csr booklet withbleed - alumni.iitb.ac.in injectable treatment for osteoarthritis better kidney...

CSR

Corporate Social Responsibility with IIT Bombay

Dean (Alumni & Corporate Relations) Office

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076

Email : [email protected]

Established in 1958, the second of its kind, IIT Bombay was the first to be set up with foreign assistance, the then Soviet Union. In 1961 Parliament decreed the IITs as ‘Institutes of National Importance'. Since then, IITB has grown from strength to strength to emerge as one of the top technical universities in the world.

The institute is recognised worldwide as a leader in the field of engineering education and research. Reputed for the outstanding calibre of students graduating from its undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, the institute attracts the best students from the country for its bachelor's, master's and doctoral programmes. Research and academic programmes at IIT Bombay are driven by outstanding faculty, many of whom are reputed for their research contributions internationally.

Located in Powai, one of the northern suburbs of Mumbai, the residents of the institute reap the advantage of being in the busy financial capital of India, while at the same time enjoying the serenity of a campus known for its natural beauty. A fully residential institute, all its students are accommodated in its 15 hostels with in-house dining; the campus also provides excellent amenities for sports and other recreational facilities. The campus houses 10000 students and 600 full-time faculty members.

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[email protected], www.trikkon.com

Table of Contents ii-iii

Project Categorization as per Schedule VIIof CSR Policy iv-vi

Micronutrient Loaded Cosmetics: Preventing Anemia in Women Prof. Rinti Banerjee 01

Fortified Rice in Mid Day Meals for Preventing Malnutrition Amongst Children Prof. Rinti Banerjee 02

Improving Healthcare in Rural Areas: Point of Care Diagnostics for Infections Prof. Rinti Banerjee 03

Improving Mobility in Elderly Population: New Injectable Treatment for Osteoarthritis Prof. Rinti Banerjee 04

Mimicking Nature to Reduce Environmental Pollution Prof. Rinti Banerjee 05

Better Kidney Dialysis with newer materials, equipment and procedures Prof. Jayesh Bellare 06

Nanomedicines across different medicinal systems: Understanding the structure and function of Allopathic, Homeopathic and Ayurvedic medicines through nanotechnology and materials science Prof. Jayesh Bellare 07

Dissemination of improved cookstove Prof. Upendra Bhandarkar &retrofits in Raigadh, Thane and Palghar district Prof. Shireesh Kedare 08-09

Addressing the drudgery involved in Bibba deshelling practice Prof. Upendra Bhandarkar 10-11

A digital teaching aid for learning English and Hindi Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharya 12-13

Interactive Multimedia Textbooks for Prof. Kameswari Chebrolu &Flipped Classroom Teaching Prof. Bhaskaran Raman 14-15

Fall prevention in the aging population of India: a dramatically rising demographic Prof. Neeta Kanekar 16-18

Mitigation of agrarian crisis Prof. Shireesh Kedare &in Yavatmal Prof. Bakul Rao 19-21

High Performance Compact Latent Heat Energy Recovery Technology Using Thermoelectrics Prof. Shankar Krishnan 22-23

Rainwater Harvesting : An option for Sustainable Management of Water Resources in Urban Context Prof. Trupti Mishra 24

Making organic farming a profitable venture for farmers with minimal land holdings Prof. T. T. Niranjan 25-26

The effects of hunger and social exclusion on farmers' financial decision making styles Prof. T. T. Niranjan 27

Active Learning in Electronics and Power Electronics with Simulation App Prof. Mahesh B. Patil 28-29

Conversion of green-house gases Prof. G. Rajaraman &into useful chemical products Prof. S. Maheswaran 30-31

Project Work Area Principal Investigator Page Nos

ii


Development of an open educational ICT architecture to help capture, complement,supplement and disseminate knowledge of existing integral practices in rural areas. Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan 32-33

Crowd-Sensing for Sustainable and Environment Friendly Commute Prof. Bhaskaran Raman 34-36

Strengthening water sources based on independent rainwater utilization Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan 37-38

Empowering tribal communities near Bhimashankar Sanctuary through Social Entrepreneurship Prof. Anand Rao 39

Designing low cost fish cages for enhancement of inland fisheries production in India Prof. Anand Rao 40

Socio-Econo-Enviro Study of Napkins &Diapers class of Consumer Goods Prof. Bakul Rao 41-42

Demonstration of Water Supply solution to upgraded Kitchen-Garden / ShedNet House Prof. Narendra Shah 43

Micro Vegetable gardens Towards Enhanced Nutrition-Security Prof. Narendra Shah 44

Sustainability Centered Decision Support System for Business and Policy Making Prof. Yogendra Shastri 45-46

Synthetic Soils for Sustainable Infrastructure Development Prof. D. N. Singh 47-48

Building Solar Enterprises in Rural Areas Prof. Chetan Singh Solanki 49-50

Centre of Excellence for Child & Maternal Health (Malnutrition & associated Tuberculosis) Prof. Rohit Srivastava &and Women Health Education Dr. Vinay Saini 51-52

DEiCONT™ Point-of-care based detection and removal of ionic impurities from water Prof. Rohit Srivastava 53-54

Diagnostic and treatment of dental cavities filled Prof. Rohit Srivastava 55-57with resistive microbes using multifunctional GO-Au-PLGA nanofiller based composite resin

Smart Phone Based Diagnosis and Photothermal Treatment of Cervical Cancer Prof. Rohit Srivastava 58-59

Development, Evaluation & Scale-UP of Non-invasive & Low cost Rapid TB diagnostics Prof. Rohit Srivastava 60-61

I-Inspector : Ophthalmoscope Prof. Rohit Srivastava 62-63

Prevention and Control of Surgical Site Infection Prof. Rohit Srivastava 64

Prophylactic vaccination facilitated by microneedle patch of reinforced polymer with vaccine-in-silk nanoparticles Prof. Rohit Srivastava 65-66

Bioabsorbable Screws for soft tissue fixation Prof. Rohit Srivastava 67-70

EmoMonitor, a proposed Prof. Seeta Vashee &mobile phone-based application Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharya 71-72

iii

Project Categorization as per Schedule VII of CSR Policy

ERADICATING HUNGER, POVERTY & MALNUTRITION


Prof. Rinti Banerjee 01


Prof. T. T. Niranjan 27

Prof. Narendra Shah 44

Prof. Rohit Srivastava &

Dr. Vinay Saini 51-52

Micronutrient Loaded

Cosmetics: Preventing Anemia in Women

Fortified Rice in Mid Day Meals for

Preventing Malnutrition Amongst Children

The effects of hunger and social exclusion

on farmers' financial decision making styles

Micro Vegetable gardens Towards

Enhanced Nutrition-Security

Centre of Excellence for Child & Maternal

Health (Malnutrition & associated Tuberculosis)

and Women Health Education

PROMOTING HEALTHCARE




Prof. Jayesh Bellare 06

Prof. Jayesh Bellare 07

Prof. Neeta Kanekar 16-18

Prof. Rohit Srivastava 55-57




Prof. Rohit Srivastava 64



Prof. Seeta Vashee &

Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharya 71-72

Improving Healthcare in Rural Areas:

Point of Care Diagnostics for Infections

Improving Mobility in Elderly Population:

New Injectable Treatment for Osteoarthritis

Better Kidney Dialysis with newer materials,

equipment and procedures

Nanomedicines across different medicinal systems:

Understanding the structure and function of Allopathic,

Homeopathic and Ayurvedic medicines through

nanotechnology and materials science

Fall prevention in the aging population of India:

a dramatically rising demographic

Diagnostic and treatment of dental cavities filled

with resistive microbes using multifunctional

GO-Au-PLGA nanofiller based composite resin

Smart Phone Based Diagnosis and

Photothermal Treatment of Cervical Cancer

Development, Evaluation & Scale-UP of

Non-invasive & Low cost Rapid TB diagnostics

I-Inspector : Ophthalmoscope

Prevention and Control of

Surgical Site Infection

Prophylactic vaccination facilitated by

microneedle patch of reinforced polymer

with vaccine-in-silk nanoparticles

Bioabsorbable Screws for

soft tissue fixation

EmoMonitor, a proposed

mobile phone-based application

iv


PROMOTING EDUCATION


Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharya 12-13

Prof. Kameswari Chebrolu &

Prof. Bhaskaran Raman 14-15

Prof. Shireesh Kedare &

Prof. Bakul Rao 19-21

Prof. Mahesh B. Patil 28-29


Prof. Chetan Singh Solanki 49-50

Prof. Rohit Srivastava &

Dr. Vinay Saini 51-52

A digital teaching aid for learning

English and Hindi

Interactive Multimedia Textbooks for

Flipped Classroom Teaching

Mitigation of agrarian crisis

in Yavatmal

Active Learning in Electronics and

Power Electronics with Simulation App

Demonstration of Water Supply solution

to upgraded Kitchen-Garden / ShedNet House

Building Solar Enterprises

in Rural Areas

Centre of Excellence for Child & Maternal

Health (Malnutrition & associated Tuberculosis)

and Women Health Education

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY & ECOLOGICAL BALANCE



Prof. Upendra Bhandarkar &

Prof. Shireesh Kedare 08-09

Prof. Shankar Krishnan 22-23

Prof. Trupti Mishra 24

Prof. T. T. Niranjan 25-26

Prof. G. Rajaraman &

Prof. S. Maheswaran 30-31

Prof. Bhaskaran Raman 34-36

Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan 37-38


Prof. Yogendra Shastri 45-46

Prof. D. N. Singh 47-48


Mimicking Nature to Reduce

Environmental Pollution

Dissemination of improved cookstove

retrofits in Raigadh, Thane and Palghar district

High Performance Compact Latent Heat Energy

Recovery Technology Using Thermoelectrics

Rainwater Harvesting :

An option for Sustainable Management

of Water Resources in Urban Context

Making organic farming a profitable venture

for farmers with minimal land holdings

Conversion of green-house gases

into useful chemical products

Crowd-Sensing for Sustainable

and Environment Friendly Commute

Strengthening water sources based

on independent rainwater utilization

Socio-Econo-Enviro Study of Napkins &

Diapers class of Consumer Goods

Sustainability Centered Decision

Support System for Business and Policy Making

Synthetic Soils for Sustainable

Infrastructure Development

DEiCONT™ Point-of-care based detection and

removal of ionic impurities from water

v


RURAL DEVELOPMENT


Prof. Upendra Bhandarkar 10-11

Prof. Shireesh Kedare &


Prof. T. T. Niranjan 27

Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan 32-33

Prof. Anand Rao 39

Prof. Anand Rao 40



Prof. Chetan Singh Solanki 49-50

Addressing the drudgery involved in

Bibba deshelling practice

Mitigation of agrarian crisis

in Yavatmal

The effects of hunger and social exclusion

on farmers' financial decision making styles

Development of an open educational ICT

architecture to help capture, complement,

supplement and disseminate knowledge of

existing integral practices in rural areas.

Empowering tribal communities near Bhimashankar

Sanctuary through Social Entrepreneurship

Designing low cost fish cages for enhancement of

inland fisheries production in India

Demonstration of Water Supply solution

to upgraded Kitchen-Garden / ShedNet House

Micro Vegetable gardens Towards

Enhanced Nutrition-Security

Building Solar Enterprises

in Rural Areas

vi

Need

Anemia is widely prevalent globally particularly in developing countries. Deficiency of folic acid in women leads to increased incidence of neural tube defects and mortality in infants. In addition, iron deficiency leads to high incidence of anemia.

There is low compliance in oral fortification and supplementation strategies due to cultural differences in food tastes, and incidence of gastrointestinal disturbances on administration. However, there is an universal appeal of cosmetics amongst girls and women globally, including women in rural areas

Outcome or Deliverables

The project aims at increasing access to micronutrients and preventing deficiencies by utilizing everyday use, culturally relevant cosmetics for delivery of micronutrients through the skin. Micronutrient encapsulation technology will be incorporated within everyday use cosmetics such that they can be used to deliver folic acid and iron through skin as a fortification strategy amongst adolescent girls and women of child bearing age.

The outcome of the project will be the optimized cosmetics which are safe, affordable and have enhanced micronutrient delivery and documented results of field trials of the optimized cosmetics. This will help enhance micronutrient status amongst women in rural India and reduce the incidence of anemia

Project Details

The patented technology has been developed for the same by the PI (two patents filed). Cosmetics which deliver folic acid and iron through skin have been developed at the laboratory scale found to be safe and are non-irritant to skin.

This project aims at scaling the innovation and making it accessible to those in need.

The concentrations of micronutrient loading will be optimized for the required fortification levels as per national guidelines.

Optimised formulations of the cosmetics with micronutrients will be manufactured under GMP settings.

This involves regulatory testing, scale up, quality control of the batches will be undertaken.

The final products will be evaluated in pilot field trials in adolescent girls in rural Maharashtra as an alternative non-oral route of fortification.

