farmer Producer Organisation It shall have opportunities for trainee/student exchange program including providing internships IIT Kharagpur and the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) have signed an MoU towards greater collaboration in issues and areas related to the development of cooperatives, agriculture and allied sectors and to the holistic approach towards sustainable development. The scope…
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IIT Kharagpur Students Startup InfinityBox Awarded Hult Prize Seed Funding

IIT Kharagpur Students Startup InfinityBox Awarded Hult Prize Seed Funding

InfinityBox, an IIT Kharagpur students startup, has received the seed capital award of $100K by the Hult Prize Foundation. It is the only Indian company that is the recipient of the seed capital award of USD 100,000 by the Hult Prize Foundation and alumni of Nexus Incubator by the US Embassy and Singapore Government-funded Young Social Entrepreneurs 2020. InfinityBox is working towards reducing the use of less single-use plastics in the food delivery industry. The startup has partnered with two of India’s most prominent food delivery companies, Swiggy in the B2C domain, and HungerBox in the B2B domain, to support them…
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Research scholar Jyotsana Priyadarshani talks about ‘organ-on-a-chip’ research

Research scholar Jyotsana Priyadarshani talks about ‘organ-on-a-chip’ research

For over two decades, researchers at IIT Kharagpur have been working on the development of affordable, portable and remote technology in the healthcare domain. The School of Medical Science and Technology and the Microfluidics Lab at the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering have collaborated on several such projects. In a similar work research scholar, Jyotsana Priyadarshani is pursuing her PhD in the area of “organ-on-a-chip” under the supervision of Prof. Soumen Das at the School of Medical Science & Technology and Prof. Suman Chakraborty at the Microfluidics Lab. Her research focuses on utilizing the frugal fabrication technique and microfluidic applications to…
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Climate Change Signals from North-Eastern India, the Wettest Place on Earth

Climate Change Signals from North-Eastern India, the Wettest Place on Earth

In a recent study, researchers from IIT Kharagpur have observed a significant change in the rainfall in the northeast in general and specifically at the wettest place on Earth, Cherrapunji-Mawsynram. The researchers observed rainfall changes in the past century (1901–2019) over the wettest place on the Earth and unveiled the first evidence for the signals of climate change and anthropogenic influence on rainfall changes in the region. The analysis of 119 years of rainfall data at 17 stations in Northeast India revealed that most of the stations show negative trends in rainfall, the highest in the summer monsoon and the…
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Who needs quantum gravity?

Who needs quantum gravity?

By Sandipan Sengupta, Dept of Physics, IIT Kharagpur Nature is made up of elementary particles, the interactions among them being manifested as forces of various kinds. A modern language to describe these phenomena is provided by quantum field theory, which is based on a set of relativistic fields. Within this framework, particles typically emerge as excitations over a (quantum) ground state, and macroscopic forces arise due to the exchange of particles. For instance, for the all so well-known case of the electromagnetic force, the associated particle is the photon, whose exchange between a source and a sink leads to their…
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With You, We Are, As You Were: Year-long Relief Campaign by Alumni for Pandemic Affected Temporary Workers

With You, We Are, As You Were: Year-long Relief Campaign by Alumni for Pandemic Affected Temporary Workers

Highlights: IIT Kharagpur Foundation USA launched the fundraising campaign from alumni in USA, India and rest of the world in April 2020 and it is ongoing IIT Kharagpur has been organizing regular camps for the distribution of relief materials funded by the alumni benefitting over a half a lakh people Temporary workers (including laundry cleaners, domestic helps, temporary hostel workers, rickshaw pullers etc.) and other economically affected poor people who are dependent on the IIT Kharagpur campus for their livelihood were provided relief materials IIT Kharagpur has reached the milestone of the first anniversary of the relief campaign which the…
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