4 days ago
IIT Dharwad bags projects worth Rs 179cr
Dharwad: The third generation of IIT-Dharwad has bagged over 149 projects worth Rs 71 crore through sponsored funding. Along with this, the premier national technological institute has also received consultancy projects worth Rs 5 crore and has garnered Rs 9.2 crore from CSR funds and Rs 5 crore research initiation grants.
Pratyasa Bhui, dean of research and development, IIT-Dharwad, stated that the social impact projects include precision agriculture to improve crop yields and assist management decisions using high-technology sensors and analysis tools. Agriculture drones are also being made. Android applications for periodic crop health monitoring, market forecasts and disease and pest detection are being designed.
Machine learning applications in speech processing, translation of educational content to Indian languages and development of text-to-speech systems, sustainable 3D and 4D printing technology with different applications like civil infrastructure, prosthetics, robotic arms, aerospace and biomedical are being designed, he explained.
The IIT-Dharwad has focused on indoor drones for firefighters. A drone prototype has been developed to locate people stuck inside a building on fire. Now, work is on developing robots for monitoring power transmission lines and pipelines.
In medical technology, portable resistive sensors are developed based on protein biomarkers to detect oral and ovarian cancers. A Raman spectroscopy-based tool has been developed to detect urinary tract infection in a short span of six hours, he elaborated.
Prof NS Punekar stated that this academic year, the IIT-Dharwad will start three new programmes in M Tech, two-year MSc and BS in economics. On students' strength, he stated that 983 students are pursuing BTech, 120 MTech and MS courses and 201 are doing PhD. A total of 1,312 students are studying on the campus.
At present, the IIT-Dharwad has 92 permanent faculty and 73 non-teaching staff, and in the next four years, it will be increased to 246 teaching and 263 non-teaching staff, he informed.