The outcomes of the project will be beneficial in using these micronutrient loaded cosmetics as platforms for further fortification of micronutrients in rural areas.

Micronutrient Loaded Cosmetics: Preventing Anemia in Women

Principal Investigator : Prof. Rinti Banerjee, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT BombayIn collaboration for Vadu Rural Health program

Duration: 2 years

Budget: Rs. 1.5 crores

01

Need

Iron, folate, vitamin B12, thiamine and vitamin A deficiencies are widely prevalent globally amongst children particularly in developing countries. This leads to both long term and short term detrimental effect such as increased illness and poor cognitive skills, on human health especially in children. Fortified rice kernels, milk and wheat are food vehicles that can cater to large populations in India. Encapsulation of nutrients such as iron, folate, vitamin B12, thiamine and vitamin A enhance their stability and bio-availability, while increasing organoleptic properties and acceptability.


A patented technology has been developed for incorporation of micronutrients in rice, wheat and milk without causing any change in colour and taste. The technology makes the micronutrients stable to heat during cooking. The technology causes improvements over existing rice fortification strategies which are restricted due to colour and taste changes.

The project aims at scaling the encapsulated rice fortification technology, and incorporation in mid day meals for fortification in rural schools. The expected outcome of the project are

1. The development of encapsulated fortified rice that is stable to thermal changes and does not cause any effects on the colour and taste of foods 2. The evaluation of the deployment of the fortified rice amongst children in rural Maharashtra as part of the mid day meal scheme.

Project Details

One Indian patent has been filed for the technology, another patent application is currently underway. The technology for micronutrient fortification in milk, wheat flour and rice has been established at the lab scale.

We propose to scale up the innovation and evaluate in field trials for fortification in school children through midday meals in rural Vadu, Maharashtra.

The work involves optimization of the encapsulation technology, evaluation of the effects on bioavailability, stability, colour and taste of rice and the scale up using rice extrusion facilities to develop micronutrient loaded rice.

After optimization, we will work with our partners to evaluate the effectiveness and acceptability of the rice in a fortification study in rural Maharashtra as part of the mid day meal program.

In addition, this is expected to act as a platform to enhance micronutrient status, hemoglobin levels and overall health amongst children in rural India which can be widely replicated elsewhere.

Fortified Rice in Mid Day Meals for Preventing Malnutrition Amongst Children Principal Investigator : Prof. Rinti Banerjee, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT BombayIn collaboration for Vadu Rural Health program

Duration: 2 years


02

Duration: 3 years


Need

Uncontrolled infections can be life threatening and at the same time indiscriminate use of antibiotics is leading to the emergence of antimicrobial resistance globally. In rural areas, the access to central diagnostic facilities is limited and much time is wasted in transfer of samples and awaiting results which can affect the treatment schedule. There is also a shortage of qualified medical personnel, hence there is a need for easy to access tests of microbial infection which will be instrument free, low cost and require minimal training for use by health care workers.


The project will lead to the development of a validated point of care diagnostic device for detecting of bacterial infections.

A paper based point of care technology that allows determination of the bacterial agent and its sensitivity in a few minutes.

The technology will be based on smart materials which enhance bacterial adhesion and monitor the response of bacterial growth by easy colour changes.

This can go a long way in ensuring correct treatment of infections in resource poor settings, saving lives and avoiding the emergence of antimicrobial resistance.

Project Details

Proof of concept has been obtained for a point of care diagnostic for bacterial infections.

The project aims at fine tuning the prototype by developing simple paper based devices which are like the home based pregnancy tests, instrument free, easy to read with minimal training.

Batches of the prototype will be developed and evaluated for batch to batch reproducibility and compared with gold standards for accuracy.

The technology will be scaled up to develop multiple devices and the clinical trials or validation studies will be undertaken. These will be assessed both in terms of effectiveness of the technology to accurately detect bacterial or non-bacterial sources of infections and sensitivity to common antibiotics and also in terms of ease of usability of the technology by end users.

It is expected that the technology and devices developed in the project will act as platforms for widespread deployment and testing of bacterial infections and sensitivity in a short period of time in rural areas.

This will allow the rational use of antibiotics and will reduce the emergence of resistant strains. The devices developed can be deployed in small clinics in semi urban areas, in primary health care centres as well as at the home setting by health care workers.

Improving Healthcare in Rural Areas: Point of Care Diagnostics for Infections

Principal Investigator : Prof. Rinti Banerjee, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT BombayIn collaboration for KEM Hospital

03

Need

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a progressive musculoskeletal degenerative disorder with a clinical symptom of joint pain characterized by the gradual loss of articular cartilage and inflammation of the joint. OA is the most prevailing form of arthritis and the foremost cause of disability in India, affecting over 15 million Indians every year. Due to limited treatment options that address the underlying etiology of the disease, it progresses leading to impaired mobility and high morbidity.

Outcome and Deliverables

The proposed project aims at developing a smart injectable gel which adheres to the bone and acts as a cushion similar to the articular cartilage and assists its repair.

The technology developed will be evaluated for regulatory toxicology and pilot clinical trials for intra-articular injection or arthroscopic instillation in joints in grade 1,2 and 3 of osteoarthritis

The outcome of the project will be the optimized formulation of the device as an injectable gel for treatment of arthritis, evaluation of the same for regulatory toxicology and the validation of the same in a pilot clinical trial.

Project details

The prototypes of the injectable gels for treatment of arthritis have been developed. Our technology denotes that the gels can be injected in a minimally invasive manner and can be adhere to bone and cartilage interface acting as an agent that promotes cartilage repair.In the project, the technology will be fine tuned to optimize the degradation, maintainance of injectability, formation of a porous network in situ gel within the body which supports cartilage and non-toxicity.

The prototype will be scaled up and evaluated for regulatory approvals for toxicity and suitably tested in preclinical and clinical trials which will evaluate it as a new treatment of the elderly suffering from osteoarthritis.

The project will lead to the development and validation of a new technology that can be directly injected into the joint and treat the underlying cause of osteoarthritis

This will reduce the requirement of joint replacement surgeries and enhance the mobility and quality of life of osteoarthritis patients using a platform technology that is minimally invasive and low cost.

In the future, the technology developed in this project can be widely deployed in osteoarthritis and provide an alternative to patients in low resource settings. In addition, it can act as a platform which can serve as a depot for the release of drugs or nutrients directly into the joint.

Nanocomposite versions of the technology can be fine tuned for addressing more advanced type 4 ostearthritis.

Improving Mobility in Elderly Population: New Injectable Treatment for OsteoarthritisPrincipal Investigator : Prof. Rinti Banerjee, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT BombayIn collaboration for KEM Hospital

Duration: 3 years


04

Duration: 2 years


Need

Organic contaminants, heavy metals and toxic elements are common pollutants of air, water and soil globally. There is an urgent need to develop strategies to control the effect of pollutants on soil, groundwater and particulates in atmosphere. Nanoparticles can enhance the adsorption and catalytic functions to remove several forms of pollutants. However, the non-degradability of the metallic based nanomaterials used for environmental control and clean up are a matter of concern in the long run.


The project will lead to the development of technologies proposed which are bioinspired nanoparticles and nanocomposites that are degradable, enhance the removal of hydrophobic pollutants, pesticides, chemicals and heavy metals and form aggregated clumps allowing their separation from the substrate.

Batches of the nanoparticles will be developed and evaluated for their ability to reduce the effects of pollutants in water, soil and air.

The nanoparticles can enhance pollutant removal while being completely biodegradable themselves.

The technologies developed will be affordable, scalable and biodegradable allowing their long term application in environmental control.

Project Details

Core shell polymeric and polymer-ceramic nanocomposites will be developed which have the ability to enhance the removal of toxic pollutants. All materials developed will be biodegradable and environmentally safe.

Batches of the nanoparticles developed will be evaluated for reproducilbility, cost effectiveness, degradability and ability to enhance removal of pollutants.

The optimized nanoparticles will then be formulated in the form of sprays for soils, surface coatings for water containers/pipes/wells and for effects on water pollution and as wall paints for control of effects of air pollution.

After validation of the technology, the same will be evaluated in a field trial.

Once the technology has been developed, it will serve as a platform wherein additional features can be built into the technology. For example, anti-bacterial features can also be built into the nanoparticles to act as coatings for reducing the effects of harmful organisms in water, soil or solid surfaces.

Mimicking Nature to Reduce Environmental Pollution

Principal Investigator : Prof. Rinti Banerjee, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT BombayIn collaboration for Non Government Organizations

05

Need

Many organs like kidney, liver and pancreas fail. End stage renal disease (ESRD) is the complete failure of kidney functions, an unfortunate but widespread medical condition, where kidneys can no longer remove wastes, concentrate urine, nor regulate many other important body functions. Diabetes and high blood pressure are the two leading causes of ESRD, accounting for more than 60 percent of cases. Hemodialysis is one the most effective and widely used mode to regulate the kidney functions artificially. Hemodialysis utilizes a dialyzer to perform the purification function of the kidney by removing metabolic waste products such as urea, creatinine, uric acid, and inorganic phosphate as well as free water from the blood. Liver and pancreas also have such problems.Why is it required (its importance)a. As many as 8 lakh Indian patients need dialysis treatment (2012).b. More than 90% of the 2.3 lakh people who develop chronic kidney failure each year in India die

within months because of a lack of treatment, 2009 study by AIIMS.c. Dialysers in use today have undesirable side reactions in a few patients. Among them are

atherosclerosis, hypertension, chronic inflammatory diseases and nephritis. With our advance biomaterial, these are less due to less ROS production.

d. High prevalence of kidney failure due to diabetes. Number of Indians with diabetes is predicted to reach 101 million by 2030.

e. Market: The global dialysis market was valued at $ 75 billion in 2013 and $ 152 million Indian market.

Deliverables

Improved, low cost kidney dialyser leading to a biomimetic, high-performance artificial organs (kidney, liver, pancreas) that would bring the powers of regenerative medicine to develop an implantable device.

Project Details

We have two innovations that will positively impact this situation. We have successfully developed an indigenous and low-cost pilot plant for the continuous production of hollow-fiber membranes to be used in hemodialysis and other applications at production rate of several kilometers per day. Membrane morphology and properties which are responsible for the separation performance can be controlled by the in-build spinning pilot plant. We have also formulated a special membrane material. Our published results show 10x better separation performance in compare to commercial hollow fiber membranes. Our HFM is highly bio-compatible than commercial membrane. It is highly efficient in removing toxins such as urea, creatinine and phosphate. Better separation performance will decrease the total treatment time as well as reduce the side reaction due to lesser contact time with blood. Our superior membrane could spur novel devices like portable/wearable dialyzers.We are ready with the prototype of lab scale hemodialyzer.The first step of this new project is to design and develop the dialyzer ready for animal testing followed by clinical trials.Dialyzer development will consist of assembly, potting, cutting of HFMs. Design includes housing shell modification to maximize the mass transfer.In the future, we wish to apply this to a biomimetic, high-performance device that would bring the powers of regenerative medicine to develop an implantable device. We have already done trials of artificial kidney.

Significance of our product and technology:1. High performance- 10x greater than commercial hemodialyzer (as our published data)2. Superior bio-compatibility: Lesser side reactions and improved quality life of renal patient3. Cost reduction due to indigenous production: Wider population reach4. Smaller dialysis time due to high flux: Benefits to patients lifestyle and dialysis center5. This could lead to research into newer devices such as implantable/wearable artificial kidneys,

including cell based ones, and other bio-artificial organs

Better Kidney Dialysis with newer materials, equipment and proceduresPrincipal Investigator : Prof. Jayesh Bellare, Chemical Engineering, IIT Bombay

Duration: 3 years for clinical trials & 5 years to deployment

Budget: Short-term : Total Rs. 40 crores & Long-term: Total Rs. 200 crores

06

Duration: 3 years

Budget: Rs.50 crores

Need

There is an immense need to improve performance of medicines across all medicinal systems. How can we reduce dose and side-effects of modern allopathic medicines? How do traditional (Ayurvedic) and alternative (Homeopathic) medicines work? What is the structure and science of nanomedicines? Are there commonalities?

Outcome/Deliverables

Better understanding of how nano-medicines work; provide leads into new pipelines for modern medicines. Our studies in the materials science of various medicinal systems will give deeper know how of processes and set better quality control for Ayurvedic and Homeopathic medicines, improved modern (allopathic) medicines. There are many more phenomenon yet to be understood during ultra high dilution process and dose reduction, as well as metronomic dosing. This research will give new insights and open thinking process that could pave the way for new medicines and better health for all.

Project details

Our work attempts to answer these questions, and we have made breakthrough progress already. 60 400 2000Homeopathic medicines have ultra high dilution factors of 10 , 10 , and 10 which are equal to

30c, 200c and 1M potencies that are regularly used for treating patients. There are several hypotheses for structure like liquid memory, clatharate formation, quantum-physical and silica hypothesis to attempt explain this but there is no proof of the presence of physical entities, so this remains a mystery. Our prior work in this area for metallic medicines has shown that nanostructures of the metals remain despite the high potency/dilution. Here, we feel need to extend this to inorganic salts, herbal extract, and nosode, which are well known even in other systems of medicine as being vital for the living, growth and functioning of the cells in our body. If there is deficiency or excess in any of these salts it creates an imbalance in the system leading to various kinds of illness. The silicate polymer coat helps hold together these particles.

We have seen that traditional medicines like Ayurvedic ones, and alternative medicines like Homeopathic ones also have nanoparticles in them. Nanoparticles show improved biological activity. The ultrahigh dilutions during manufacture used in homeopathy have raised a controversy in the scientific world. Due to this, the molecular basis of the medicinal action of the drug was always in doubt. Electron microscopy was used to show for the first time that nanocrystals of the starting materials are present in the final product despite the extremely high dilutions. State of art instruments like High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscope, Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometer, Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometer and many other techniques can now be applied to know the presence and composition of many alternative medicines that are obtained from natural extracts.

We have developed modern nanomedicines of carboplatin leading to improved delivery to the retina for retinoblastoma, and this is the very first Indian nanomedicines to reach first-in-human trials.

Nanomedicines across different medicinal systems: Understanding the structure and

function of Allopathic, Homeopathic and Ayurvedic medicines through

nanotechnology and materials science Principal Investigator : Prof. Jayesh Bellare, Chemical Engineering, IIT Bombay

07

Abstract and Background

The project aims to reduce the problem of drudgery in firewood fetching activity and smoke incurred during cooking by disseminating twisted tape packs and grates in the tribal and rural region of Raigadh, Palghar and Thane district. Firewood collection and carrying an overhead load of around 25 kg to home from the local forest area is one of the most arduous activities of tribal women in Thane, Palghar and Raigadh districts. For an average family of six, women have to make 100120 trips to the local forest to fetch the annual requirement of firewood. One such trip requires around 23 women work hours in winter and around 46 hours in summer season. Investigations carried out in Gawand-wadi (Karjat Block of Raigadh district), Kochecha pada and Amberbhui (Wada block of Palghar district), Akre and Vainganpada (Javar block of Palghar district) revealed that women face the problems of back ache, neck ache, calf muscle ache during woodcollection and carrying, apart from the amount of time lost (450 hours annually). Most of the improved cookstoves run by the state have not been accepted by rural and tribal women due to the various reasons such as: a) improved cookstoves are not designed by considering the existing cooking practice, b) Some improved stoves need a particular fuel size and shape that puts an additional burden on women, c) improved cookstoves are usually available in a single pot design, whereas, villagers use either two pot or three pot stove at most of the paces, d) maintenance of the stoves cannot be easily done in rural environments. Against this scenario, a bottom up approach was followed to make small changes in the existing cookstove itself for its improvement. An action research carried out with women from Gawand wadi in Karjat block yielded a small device called twisted tape pack (see figure 1) that can be incorporated in the existing cookstove to improve its performance. It is established that incorporation of optimal twisted tape packs (ttps) in the existing cookstoves brings the following changes:

1. It reduces firewood consumption by around 25%. It reduces around 2530 firewood fetching trips of women and thus the associated drudgery. This saves 300 women workhours expended for firewood fetching and cooking activities annually. It also saves around 625 kg firewood for an average family.

2. It reduces time of cooking by around 18%3. It reduces smoke significantly.

This retrofits do not change the existing cooking practice and are available at low cost. Thus they are quite promising solutions to the problems incurred in the existing cooking practice.

Till now, context appropriate retrofits (twisted tape packs and in some cases grate and twisted tape packs) are developed and disseminated to some extent at a few places in Maharashtra (Karjat, Wada, Javar, Satara, Ambegao, Yavatmal, Sangamner) and Karnataka (Yadgir).

Proposed Work and Outcome

The dissemination of the retrofits would be carried out in two phases. The first phase will concentrate on the dissemination of the retrofits in Karjat and Wada block. It will serve as a dissemination cum learning exercise to devise a set of methods for the effective dissemination. Wada block has tribal and scheduled caste population of around 90000. We will work with Shree Nityanand Educational Trust (SNET) in Wada block and with Oak Vanaushadhi Kendra in Karjat block for the dissemination. We have already started dissemination of ttps near Ganeshpuri with SNET in a limited area. Learning from the ongoing small scale dissemination activities near Ganeshpuri (with SNET) we propose the following plan.

1. We will attempt to develop a number of women entrepreneurs in the selected tribal villages (consider 50 villages that comprise around 1618 thousand population for the first phase) of Wada block. Field workers hired at SNET (may be four in the first phase) will build the capacity of these selected women entrepreneurs by regular visits, a set of training sessions, and review

Dissemination of improved cookstove retrofits in Raigadh, Thane and Palghar districtPrincipal Investigator : Prof. Upendra Bhandarkar, Mechanical Enggineering, IIT Bombay andProf. Shireesh Kedare, , IIT BombayEnergy Science and Engineering

Duration: 2 years

Budget: Rs. 23.46 lakhs

08

meetings. These field workers will work full time for the project work. Women entrepreneurs will receive twisted tape packs (ttps) from the field workers, they will help in selling the ttps to rural women in their village and surrounding villages. They will get some amount (around 10 rupees per ttp) for every sold ttp from the price of ttp itself. Women entrepreneurs will keep records of the names of households who bought ttps and the economic accounting for the corresponding village. We would try to sell the ttps at its market price (100 rupees/ttp) for the first phase. Learning from the experience from the first phase, we may either continue or consider for subsidy for the next phases.

2. Field workers will be trained to conduct a set of meetings in the villages for publicizing the retrofit technology. He/she will make use of handbills and posters for this work. Field workers would keep accounting of the twisted tape packs along with basic documentation of the socioeconomic background of the buyers. They will carry out documentation of cooking practice of the selected households for kitchen performance tests. They will help in the conduction of kitchen performance tests and measurement of time of cooking (rice making). They will also gather qualitative feedback from the selected families.

3. We will document cooking practice in various villages and design a set of kitchen performance tests and time measurement exercises. We will carry out kitchen performance tests in a few selected households (by considering variety of region, family size, and other details) to find out the actual reduction in the firewood consumption (may be two villages for the first phase). Time measurement to cook a particular item will reveal the reduction in the time of cooking.

4. We will also customize the design of ttp as per the regional variation in the coosktove design and cooking practice.

At the end of the first phase, we will make plans for phase two. Tentatively, we will try to reach in fifty tribal villages in Wada and Karjat blocks till March 2017.

Figure 1 : Twisted tape packs retrofitted in a cookstove in Kochecha pada village in Wada block

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Goal

Developing and dissemination of a mechanism to address the drudgery involved in the traditional activity of bibba deshelling by women from tribal communities.

Objectives

1. To develop a mechanism to address the drudgery involved in the bibba deshelling mechanism2. To disseminate the developed mechanism in the tribal communities

Background

Marking nut or Bibba is one of the non timber forest produce which is available in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgadh, Orrisa and Maharashtra. The processing of marking nut involves many activities from collection from forest to manual deshelling of nut with stone hitting (see figure 1). The deshelling of marking nut is done only in the Marathwada and Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. A few attempts have been made to train tribal people from Orissa but the outcome is not up to the mark. Aurangabad, Jalana, Vashim, Nanded, Akola, Buldhana, Amravati, and Parbhani are the main districts in Maharashtra that are involved in deshelling process of marking nut, also called as Bibba in Marathi. It was found that around 15000 households from Aurangabad and Jalana districts are involved in this activity.

Sellable produce from Bibba are sweet fruit (Biboo), Kernel and oil. This nut is similar to Cashew nut but has different social and economic values. From the nutritional analysis it is found that Godambi is more nutritious than Cashew and gets a market price of Rs.500/kg. Although the price tag seems to be very attractive the overall process includes huge drudgery and other socioeconomic problems. During the deshelling process with stone (see figure 1), a lot of oil is expelled out from the nut and causes serious blisters on th e skin if it makes contact; in most of the cases the vapours of oil makes the eyesight blurred for a short time period. Women have to wrap both the arms and other body parts with multilayers of cloth. This activity is performed for 810 hrs a day in very strained physical posture and nearly 12000 -15000 strokes of stone are applied to nuts in this time. With such high and repetitive physical pain women deshell the nut to get daily income of Rs.100-250/. All family members contribute in different activities but the most difficult activity is done by women.

A few NGOs such as Savitribai Phule Mahila Ekatmta Sanghthan from Aurangabad, Agriculture universities from Parbhani and Akola have tried to develop manually operated deshelling mechanisms. The efforts started around the year 2000 but none of the devices have found acceptability among the women. The developers tried to offer technological solutions which were comparatively safe but was unable to match productivity of traditional process.

Against this scenario, Shrijith Kunjir (erstwhile masters student) and Dr. Vijay Honkalaskar (Lokchetana Sanghatan) worked with tribal women from Ghatambri

village in Aurangabad district to carry out a comprehensive study of the multidimensional aspects of the problem and to find an appropriate solution. Savitirbai Phule Mahila Ekatmata Samaj Mandal from Aurangabad provided the local support for the work while seed funding was provided by the Tata Center for Technology and Development, IITB.

Addressing the drudgery involved in Bibba deshelling practicePrincipal Investigator : Prof. Upendra Bhandarkar, IIT BombayMechanical Engineering,

Figure 1: A malhar koli women de-sehl ling bibbas

Duration: 2 years


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Efforts carried out by us till now to study and address the problemThe problem : Based on a number of participatory exercises, field level measurements, and socioeconomic study associated with the traditional bibba deshelling activity, the following problem was formulated.

1. To increase the productivity of the present bibba deshelling activity beyond 400 bibbas per hour by the tribal women.

2. To ensure that there are less than 20% of the breakages.3. To reduce the backache, neckache, arm ache, and other body muscle ache involved in the bibba deshelling activity.4. To reduce oil spillage and oil vapor attack to address the problem of health hazards incurred during the activity.5. To build an alternative way or mechanism that is affordable (less than 10 thousand rupees or a payback period of

less than one year).6. To ensure that the new mechanism should not take away the livelihood from the tribal community to the other

forward communities

Efforts carried by us to address the problemTill now, five different mechanisms were developed to improve the existing bibba deshelling activity. The recent models are shown in figure 2. It involves a pressing mechanism to deshell bibba. The recent models are found to be impressive and women showed their interest in using them. It is required to further improve the models and disseminate them in a commercial way.

Proposed workIt involves the following

1. Developing a context appropriate mechanism to address the problems incurred in the existing bibba deshelling activity. This involves further improvement of the recently developed bibba deshelling mechanism. It is required to carry out a number of field trials with a number of selected tribal women, getting feedbacks from woman, and further improvement of the manual machine. Additional efforts have to be made to reduce the cost of the manual machine by making it simple.

2. Study of various bibba deshelling activities carried out in various districts and customizing the developed bibba deshelling machine as per the local requirements.

3. Developing a commercial model of dissemination of the machine with the help of local volunteer organizations.

Deliverables

1. A developed mechanism that addresses the problems involved in the existing bibba deshelling activity2. Context specific customizations of the bibba deshelling mechanism (in Vidarbha and Marathwada regions)3. Developing a commercial dissemination network in Aurangabad.

Figure 2: Recently developed experimental machines to deshell bibba

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Rationale

Education – a Challenge

Education is the backbone of every society, but what matters the most is quality education with good teachers and teaching aids. According to UNICEF, 40-50% of the children from 15-18 years age group are dropping out of schools. The Indian Government is taking initiatives to improve the situation through programs such as 'Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan', 'RashtriyaMadhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan', 'Sakshaar Bharat Mission'. However, this is not enough because the challenge is huge. The Indian corporate sector also plays a big role in improving quality education as per the government mandate of devoting 2% of companies' annual revenue to Corporate Social Responsibility.

Addressing the Challenge of Language Teaching

In education, languages play an important role and we believe that resource assisted language learning will address the long standing need of the country of producing well-groomed youth who communicate well, express themselves aptly and foster better understanding in society. Keeping in mind the above, this project aims to build a digital language teaching and learning aid which can be used in CSR activities related to education, both in formal school settings and informal teaching environments. It will be in tune with curricula across the various school boards. While it will be a comprehensive language teaching aid with a structured focus on vocabulary and grammar, it can also impart situation based conversational skills, wherein grammar and vocabulary will be imbibed in the process. The data will be enhanced with audiovisual features, making learning effective and interesting. The product will be available through online, offline and mobile interfaces.

Wordnet Based Language Teaching Aid

This teaching aid will be based on Wordnet, which is a lexical database built on psycholinguistic principles. Wordnet is designed around lexical and semantic relations which are cognitive universals, i.e., these relations are found in all languages. Such a lexicon can be a valuable aid in teaching language, as word relationships and meaning relationships are very helpful in firmly establishing word-meanings and word-usages in the mind of learners. For example, the fact that "horse" is a kind of "animal" (hypernymy relation), "uniform" is opposite of "diverse" (antonymy relation), "cultivate" has as its object "land" (argument entailment relation) greatly assist in understanding these words. We, at IIT Bombay have built Wordnets of 18 Indian languages, all linked to English. These are mainly meant for Natural Language Processing tasks. In the proposed project, from amongst these languages, Hindi and English will be remodeled to suit the teaching and learning environment.

Digital aid

The need of the hour - In keeping with the rapid digitization of India, actively promoted both by government and private sectors, this product will be in tune with the modern innovative instructional techniques. These are namely,

?Use of multimedia in classrooms where the traditional blackboard is being replaced with

interactive white smart boards and books by electronic texts on digital devices.

?Blended learning – A flipped approach, where content is delivered digitally and classroom

time is spent on discussions, problem solving, practical exercises or lab work.

?Increased learner control, choice, and independence, where learners take responsibility

for their own learning with the help of technology enabled learning resources.

?Anywhere, anytime, any size learning through smartphones, tablets and other devices,

which requires a new look at course design and content packaging.

A digital teaching aid for learning English and HindiPrincipal Investigator : Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharya, IIT BombayCo-PI: Prof. Malhar Kulkarni, Humanities & Social Science, IIT Bombay

Computer Science and Engineering

Duration: 2 years


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Language - The Crucial factor in the Literacy ScenarioLanguage is the medium through which knowledge is transferred. A good command of language is required not only for day-to-day interaction but also for acquiring life skills and employability. In view of this, our product aims to equip the learner with a comprehensive knowledge of English and Hindi, which includes the following:

Vocabulary Mastering vocabulary is a major part of language learning and a better understanding of the mental lexicon helps in the development of better instructional strategies. Understanding a word involves committing to memory its form, capturing its relationship with other words and finally knowing how and where to use it.

?Grammar A comprehensive learning of language also includes understanding its grammar. The product being offered will incorporate the grammatical features of the language. This will be in accordance with school syllabi.

?Gamification - The fun way of learning It is a well known maxim that learning is more effective if it is done through fun. Language based games will increase the interest of learners and thereby lead to better retention.

?Theme based learning using VisualizationTeaching language using theme based visualizations helps in vocabulary enhancements and writing skills. The product will provide such themes in the teaching environment which may be selected by the resource provider as per the level of the learner.

Details of scope:This product will be designed to cater to the needs of language learners starting from age 6 to adults. The information will be provided in a layered manner, each layer capturing the right level of abstraction. The product will specifically focus on the following aspects of language teaching and learning:

?Vocabulary –words, their synonyms meanings and usage

?Pictures

?Pronunciations

?Grammatical information

?Language based games

?Theme based learning using Visualization

Description of the benefit that the project will accrue:This is a comprehensive digital language teaching aid which can be used in multiple learning environments. It will be audio-visually enhanced, which can lead to better learning, longer retention and effective classroom management. Specifically, it aims to achieve the following learning outcomes -

?Learning correct pronunciations of words.

?Learning to associate a concept with a picture.

?Learning different senses or meanings of a word (Polysemy)

?Learning synonyms (words having similar meaning) or antonyms (words having opposite meaning) of a word.

?Getting gender information of words.

?Acquiring a wide vocabulary for creative writing.

?Making simple translation of text.

?Identifying Parts of speech.

?Understanding the usage of idioms.

?Learning the different lexical and semantic relations.

?Making School Projects, Quizzes, Competition, Spelling word contest.

?

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Need

Worldwide, the demand for quality education is high, unfortunately far exceeding its supply. While an ideal teacher student ratio is around 1:20 to 1:30, this is an Utopian dream today, especially in the regions of the world where it is sorely needed. For instance, in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the premier technological institutions in India for higher education, class sizes of around 100 students are commonplace, with some core courses and popular courses often touching 500 to 1,000 students! This takes toll on the quality of learning.

While there's no panacea, we see an opportunity to alleviate some of these teething problems, taking appropriate aid of technology. This proposal aims to create a series of interactive multimedia textbooks for a range of basic courses in Computer Science. Interaction is a key element of learning and teaching. Thus interactive multimedia textbooks have immense potential in changing the way students learn and instructors teach. Our experience has shown that it would have a doubly positive impact when combined with a flipped classroom teaching model, as we elaborate below. This project would also use and promote the use of the interactive multimedia textbooks developed, for teacher training as well as the conduct of relevant courses in various colleges.

Project Details : Interactive Multimedia Textbooks, Flipped Classroom, their Benefits

Historically, the technology of printing books on paper, in early 3rd century, was the first revolution in teaching and transfer of knowledge. E-books on the Internet toward the end of the 20th century represented the next paradigm shift in technology for organization and transfer of knowledge. We believe that the introduction of interactive multimedia textbooks would be a further revolution in the context of student learning and effective teaching, especially in higher education.

Interaction is a key element of learning. This is one of the important reasons as to why a large classroom is not as effective a learning environment as a smaller one. But large classrooms are a reality of life today, with class sizes touching a hundred or more students in popular engineering colleges. Interactive multimedia textbooks would significantly improve the quality of learning in this context.

An additional significant advantage of an interactive multimedia textbook is that it fits in nicely with another effective teaching technique: the flipped classroom.

A flipped classroom is one where the traditional roles of in-classroom and out-of-classroom activities are flipped. In a traditional classroom, students listen to the instructor's lecture in the classroom, and do homework or problem solving outside the classroom. In the flipped classroom teaching model, students listen to the instructor's lecture outside the classroom. Typically, they watch the recorded video lectures prior to entering the classroom. The in-classroom activity consists of discussion and problem solving.

The flipped model of teaching has been found to be an effective method of teaching, in comparison to a traditional lecturing model. The idea is that the students learn more effectively when applying theory they have learnt in a lecture. It is during this learning process that the instructor's presence is important, and the flipped model of teaching achieves this.

There are additional benefits of the flipped model of teaching, especially in dealing with large class sizes. In using the flipped model of teaching, the authors of this proposal as well as others have divided a large class into three groups, with the instructor meeting each group once for an hour during a week. Whereas in a traditional classroom model, there were three one hour (lecture) meetings per week. The first additional advantage of this is that it allows for a factor of three better teacher-student ratio, further improved interaction, and hence overall better learning. The second additional advantage is that it greatly improves flexibility in scheduling physical meetings.

Interactive Multimedia Textbooks for Flipped Classroom TeachingPrincipal Investigator : Prof. Kameswari Chebrolu & Prof. Bhaskaran Raman

, , IIT BombayComputer Science and Engineering

Duration: 2 years

Budget: Rs. 40 lakhs

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Work done so far

The PIs have thus far built a learning management system platform, BodhiTree, as part of a past project. This platform supports interactive multimedia textbooks as well as flipped classroom teaching by providing support for lecture videos, embedded in-video quizzes for interactivity, a discussion forum, student progress tracking, among others.

Aside from the platform, the PIs have also developed interactive multimedia textbook material for four courses thus far:

?Computer Networks (UG)

?Computer Architecture (UG)

?Wireless Networks (UG+PG)

?Introduction to Unix and Scripting (UG+PG).

The material has been used in as many as 11 course offerings at IIT Bombay in the last 3 years, with very positive feedback from the students. The material has also been used to conduct external workshops and teacher training programs.

Comparison with state-of-the-artClosest to our proposed work are various MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) platforms such as Coursera, Udacity, edX, and the indigenous NPTEL effort. There are two key differences. First, most MOOC courses do not have an element of interactivity. In our experience of creating and using interactive multimedia textbooks, the interactive nature of the material has received near-100% positive feedback from the students, with about two-thirds of the students indicating that this is a key element in their learning. The second point of difference is our support for flipped classroom teaching. We view interactive multimedia textbooks as an aid in teaching (especially large classes), as opposed to a replacement of teachers (which is the view of MOOCs).

Outcomes and Deliverables:There is a need to expand the base of subjects on which we have interactive multimedia textbook material, to at least cover the set of basic and popular Computer Science subjects. These include:

?Introduction to programming

?Data structures and algorithms

?Operating systems

?Databases

?Network security

?Machine learning

There is significant work involved in putting together this material in an interactive multimedia textbook form suitable for flipped classroom use, including creation of content, editing, embedding of interactive in-video quizzes, creation of out-of-video practice problems, etc. This work will be taken up in this project.

After creation of the interactive multimedia textbook material, this project will also undertake use of the material for conducting courses within as well as outside IIT Bombay (such as teacher training courses). The interactive multimedia textbook material will also be released (on consent of content creator) to teachers in other colleges who wish to use the same. The technical and platform support required by the teachers for such use, will be provided as part of this project.

The BodhiTree platform will be used to provide instructor support in the above activities.

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Need

Globally, the number of older persons is expected to more than double, from 841 million people in 2013 to more than 2 billion in 2050 with the growing rate of the elderly (60+) being faster than any other age group (United Nations Report). India is facing a dramatic rise in the elderly population with the numbers predicted to rise from 8% presently to 20% by the year 2050, with India's older population projected to exceed 227 million in 2050. Nearly 45% of India's disease burden is projected to be borne by older adults in 2030. While people are living longer lives almost everywhere, the prevalence of disability is increasing as populations age.

Falls are the leading cause of both fatal and non-fatal injuries, dependence, and poor quality of life among older adults and are considered as one of the “Geriatric Giants”. Falls are also the leading cause of long-term disability in older adults and are a barrier to healthy aging. Every fall results in high levels of fear of falling, loss of confidence, reduced mobility and physical inactivity; further increasing the risk of a subsequent fall due to detuning of the balance control system. Both, impaired mobility and physical inactivity are predictors of subsequent dependence, depressive symptoms, and institutionalization. Direct costs of falls include health care costs and indirect costs include societal productivity of individuals or care givers (such as income loss). Falls are increasing at an alarming rate in India and have become one of the major public health problems. India's health insurance scheme for the poor only covers those ages 65 and younger, leaving India's elderly population particularly vulnerable. Moreover, geriatric rehabilitation services in India are grossly inadequate, unavailable in many areas, or inaccessible due to high costs, leaving most of the elderly not being assessed for fall risk and therefore not being enrolled into any kind of fall prevention and rehabilitation. Fall-related injuries affect a person's savings, increase the economic burden of caregivers, and contribute to neglect of older adults. Thus, falls and subsequent loss of mobility due to aging has significant impact not only at an individual level but also at societal and economic levels. Therefore, fall prevention is a critical public health need for India and requires development of innovative, evidence-based, accessible, and cost-effective balance rehabilitation and fall prevention strategies to reduce disability and enhance independent mobility and quality of life in older adults.

Falls are potentially predictable and preventable. A number of factors (biological, behavioral, socio-economic, and environmental) contribute to the risk of falls in older adults. Impairments of balance and gait are the most common predictors of falls worldwide. While fall risk factors have been intensively assessed in the western populations, comprehensive assessment of risk factors for falls in the aging population of India is lacking. A few studies have documented some of the risk factors [4], however, there is no detailed study connecting the neurophysiologic mechanisms underlying balance and gait function (such as cognition, motor control) with the risk of falls in the elderly in India. The elderly of India have a unique set of risk factors (such as diabetes, economic status, lifestyle differences) and, therefore, findings from studies on western populations cannot directly apply to understanding fall risk patterns in the aging Indian population. A comprehensive understanding of risk factors for falls in the elderly of India is the crucial first step to develop evidence-based and cost-effective fall prevention and rehabilitation strategies.

Therefore, the overall objective of this research study is a comprehensive identification of the risk factors for predicting falls in the aging population of India. Specifically, the study will focus on the role of cognitive function, balance and gait control on fall risk with respect to the unique demographic (age, gender, chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus, etc), behavioral (sedentary lifestyle, physical fitness levels), socio-economic (income, education levels, access to healthcare),and environmental(home and community hazards) risk factors that are prevalent in the aging population of India. The findings of this study will form the foundation for developing a fall risk assessment model and a novel, low-cost, and targeted cognitive-motor based fall prevention and rehabilitation approach.

Fall prevention in the aging population of India: a dramatically rising demographicPrincipal Investigator : Prof. Neeta Kanekar, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Bombay

Duration: 4 years


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Project details

Human vertical posture/balance is inherently unstable because of the high location of the center of mass, small support area, and multiple joints between the feet and the center of mass. The process of balance control involves integration between the sensory, cognitive, and motor systems for coordinating stability and mobility in order to prevent falls and to perform movements efficiently. However, with increasing age the ability to maintain balance deteriorates. Specifically, the frequency of falls due to poor balance control increases with age due to age-related deterioration of underlying systems that control balance such as the sensory pathways (e.g: due to diabetes), cognitive functions (e.g., age-related neurodegenerative changes, reduced attention abilities), and the motor pathways (e.g, reduced muscle strength, poor coordination of muscles, joint stiffness). Walking speed is a key vital sign in older people, reflecting overall health status and function. Slower walking speed is predictive of falls in the elderly. Constant control of balance during walking is essential for maintaining stability and for progression of movement. Older adults with cognitive problems have a higher risk of falls, at least twice that of cognitively normal older adults. The consequences of falls in this population are very serious: fallers with cognitive problems suffer more injuries due to falls and are approximately five times more likely to be admitted to institutional care. Despite our understanding of the relationship between walking speed and falls, it is not clearly known how cognitive capacity affects balance control and gait with aging and how this interaction predicts fall risk. Moreover, what is poorly understood is how the interaction between cognitive function, balance, and gait control is uniquely affected by the presence of other fall risk factors (behavioral, socio-economic, and environmental). In the Indian aging population, both these questions remain unanswered.

To address this critical public health need, the present study will focus on the following objectives:Aim 1: To determine the risk factors for predicting falls in the aging population of IndiaAim 2: To examine the unique effect of age-related cognitive deficits, balance, and gait control on the risk of falls with respect to behavioral and socio-economic factors (such as physical fitness levels, levels of income, and accessibility to health care) in the older adults of India

Research Design and MethodologyA representative sample (n = 600) of older adults (age: 60 and above, equal number of males and females) based on their fall history (classified as fallers: >2 falls in previous year; non-fallers: 0 falls in previous year), cognitive function (cognitive scores will be determined using established tests: participants with age-related mild to no cognitive impairments will be included), and having satisfied the inclusion/exclusion criteria, will be included in the study. All study participants will provide written informed consent approved by the Institute Ethics Committee of IIT Bombay.

The participants will be assessed on five main domains:1. Laboratory-based Instrumented Balance and Gait Assessments: These will include assessments of

neurophysiologic functions, postural sway, perturbation-based assessments, and spatio-temporal and biomechanical assessments of gait.

2. Clinical Assessments of Cognition, Balance and Gait:These will include measurements of functional balance and mobility, balance confidence, quality of life, muscle strength and joint mobility, endurance, and cognitive function (reaction time, attention, memory).

3. Behavioral Assessments: These will include measures of physical activity, use of assistive devices, medication history.

4. Assessment of Socio-economic Factors: These will include levels of income (low-medium-high), levels of education (primary-secondary-higher secondary-graduate-postgraduate); etc.

5. Demographic Factors (age, gender, height, weight, etc.) and history of co-morbid factors such as diabetes mellitus, depression, smoking, alcohol, etc. will be obtained for all participants.

All the data will be analyzed using rigorous statistical methods in consultation with a biostatistician

Outcomes expected from the project

India is facing a dramatic rise of its aging population. Falls are a serious threat to healthy aging and are a leading cause of long-term disability, depression, and dependence in older adults. The socio-economic burden of falls in the elderly is rising sharply in India; yet, there is no fall-risk screening for the elderly. There is a critical public health need to identify fall risk factors and develop accessible and cost-effective rehabilitation approaches for preventing falls, improving balance, mobility, independence, and quality of life in the elderly of India. Assessment of fall risk factors is an important first step to develop effective fall prevention programs. It is cost-effective and easier to prevent rather than treat falls. Yet, a comprehensive identification of risk factors for falls is lacking in the Indian population. The present study will be the first comprehensive research study to identify and correlate fall risk factors in the Indian aging population based on neurophysiologic, biomechanical, cognitive, clinical, behavioral, socio-economic, and demographic measures. The project will accrue benefits in the short and long-term.

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Short-term outcomes and benefits: The outcomes from the first aim of this study will form a solid foundation for the development of robust fall risk assessment models. Such fall-risk models will be unique to the aging Indian population and will help in early identification of at-risk older adults in whom falls can be prevented and/or reduced through risk factor modification and comprehensive rehabilitation.

Long-term outcomes and benefits :The findings of the second aim will be immensely useful in determining associations between age-related cognitive impairments, balance control and falls. Older adults with even mild cognitive impairments are at a high risk for falls; early detection of such at-risk individuals is important. Based on these outcomes, a long-term goal is to develop a multi-lingual cognitive-motor based fall prevention and rehabilitation approach that can be delivered and monitored via mobile-based applications making it accessible to a larger segment of the aging population. Such a telerehabilitation approach will also be instrumental in setting up cost-effective community-based fall prevention centers where training sessions can be conducted by community leaders under the remote supervision of rehabilitation clinicians.

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Goal

To carry out action research to devise and disseminate context appropriate agrarian practices among the farmers of Yavatmal district in order to address the burgeoning agrarian crisis.

Objectives

1. To carry out action research with various farmers in Yavatmal to understand multi-dimensional aspects of agrarian crisis and their intricate interrelationships

2. To develop various interventions (agrarian practices, tools, methods etc.) for various agro-ecologies in Yavatmal to address the crisis

3. To devise efficient and local ways to make various agricultural inputs4. To carry out action research to develop efficient techniques for the wide scale dissemination

of the accepted interventions.

Background

The problem of farmers' suicides, which has sprouted over a much deeper and wider problem of agrarian crisis has been daunting Indian farmers for more than eighteen years. According to the records of National Crime Bureau, more than 2 lakh farmers across India have committed suicides over the period of last eighteen years. There were 48.6% indebted farmers across India in year 2011 with an outstanding debt of around 25.9 thousand rupees per indebted farmer. Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, and Punjab witnessed more than 65% of farmers' indebtedness in 2011 which is highest in India. The problem of farmers' suicides is just a tip of the iceberg and a much wider, multifaceted, and growing leviathan of agrarian crisis lies at the base. Agriculture had never been nonviable to such a high degree in the early reported history of India. Farmers get trapped in the vicious cycle of crop failure and indebtedness.

In this regard, Vidarbha is one of the most affected regions in India and Yavatmal is the most affected district in Vidarba. We are working with Dindayal Bahu-uddeshiya Prasarak Mandal (DBPM) on the problem of farmers' suicides in Yavatmal since 2014. CTARA's two research scholars and an alumni are working with us on mitigating the agrarian crisis as a part of their doctoral research.

Since 2007 DBPM has been instrumental in the generation of sustainable livelihood for more than 120 agrarian families whose member/s had committed suicide/s due to indebtedness. The organization has its presence in more than 150 villages in Yavatmal district.

Work completed

Till now, we have carried out an action research cum development practice with a number of farmers to understand the complex, multidimensional, and dynamic nature of the problem that spans a number of social, agro-ecological, cultural, and economical dimensions. The work carried out with a number of farmers can be divided in two phases. First phase involves the participatory action research carried out with farmers from six villages in Vidarbha to understand the crisis. Second phase involves a concentrated engagement with a few selected farmers to explore various farming practices to build a healthy agrarian system.

Phase 1: Outcomes of the participatory action research

The action research was carried out in six selected villages revealed the following understanding of the crisis.

Mitigation of agrarian crisis in Yavatmal

Principal Investigator : Prof. Shireesh Kedare, and

Prof. Bakul Rao,

Energy Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay

Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA), IIT Bombay

Duration - 3 yearsDevelopment of soil testing laboratory - Rs. 34.5 lakhsDevelopment of a bio-culture laboratory - Rs. 38.5 lakhs

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?Agricultural system has become investment intensive (for various agricultural inputs) over the last two decades.

?Agrarian system has become dependent on the centrally organized agricultural input market (to procure

seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, tonics, herbicides, fungicides, tractors and sell), and partially dependent on the state (for credit, crisis relief fund, and multiple agricultural schemes).

?Agrarian system comprises dynamic and complex interaction of different subsystems, namely, soil, water, cattle,

human population, family size, farm size, birds, bees, social capital, and farm temperature. Over the past two decades, all of the above subsystems are deteriorated causing the deterioration of the agrarian system.

?Agrarian system is trapped in a number of vicious loops causing further deterioration of its subsystems. Up until now,

we have identified 4o different vicious cycles related to cattle population, soil, birds, bees, credit alternatives, aspiration to look for other livelihood alternatives, liquor addiction, and labour.

?Market prices or minimum support prices of agricultural produce are not decided on the basis of the suitability of a

farmer. Therefore a number of farming groups (with varying soil type, land size, availability of water etc.) fail o make their farming viable.

?Increase in the investment on children's education, family health car, hefty wedding practices and liquor addiction

have further deteriorated the crisis.

Phase 2: Outcomes of the first years' work with farmers

Building on the understanding of the agrarian crisis, a number of healthy and least dependant agrarian practices were studied and designed according to the farmers' contexts (skills, capabilities and mind-sets). Dindayal Bahuuddeshiya Prasarak Mandal and we worked with forty farmers from four villages (Pathari, Borsinha, Shivani, and Malkhed) belonging to four different agro-climatic zones in Yavatmal to implement the practices on a part of their owned land (1-3 acres). Farmers could replace the use of extensive pesticides with herbal pest controllers such as neem extract and herbal extract (dashaparni ark). Farmers could use a very effective liquid organic fertilizer instead of chemical fertilizers. A few farmers developed cultivated manure fertilizers, jeevamrut (a liquid organic manure), amrutpani (a liquid herbal tonic and pest controller). Overall, the exercise could receive astounding results. Overall, it was witnessed that the farmers could increase their yield by around 1.2 to 1.6 times (forty farmers from the four villages). Two farmers could double his yield of cotton. Farmers could save an investment of 4 to 15 thousand rupees that would be expended on chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Farmers could get benefits of around 20-25 thousand rupees (a few farmers have got even higher benefits). This exercise gave us a confidence that we are on the right path to address the agrarian crisis. The key processes that helped to get the success are: a) working with farmers in a participatory way, b) developing the least dependent and ecologically healthy practices that consider the contexts of the farmers (assets, mind-sets, and capabilities), and c) an iterative process of working on the constructive feedback from the farmers and building on it again and again. Other than these fruitful exercises, Deendayal Bahuuddeshiya Prasarak Mandal has started building a research and training centre in Nilona village (9 km from Yavatmal town). It would be used to conduct a set of laboratory research projects and farmers training workshops pertaining to mitigate the agrarian crisis.

Next three years' proposed work

Based on the experience of the first two years' exercises, we propose the following flexible plan for the next three years.

Action research to develop various effective agrarian practices

Action research with a number of selected farmers would attempt to develop a number of effective farming practices that can be disseminated in various phases (third phase onwards) to the farmers in Yavatmal to address the agrarian crisis.

?Study of soil samples across different agro-climatic zones and contextual variations of farms in Yavatmal to find out

the present physical, chemical, and biological structure of the soil to develop a set of practice for its restoration. It involves developing a soil testing laboratory at the field centre and testing the samples from private research laboratories to find out the concentration of certain components of the soil.

?Developing various effective and cost effective herbal pest controllers and tonics according to the crop, its life

stages, and other conditions (such as draught, diseases etc.). The testing facility would be further extended to characterise the pest controllers and tonics.

?Developing various cultivated manures and organic liquid fertilizers that are effective in improving the soil health in

short and long time. Developing context appropriate methods to make various cultivated manures and organic liquid fertilizers having desired characteristics and nutrition's. We would like to setup a bio-fertilizers (such

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as rhizobium, azotobacter, phosphate soluble bacteria, trichoderma etc.) developing laboratory at the field centre that will be useful for the purpose of research and dissemination

?Developing various local, cost effective, and effective ways to prevent and control various plant diseases.

?Developing methods to transfer the appropriate practices, tools, and techniques to various farmers in Yavatmal.

Deliverables

?Documentation and development of various methods, processes (to make various inputs), and farming

practices to address the agrarian crisis in Yavatmal.

?Developing a number of effective dissemination methods

?Development of a self-sustainable agricultural research and training centre in Nilona village that would serve as a

repository of developing and disseminating various agrarian practices useful to develop healthy agro-ecology in Yavatmal

21

Need

Reduction of CO emission from industrial processes is essential for suppressing global warming. 2

Fossil fuel based power generation and chemical processing produces a large amount of CO . Hence, 2

the reduction in energy consumption is a topic of contemporary interest. To reduce the energy consumption, heat recovery technology, which exchanges heat between the hot and cold streams in a process, has been applied to thermal processes. A common example of this technology is the application of a recuperative heat exchanger between the feed-product streams. By using a feed-product heat exchanger in a thermal process, the heat is exchanged between cold feed stream and hot product streams to integrate heat or recirculate the heat within the system thereby reducing the energy loss. When processing streams undergo phase change, recovery of most of the latent heat cannot be achieved by using recuperative heat exchangers because pinch point appears at the location with minimum temperature difference between the feed and product streams. The main technical objective of this project is to perform development activities including a proof-of-concept demonstration of a high efficiency latent heat recovery technology using thermoelectric modules (TEM) and compact, process-intensive micro-capillary wicking evaporators. The proposed concept is directly extensible for solar thermochemical energy storage as well as fuels production and also for humidification-dehumidification water desalination.

Outcomes and Deliverables

The proposed work is focused on three major objectives:

?Design and demonstrate proof-of-concept, and utility of the latent heat recovery heat exchangers

?Evaluate system performance and energy savings

?Develop design guidelines of the concept for system scale-up

Intermediate Objectives:

?To publish the work in international journals of high impact and present the work in international

conferences

?To patent the procedures of suitable TEM-evaporator-condenser assemblies

?To invite industries to partner in the research work, and amend the working methods according to

their specific needs.

The proposed 3 year project will integrate high performance compact wicking evaporators with commercial thermoelectric modules and condensers in order to reduce exergy loss and recover heat from product stream for vaporizing feed stream. The project will consist of the following four steps:

?Task 1 – System analysis and tradeoff study of TEM integrated phase change heat exchanger for

energy efficient operation

?Task 2 – Design and fabrication of evaporator and condenser components and integration of

fabricated components with TEM in a process flow loop

?Task 3 – Demonstration of compact latent heat recovery technology and

?Task 4 – Design guidelines

During Task 1 a systematic analytical framework for integrating TEM to phase change heat exchangers will be developed and energy efficient operating maps for the proposed system will be identified. Following that, we will develop a test set-up that includes design and fabricate the components of the system and integration in Task 2. Subsequently, experimental analyses to measure performance will be undertaken in Task 3 and finally design guidelines will be generated in Task 4.

The critical outcomes of the work are to derive experimental and theoretical data, and demonstrate proof-of-concept that will support further development of the concept of latent heat recovery heat exchangers, and to establish fundamental principles and technical basis. The direct impact of proposed effort is a technology demonstration that highlights substantial energy savings. As

High Performance Compact Latent Heat Energy Recovery Technology Using ThermoelectricsPrincipal Investigator : Prof. Shankar Krishnan, Mechanical Engineering, IIT Bombay

Duration: 3 years


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thermoelectric materials are getting cost competitive, this technology opens another window for its industrial use and possibly can exploit economy-of-scale for further cost reduction. As the manufacturing service grows in India through the Make in India program, energy efficiency in industries is of vital importance. Inefficient use of energy in industries will exacerbate the demand for energy further. The proposed effort is an approach that impacts the growing energy efficiency markets and societal needs.

Project Details

An innovative approach is proposed for latent heat recovery heat exchangers positioned within the feed and product streams of an industrial process, in order to recover the heat energy. The proposed concept promises more than 65% savings in energy consumption of industrial processes and is directly extensible to solar thermochemical processing for thermal energy storage and/or fuels production. Improved energy efficiency is accomplished by integrating TEM to recuperative heat exchangers and concomitantly improving boiling heat transfer coefficients. The evaporation heat transfer enhancement is achieved by using capillary wicking evaporators developed by the PI in his past work. The proposed work capitalizes on the high efficiency region of thermoelectric modules for heating and vaporizing the incoming feed stream at a small temperature difference between product and feed streams.

Thermoelectric heat pumps work based on the Peltier effect. When current passes through dissimilar materials that are connected at the ends, charge carriers (holes and electrons) move with or against the current flow direction carrying heat from one end to the other end. Unlike vapor compression cycle based heat recovery systems, TEM can be used for both gaseous and non-gaseous phase systems. For energy efficient operation of TEM as heat pumps, a smaller temperature difference (T) across the two ends is desirable. Commercially available TE materials (ZT ~ 1) have been demonstrated to deliver a COP of 2.2 to 3.5 for heating applications when a temperature difference of T = 10-20 C is heat

maintained across the streams. With some of the advanced TE materials, COP > 4 is easily achievable. Compared to heat

electrically heated vaporizer, the TEM based heat pumps are expected to provide energy savings of more than 65% as rdonly 1/3 (COP ~ 3) of electrical power is needed. The main technical objective of this project is to perform heat

development activities including a proof-of-concept demonstration of a high efficiency latent heat recovery technology using TEM and compact, process-intensive micro-capillary wicking evaporators.

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Need

Mumbai has been experiencing intermittent water stress since the last century (Zérah, 2008). Scarcity of water in the city has been induced by both natural and anthropogenic factors. Poor monsoon as well as a constant disproportionate population growth seems to be responsible for creating a gap between the demand and supply of water in the city.

Mumbai currently has multiple water sources: Tulsi and Vihar lakes located within the city; and Tansa, Vaitarna and Bhatsa dams located at around 100 kms from the city (MCGM, 2007b). Water stock in these lakes and dams is highly dependent on the rain available during the monsoon season which typically lasts from June to September every year. Hence, water shortage in the city burgeoned during the drought years of 2009-10, 2012-13 and since 2014, which received scanty rainfall. 2009 was described as the worst drought in history, with rainfall of only 220 mm (Skymet Weather, 2014) and water stock reduced by 30% in the city (BBC, 2009).

The city's ever increasing population has also hampered the BMC's (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) efforts to increase supply and cater to its water demand. The current demand is around 4300 mld whereas BMC supplies 3750 mld (Shivadekar, 2015). There have also been numerous instances of leakages in the pipeline network. The Chief Minister has reported that around 27 % of water supply of the city i.e. 900 mld gets wasted everyday (Scroll.in, 2016a).Leaky pipelines also result in contamination of water from the sewer, especially during monsoon and floods (Venkatraman, 2014b). Water loss is also attributed to illegal water connections in the city (Express News Service, 2016). Inequality in access to water, especially in the slums, in the city is to be blamed partially for these illegal connections (Graham, Desai, & McFarlane, 2013).

Policies and strategies to cope with drought and water shortage have not varied over the years. Strategic plans to improve supply through constructing dams and improving pipeline network have been in the BMC's agenda since the 1990's. Also, policies mandating rain water harvesting, which has the potential to significantly reduce demand, has been in place since 2002. The state of Maharashtra has not seen changes in the ruling party (before 2014), and hence, it has not experienced any drastic remoulding of political will regarding water management in the past years.

In view of these numerous multi-stressors, this paper has attempted to propose the rain water harvesting as an adaptation option for managing the water crisis in the city.

Outcomes or Deliverables

The outcome of the project is to measure the capabilities of Rainwater harvesting as a solution to water crisis. It will also provide the financial, technical and institutional challenges is adopting rainwater harvesting. The project will also identify and quantify the co benefit associated with rainwater harvesting system.

Project details

The shortage of water in Mumbai is around 800 million litres per day at present that is expected to rise to 2000 million litres per day by 2021. One of the ways to meet the water shortfall is through rain water harvesting. It is a water conservation method by which rain water can be reused and is one of the missions of Smart Cities. In an urban context, apart from meeting some of the water needs, communities can become self-sufficient in the long run. There are regulations requiring buildings to have rain water harvesting system, yet there has been limited execution and still less monitoring. The project proposes to assess water efficiency, present status, financial and institutional challenges required for implementing rain water harvesting system in case of industrial townships and commercial buildings in Mumbai. Necessary equipment and infrastructure for assessing water efficiency shall be procured and rain water harvesting expert will be consulted. Workshops / training creating awareness of rain water harvesting and technical details will be conducted in order to promote Rainwater harvesting.

Rainwater Harvesting : An option for Sustainable Management of Water Resources in Urban Context Principal Investigator : Prof. Trupti Mishra, Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, IIT Bombay

Duration: 2 years


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Need: Shortage of agricultural land

India can very soon face shortage of agricultural land. The total acreage remaining in last 40 years is estimated to be around 140 million hectares whereas the number of farmers has risen from 7 crore to 14 crore, resulting in halving of the average land holding.

Yield maximization pressure and increasing use of chemicalsBesides reduction in land, there is also an additional pressure of maximizing the produce by using chemical pesticides and fertilizers, which is ultimately putting the consumer at risk. As per the report by the agriculture ministry, the number of samples having pesticides above the maximum permitted levels in vegetables, fruits, meat and spices has almost doubled in the past few years. The fifth national report of desertification mentions land degradation as one of the major environmental concern for the country. Almost 25% land is facing desertification affecting its productivity and resultantly the food security.

Need of the hour: Organic farming

One of the effective ways of breaking this vicious cycle of decreasing land holdings, increasing pesticide use and reduction in healthier food options is the adoption of organic farming practices. Organic agriculture is claimed to be the fastest growing agriculture based industry in the world. In between 2001 to 2011 the agricultural land under organic agriculture globally has grown by 135%. Also, though organic farming is getting much attention in present times but it has got mention in many of India's ancient literatures like Rigveda, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Kautilya, Arthasashthra etc.

Better eco friendlinessOrganic farming methods are supposedly less damaging in reduction of biodiversity level and produce less waste per unit area. It has been claimed that organic agriculture helps in effective soil management and even can reverse the change of climate change. The species inhibiting are found to be 30% higher in the organic farms.

The GapIn spite of the rising urgencies and government support, there still remain areas where uptake and benefits of organic farming needs to be improved. Various factors like lesser yield (as compared to conventional farming) and relatively dull appearance of the produce are decelerating the adoption of organic farming. Increasing the uptake of organic farming will be possible by measures like, increasing profitability for farmer (within the existing constraints like less land holdings, low expected yield), increasing awareness levels of the target consumer segment, strengthening supply chain etc. The importance of organic farming methods is already getting realized internationally.

DeliverablesThis project will involve a detailed study of the farm to folk supply chain for the organic produce. The major deliverables from the exercise will be developing solutions for improving profitability, better marketing of organic produce and helping farmers with minimal land holdings in making smooth transition from traditional to organic farming methods. The project will further highlight how the eco friendly feature can be effectively weaved with aforementioned deliverables.

Profitability for farmers with small land holdingsFactors like premium pricing, lesser yield and expensive land holdings affects profitability in organic farming. This project will address the issue of how farmers can realize the potential of premium pricing for their organic produce. It will also focus on the feasibility of organic farming substituting conventional agricultural.

Providing consumer with healthier optionsBesides increasing the uptake of organic farming methods the project will also present suggestions for providing the consumers with healthier food options. The changing lifestyle and increasing diet consciousness can prove highly profitable to adoption of organic farming.

Making organic farming a profitable venture for farmers

with minimal land holdingsPrincipal Investigator : Prof. T T Niranjan, , IIT BombayShailesh J Mehta School of Management

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Duration: 1 year


Finally, the project deliverables can effectively complement government's efforts of encouraging and empowering organic farming methods and practices.

Project Details

The scope of the project will encompass the following important areas:

?Studying Consumer behavior: Study will research on the perception of the consumers towards organic produce and

products

?Demand management: Identifying the customer segments, estimating demand and developing of a forecasting

approach and a marketing plan

?Farm operations / production: Exploring viability of modern farming methods and development of best practices

related to the important methods

?Storage and warehousing: Grading and packaging of perishables; analyzing the existing gaps and building feasible

solutions

?Supply and distribution: Possible ways of overcoming infrastructural glitches; selection of appropriate distribution

channels

Phases

The study will reach out to farmers group, private players, government departments and individuals. It will be broadly three phases. Phase I will include studying consumer perception and demand forecasting, phase II will focus on farm operations and phase III on the supply chain and distribution. The project also aims at implementing solutions at a pre designated site or geography.

Besides utilizing intellectual resources from IIT Bombay the project can also seek professional services from experts working in this area (for example Mr. Madhu Chandan Chikkadevaiah a successful IT professional and entrepreneur who leaded Mandya Organic Farmers Society in generating revenues of 1 crore, Abhinav farmers group in Pune etc.) who can effectively contribute in the success of the project.

26

Need

Some of the 15000 farmers suicides that occur each year could be direct results of poor decision making on crop insurance, choice of crop rotation, loan repayment etc. in spite of many helpful governmental policies. 20% of farmers avail of crop loans from financial institutions and only three fourth of those are insured. Among the 80% non-loanees, only 15% avail insurance voluntarily which could be a major reason for their financial distress in case of natural disasters.So why and exactly how their decision making and risk attitude is affected by poverty and social exclusion needs to be studied in their natural habitat; so that their decision making can be improved in critical situations.


The objective of this project is to study and improve Indian farmers' financial decision-making styles. The effects of poverty via hunger and social exclusion will be studied for better understanding of the underlying mechanism through which these differences affect the decision making and the risk-taking attitude. The results of this study will be directly helpful to poor farmers, enabling them to make better financial and social decisions. The findings can help policy making of government or private institutions aimed at improving lives of poor farmers.

Project Details

Poverty impairs cognitive function; hence the poor make poorer financial decisions. Experimental evidence shows that even temporarily induced financial differences can differentiate the cognitive performance. The temporary economic state seems to induce these effects, as the same farmers show diminished cognitive performance before harvest, when they are relatively poor, compared to after harvest, when they are relatively rich . Even temporarily induced social exclusion can have serious psychological effects on people's decision making . This reinforcing loop perpetuates poverty. Neurobiological studies shed light on the fact that in animals, nutritional state affects the use of neural structures in the brain to process the information and make decisions, so different pathways are utilized when hungry and satiated (Merker, 2013).

Different ethnographic factors such as culture, environment, social dynamics etc. play a role in peoples' ability to access the options, and people from different backgrounds differ on fairness, spatial and moral reasoning, thinking style and self-concepts , so results from one geographic region may not be applicable in other regions and require area specific investigation to understand the underlying situation.

?Methodology: This project will use a multi-methodology approach to study the effects of hunger and social exclusion on people's decision making. The first part of this project will involve a field case study in two states (Maharashtra & Karnataka) in India to uncover the financial and social decision making of the farmers. The states are chosen because of the increasing number of farmer suicides in those states where we can see the maximum impact of such parameters and the treatments can have direct and maximum impact in addressing the problem. In the second part, a decision model of this problem would be formulated and tested in the laboratory setting using an eye-tracker methodology to uncover their decision-making mechanisms. The findings will be tested on a large scale population.

The effects of hunger and social exclusion on farmers'

financial decision making stylesPrincipal Investigator : Prof. T T Niranjan, , IIT BombayShailesh J Mehta School of Management

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Duration: 2 years


Need

For sustained industrial growth, highly trained manpower is absolutely essential. It has been generally observed that graduates from a large number of engineering colleges in India do not possess the background, skills, and motivation required by industry. Teaching methods play an extremely important role not only in motivating students but also in imparting the right kinds of skills to them so as to improve their overall competence. Traditional methods such as blackboard teaching are and will continue to be important in teaching basic concepts involved in a topic. However, if they are augmented with modern teaching methods, which are now made possible due to the computer/IT revolution, the training quality can be substantially improved. In-particular, if the students participate in a class in the “active learning” mode, their learning improves substantially, as demonstrated by research in Education Technology. We propose to provide technology integration to enable active learning and thereby develop higher-order thinking skills of the students particularly in the areas of electronics and power electronics.

At IIT Bombay, we have several years of experience in using circuit simulation in teaching courses in electronics and power electronics. From the feedback received from students, we found that circuit simulation has been useful in imparting basic concepts in these areas. Circuit simulation has been used by us to (a) illustrate the circuit operation with plots obtained by simulating the circuit, (b) assign home-work problems involving simulation, and (c) show the effect of changing circuit parameters on the operation of the circuit.

After talking to several participants (college teachers as well as students) in the training workshops we have conducted in the past, we have found that circuit simulation can be used more effectively in classroom teaching if students are given access to a simulator during the class. Since almost all students possess a smart phone or a tablet now, a freely downloadable mobile app for circuit simulation is expected to be of great value for teaching basic as well as advanced courses on electronic and power electronic circuits. In the proposed work, we plan to develop such an app for classroom use.

Outcome and Deliverables:

The primary outcome of this work is a freely downloadable app based on circuit simulation for use in classroom teaching in the areas of electronics and power electronics. With the app, students will be able to download specific circuits (which have been uploaded by their instructor) in the classroom, simulate the circuits, and view the results on their mobile phone or tablet. They would be able to change circuit parameters (e.g., a resistance or a capacitance) and see their effect on the circuit performance. In other words, the app will provide a quick visual feedback to the students with respect to the topic of discussion. This would help in fixing the theoretical concepts being taught by the instructor firmly in the student's mind. This “active learning” strategy is known to be far more effective than traditional classroom teaching alone, and it is expected to improve the students' motivation as well as understanding very significantly.

Based on the proposed app, we also plan to set up a portal where a large number of simulation files and the associated help files will be made freely available to college teachers. A discussion forum will be set up to allow teachers to interact with us and also with teachers in other engineering colleges.

In addition, in order to spread awareness about the app and the course material, dedicated workshops will be conducted at a number of engineering colleges throughout the country. In the workshops, selected topics from electronics and power electronics will be taken up, and the use of the app will be illustrated with reference to those topics.

The proposed project has significant implications on the engineering education scenario in the country. We feel that it will mark a "paradigm shift" in the way courses in electronics and power

Active Learning in Electronics and Power Electronics with Simulation AppPrincipal Investigator : Prof. Mahesh B. Patil, Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay and Prof. Suryanarayana Doolla, Energy Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay.

Duration: 2 years


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electronics are taught in engineering colleges, and rejuvenate the educational effort in those areas. From our interaction with engineering college teachers and students, we have found that one key issue faced by competent teachers and students is technical isolation. We hope that the proposed project will serve to remove this barrier and create an atmosphere for positive engagement with other professionals. We expect to see a greater level of enthusiasm in teaching and learning which will eventually make the graduating students more fit for taking up challenges in industry.

In summary, the project deliverables include (a) an app based on circuit simulation which is suitable for classroom teaching in the areas of electronics and power electronics, (b) course material, workshops, and a discussion forum for engineering college teachers in electronics and power electronics.

Project Details

At IIT Bombay, we have a circuit simulation package called SEQUEL which has been developed in-house (www.ee.iitb.ac.in/~sequel). SEQUEL is currently being used by a few engineering colleges in the areas of electronics and power electronics. It has a GUI for schematic capture, plotting results, etc. The user can run an existing project (circuit) or make up a new circuit if required. At the present time, the program runs on a desktop, and that is somewhat limiting in a classroom set-up where a teacher would like students to try out a circuit in the class, without having to go to a computer lab to run the simulation. In the first part of the project, an app will be developed which will make SEQUEL accessible from a mobile phone or a tablet. This work will be carried out in several stages to enable the following.

1. Users can transfer their circuit file to Google Drive or any other cloud storage2. The app will open such files and show them in read only mode3. Server code will remotely run simulations and serve results4. App will render graphs5. App will edit properties of elements in a circuit

In the second phase of the project, we will familiarize teachers from engineering colleges with the app and train them to use it in the class. For this purpose, we will hold a series of workshops (about 10), some of them at IIT Bombay and others in various engineering colleges. In parallel, we will set up a portal for interaction of college teachers with us and among themselves. Course material including circuit files, presentations, tutorials, problems, etc. will be uploaded on this portal so that the entire set serves as a comprehensive suite for electronics and power electronics.

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Need

This decade witnessed significant increase in the pollution levels in India and this is essentially due to exponential growth in Industries. This increase in CO concentration is largely due to the combustion 2

of fossil fuels, which are required to meet the world's energy demand. Obviously, there is an urgent need to control CO emissions and develop efficient carbon capture systems. Carbon dioxide (CO ) 2 2

and methane (CH ) are the major contributor to the greenhouse effect. As both these gases are 4

kinetically and thermodynamically stable, it is extremely difficult to break the covalent bonds to utilizing them as a chemical feedstock. To make it react these chemically inert molecule, often very high temperature or pressure or unusual conditions required due to it high activation energy barrier. One way to circumvent this problem is to use metal catalyst to reduce the activation barrier, then reaction can be performed under ideal optimized standard temperature and Pressure (STP) condition to utilize these abundant CO as a chemical feed stock. The proposed project in here is aims to tackle 2

the green house problems and use CO as a chemical feed stock to make useful products such as 2

formic acid to methanol.

Outcomes

A suitable catalyst that can activate and transform CO into useful chemicals such as methanol, which 2

can be used an alternative for the fossil fuels. Similarly, it can be converted into other small organic molecules which are medicinally relevant (example: acetyl salicylate (Asprin) from acetylpyridine with CO in the presence of catalyst) or industrially important chemicals such as polycarbonate 2

/polycarbamate and or cyclic carbonates/carbamates. As a result, valorization CO is currently 2

receiving considerable and ever increasing attention presently. The proposed project aims to target these medicinally and industrially relevant complexes apart from using the CO2 as a renewable energy resource. This will be achieved by revealing a new generation of a catalyst or by utilizing the existing catalyst, its reactivity towards the CO will be modulated for the enhanced catalytic 2

performance. Further, advanced level computational methods will be employed to identify a suitable catalyst with enhanced performance.

Project Details

The first step of activation is polarizing the C-O/C-H bonds in CO and CH respectively. However this 2 4

task is challenging as these bond are inert towards many reactants. Coordinatively unsaturated metal catalyst possessing strongly Lewis acidic or basic properties are needed for the activation of CO . The 2

methane activation on the other hand, requires electron deficient metal-oxo/nitrido complexes. In this project, we aim to activate CO and CH which require drastically different catalytic environments 2 4

(Figure 1).

Conversion of green-house gases into useful chemical productsPrincipal Investigator : Prof. G. Rajaraman and Prof. S. Maheswaran, Chemistry, IIT Bombay

Figure 1. Catalyst which activates a) methane (CH ) b) which expected to activate CO .4 2

Duration: 3 years


30

Coordintelvely unsaturated Ni(II/III) complexes are already been made in the laboratory and this can be utilized as a basic prototype to activate the CO2 molecules. Once CO2 binds to the metal ions, the bonds will be polarized and this will facilitate various chemical reactions and possible up conversions. For methane activation on the other hand, high-oxidation state Fe-oxo species needs to be generated to activate and convert this to useful products. Theoretical methods help to understand the mechanism of these catalytic reactions and thus help to design a novel catalyst where efficiency, selectivity and robustness can be enhanced. Exact mechanism of methane to methanol conversion using dinuclear Fe catalyst has been established recently by us and this offers a viable way to fine tune to catalyst to enhance the turnover number.

The project unfold in the following ways a) MS lab will utilize the existing catalyst and find an experimental ways to activate CO and CH by optimizing the 2 4

reaction conditions.b) GR lab will explore the mechanistic aspects of these reactions to figure out what the properties the catalyst should

possess to activate CO or CH and design in silico such catalyst. 2 4

c) MS and GR lab will together target novel catalyst possessing potential to activate CO and CH and convert them into 2 4

useful products such as formic acid /formaldehyde /cyclic carbonates, methanol and medicinally relevant organic molecules etc.

Prediction based on the experimental inputs is a novel strategy where challenging problems can be easily tackled. This strategy has a proven track record of solving outstanding issues as witnessed by our groups earlier in magnetic materials.

Description of the benefit that the project will accrue:

The main aim of the project is to convert green-house gases into useful products such as methanol. This project expected to have the following benefits a) Reducing the environmental pollution b) Harnessing useful chemical products from the abundant green-house gases such as CO and CH . 2 4

c) Producing sustainable fuels such as methanol from pollutants CO /CH .This is expected to not only solve the 2 4

environmental problems but also reduces the dependency on fossil fuels.

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Introduction

1. Empowering Cottage Industries and Farmer Producer Companies through E-Commerce Platform -Lokacart: An ecommerce mobile-first platform, Lokacart, bridges the gap between farmers and consumers. The app has two software parts - Lokacart Client App and Lokacart Admin App. Thus this app aims to ameliorate farmers' economic and livelihood conditions.

2. Digital Storyboarding through LokaVidya Android and Desktop Application: This project aims in development of an open educational ICT architecture to help capture, complement, supplement and disseminate knowledge of existing integral practices. In the present circumstances, the efficient and reliable techniques are needed for collecting, preserving, organizing (arranging), representing (describing), selecting (retrieving), reproducing (copying), and disseminating documents. The idea of documentation process should capture the dynamics of an ecosystem in a systematic manner and should trivialize the information retrieval mechanism. It has incepted into the creation of Lokavidya, which aims to facilitate creation of fast and structured documentation.

NeedNEED TO DEVELOP LOKA CART

The need to develop the system came from a field visit to Pune where it was observed that the customer's contact an organisation by manually calling an organization representative to place the order. It has been noticed that this methodology is not reliable. There exist flaws in ordering products manually. Sometimes, the products or quantity ordered by the customer is different from the one which the organisation send. Due to miscommunication in network, human error in hearing etc. the organisation started using a system called “Awaaz De”. This is a platform that could overcome the barrier between the customer and the farmer by disseminating content and collecting data automatically. But Awaz.De couldn't fill all the barriers between the end users. Following are few reasons:1. Language interoperability2. Incorporating new languages quickly3. Multilevel Touchtone facility4. SMS Facility5. Facility for Calling Local Numbers6. Directly Export Numbers from Spreadsheet7. Not Customizable8. Creating a hierarchy of groups

To overcome the barriers by “Awaaz De”, we developed an Information and Communication Technology based web-system.

NEED TO DEVELOP LOKAVIDYA

The need of the project comes from the fact that 'Technology' has the potential to be utilised as a medium to complement practices in the rural societies, for their development. The project aims to address the lack of facility for knowledge acquisition, discussion with professionals and knowledge dissemination in the context of best practices amongst rural populations by developing a robust and secure end-to-end audio-visual communication systems. This will help rural populations share, strengthen and enhance agricultural practices and livelihood options with the goal of improving their economic condition.

Development of an open educational ICT architecture to help capture, complement, supplement and disseminate knowledge of existing integral practices in rural areas.Principal Investigator : Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Computer Science & Engineering Department, IIT BombayCo PI : Prof. Narendra Shah, CTARA), IIT BombayCentre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (

Duration: 3 years


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The project aims to develop applications in the following avenues:

1. A platform for creating informative audio-visual information2. A platform to facilitate organization, search and retrieval of audio and video for enhanced learning3. A platform to collaborate with Reliance Foundation to document a village

The purpose of the project is skill development and training the use of tool to educate rural population to provide them with necessary information to tackle various issues associated with its adoption. It also aims at up scaling the skill development and provide them with livelihood options. Hence the project and the problem it attempts to address aligns with your organization's focus.

Deliverables

LokaCart

?Two Android based applications - a. Client app b. Admin App

?An Audio-Visual android application to maintain the transparency between the end users.

?Deployment and Marketing of applications to get user feedbacks on these apps and how you think it should be improved to cater better.

Lokavidya

?An Android application which will help to facilitate the rural population to exchange their ideas and experiences in the form of audios- videos for surmounting literacy and language barriers.

?An web extension to this android application that allows the rural population to share their ideas and experiences through audio/ video.

?Training programs for usage of this application along with creation and dissemination of videos.

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Need: For Enhanced Use of Public Transportation

Road traffic congestion is a world-wide issue today. In addition to causing increased delays, loss in revenue and increased stress levels that affects the socio-economic fabric of cities, road traffic causes tremendous damage to the environment and people's health. Adoption of public transport by commuters to reduce the number of private vehicles on the road has thus become the need of the hour. Studies have revealed that commuting by public transportation reduces carbon emissions by 20 lbs per day, 4,800 lbs per year, which is more than the total energy savings achieved by weatherizing one's home, adopting fluorescent bulbs and replacing an old refrigerator. Recent years have therefore witnessed the rise of various efforts such as, --ridesharing, commuter buddy programs, provisioning of clean fuel vehicles, and availability of parking information for bikes -- that encourage environment-friendly, sustainable commuting. While these endeavours are largely popular in developed geographies, their percolation in developing regions has been slow.

Ironically, the severity of traffic congestion is greater in developing regions like India, where new-found wealth for a section of the population has driven traffic congestion to the extreme in most cities. The road traffic in cities like Bangalore is alarming, with over 5 million vehicles plying on barely 3000 kms of road. Growth of infrastructure has not been adequate due to a variety of reasons, including insufficient funds, bureaucracy, and sheer lack of physical space for the traffic volume.

Sustainable and clean commuting using public transport in developing regions is hindered by two major factors intrinsic to public transportation systems in these regions:-- uncertainty and overcrowding. Since road traffic is chaotic and unpredictable, there is lack of data for planning both at the short time scale (when is the next bus/train?) as well as long time scale (how many buses/trains to run on this route?). This unattractive nature of public transportation pushes more people to buy and use private vehicles, creating a vicious cycle. The governing agency may therefore have to resort to the enforcement of strategies such as the odd-even number rule for commuting in private vehicles in Delhi. This in turn may not be a scalable, long-standing solution for sustainable commuting, as cities grow and the number of private vehicles significantly increases.

The problem of lack of use of public transport, is generally tackled by attempting to provide real-time public transport information, using on-board GPS based vehicle-tracking units. This approach is known to incur energy and maintenance cost overheads, thus leading to the poor adoption of GPS units in practice.

We therefore propose a low-cost, crowd-sensing based approach to promote the use of public transport for environment-friendly and sustainable commuting. In particular, the proposed solution provides real-time information on public transportation systems using real-time mobile-sensing data, seamlessly gathered from commuters. Such information will help commuters plan, and hence greatly encourage use of public transportation. Further, transit utilization based insights may enable authorities to dynamically allocate buses/trains to particular routes. The potential benefits are enormous: reduced carbon footprint due to reduced congestion, improved operational performance, enhanced & predictable mobility (waiting time, travel time) for commuters and improved road safety.

The opportunity: Mobile crowdsensing

We see a significant opportunity for addressing the above problem, specifically in developing regions, by taking advantage of current capabilities of wireless communication techniques and the widespread penetration of the smart phone market. In particular, we leverage the plethora of sensors such as GSM, accelerometer, magnetometer, GPS, gyroscope, microphone etc. to infer commuting users' locations, commute modalities (such as train/bus etc.) and high-level, aggregate attributes pertaining to road/transport conditions (such as traffic, crowdedness, delays etc.). Smart-

Principal Investigator : Prof. Bhaskaran Raman , IIT BombayComputer Science and Engineering

Crowd-Sensing for Sustainable and Environment Friendly Commute

Duration: 3 years


34

phones also have a variety of wireless interfaces: WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G/4G, which can be used for communication locally (e.g. amongst smart-phones within a bus) as well as globally (i.e. with a Mobile-cloud infrastructure). We envision a scenario where we: (1) intelligently learn road/transport-related information from the sensor data collected from users' smart phones (e.g. user X is on bus no: 32, whose route is currently mildly congested), (2) deduce high-level insights from data aggregated across multiple smart phones (e.g. bus no: 32 will arrive at user Y's bus-stop in 40 min).

Prototype Plan and Deliverables

The prototype will consist of components that address the goals outlined in the Project Details section, and can be evaluated based on accuracies of prediction of commute-conditions, and the reductions in carbon footprint achieved. The proposed solution builds upon the CARTS framework and our previous works which specifically focus on power-efficient, mobile sensing approaches and their applications to transportation systems in developing regions. The project aims to deliver the following components:

?Crowdsensing mobile app and application server for real-time tracking of the bus/train: The mobile app can be

installed on smart-phones of commuters and can be configured for participatory/opportunistic sensing. The server aggregates and processes crowdsourced spatio-temporal sensor data to provide insights and inferences to commuters and transit agencies.

?Integration of components that achieve energy efficiency within the mobile app: The app can be configured to an

energy-efficient mode of localization and mobile-to-mobile communication while it is being used for real-time tracking of the bus/train.

?Incentive mechanism deployed at the server: The incentive mechanism maximizes contribution of crowdsensing

data from commuters even while taking into consideration constraints on cost, energy, reliability and the dynamism in commuter availabilities.

?Public transportation system simulator and commuter mobility models: With sufficient crowdsensed data, it should

be possible to emulate the transit system at any point of time. It should also be possible to derive a stochastic mobility model for commuters of different transit systems in Mumbai. The interplay between the two will enable transit agencies to get a bird's eye view of the public transportation scenario, thus enabling them to make intelligent decisions with respect to transit frequency and scheduling policies.

The prototype will potentially be deployed and tested in Mumbai. We envisage that, once deployed, the proposed system will facilitate sustainable commuting in a scalable manner, by encouraging commuters to use public transportation systems more effectively. This in turn will benefit the community in the long run, by providing a cleaner and sustainable solution for transportation problems encountered by emerging cities in developing regions.

Project Details:

As part of this project, we expect to achieve the following goals:1. Development of scalable and power-efficient, participatory as well as opportunistic mobile crowdsensing

techniques to gather commuter-related attributes such as commuter spatio-temporal context, mode of transport etc. , which can work robustly in chaotic road conditions intrinsic to developing regions.

2. Development and prototype deployment of an overall architecture involving sensed data, its collection, processing, and dissemination. This will include techniques for identification and filtering of outliers in crowd-sourced data (noise or malicious input), in our application context.

3. Development of power-efficient means to identify crowd-sourced data pertaining to the same spatio-temporal context, by enabling users to share mobile sensor data using sound-tone communications.

4. Design of incentive mechanisms and a data veracity framework for ensuring an adequate and suitable user base that crowd sources mobile sensor data for the system.

5. Design and development of a real-time simulator for buses and trains. The simulator can estimate traffic conditions, predict arrival times and provide high-level insights which may facilitate transit agencies in making decisions with respect to bus/train frequencies and make scheduling decisions.

Work done thus far: The proposed work complements and extends an ongoing project “CARTS: Communication-Assisted Road transportation Systems”, which builds the sensing and communication framework for road transport systems, suited to the chaotic road conditions observed in developing regions. The framework essentially gathers mobile as well as static sensor data, processes it and disseminates inferences drawn based on the same. While the primary focus of the CARTS initiative is on building the sensing and networking components, the current proposal aims

35

to take the next steps toward real field deployment. This is achieved by leveraging energy-efficient crowd-sensing data (as opposed to power-hungry on-board sensing units), and a distributed data sharing model which uses low-energy sound-tone communication for identifying crowd-sensed data belonging to the same spatio-temporal context. Presently, we have made initial breakthroughs in building the low-power modules for non-GPS localization and in-vehicle sound-tone communications. Preliminary results obtained by deploying these modules within the CARTS framework show promise in achieving energy efficiency and making the framework a suitable solution for sustainable commuting. The current proposal will also look at some of the unresolved aspects of the CARTS project, such as user incentivization for large scale adoption.

36

Origin of proposal

Water touches every aspect of life and in India the availability of this basic resource is almost on the threshold of a crisis. As India continues to undergo dramatic shifts caused by a growing economy and population, competing demands for this limited resource originating from households, industry, and agriculture have wide-ranging implications for the country's future. If no proper action is taken timely, there can be direct consequences.

The World Health Organization estimates that 97million Indians lack access to safe water today, second only to China. As a result, the World Bank estimates that 21% of communicable diseases in India are related to unsafe water.

Coming to Indian state Maharashtra, the geographical area of Maharashtra is 30.7Mha.and the cultivable area within is 22.5Mha.(73%GA). Out of this, 40% area is drought prone and 7% of it is flood prone. The highly variable rainfall in Maharashtra ranges from 400 to 6000 mm and occurs in a 4-month period. The number of rainy days varies from 40 to 100. Annual availability of water resources

3consists of 164 km3 of surface water and 20.5 km of subsurface water. 58% of average annual availability of water is found in 4 major river basins namely Krishna, Godavari, Tapi and Narmada.The 4 river basins comprise 92% of the cultivable land and 75% of people living in the rural settlements, fast growing town and industrial area. An estimated 49% of the area of these river basins contains 43% of the population and already considered deficit or highly deficit in regard of water availability. These deficit areas are expected to increase steadily with population increase and economic growth. In the state's river basins and sub-basins competition for water supply and conflicts among different uses of water has already emerged and is growing. Most of the work to resolve these issues can be classified broadly as "Drainage Water Management". The state needs to find new ways to overcome conflicts among different users of water, stagnation in agricultural production growth, increase in productivity, expansion and intensification of irrigation and increase in income.

Normally watershed development is a solution for rural water problem. Moreover, if a village or 'pada' or number of houses are considered as a single unit and if water availability is worked out on the basis of average rainfall and land holding of that particular unit, water requirement of that particular unit can be fulfilled by adopting a combination of several techniques. In addition to all other sources of water such as wells, bore wells, ponds, lakes, streams, rivers etc. we should use rainwater as a source of water. Also, the draining pattern of that area (through streams and rivers) has to be considered and rethought as well.

We wish to test the foresaid for some select regions (by collecting and analysing the data along with Jalvardhini previous survey's).

Project summary

This project covers an approach of effective utilization of rainwater for solving rural-level water problems instead of the time consuming watershed solutions.The project treats a village as a small independent unit for utilizing and managing its water sources. It highlights the relevance of collection, analysis and availability of data at the Gram Panchayat level for making effective decisions about utilization of resources available in a small unit with a focus on rainwater harvesting. Emphasis is given on local involvement and work distribution to aid in building technology awareness amongst people within a unit. Also an understanding of the behavior and pattern of land, labor availability and water usage to propose suitable combination amongst crop cycles and other important factors is crucial.Without suggesting any kind of freedom i.e. exploitation and wastage of water sources available, the project aims at promoting independence to a local unit (a village or 'pada') for its water requirements. Even in the varying scenarios, like setting up of a chemical industry in an area, where the industry uses and exploits the local water sources, the unit in itself should be able to sufficiently meet its water requirements.

Strengthening water sources based on independent rainwater utilization

Principal Investigator : Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Computer Science and Engineering, IIT BombayCo PI : Prof. Eldho T.I, Civil Engineering, IIT Bombay and Mr.Ulhas Paranjpe, Jalvardhini Pratishthan

Duration: 3 years


37

Our strategies:

?Strengthening Local Sources: We begin with taking stock of existing water sources, identify which all water sources

are rechargeable, then find a connection between these water sources on how they could mutually benefit and later, gradually through this exercise strengthen the local water sources of a region. we plan to study how Local and non-local sources can be connected to each other in order to act as a reliable water source. This source can then be used to meet different consumption needs of the area such as

?Small scale industries that includes local sources like the household needs

?Cottage Industries.

? Large Industries like the chemical industries .

Using GIS as a Tool: GIS can be used as a powerful tool for developing solutions for water sources such as, assessing water quality and managing water sources on a local or regional scale. We plan to use GIS technology to integrate various data and applications into one manageable Decision Support System. The data after being mapped to GIS can be used to suggest people in their specific region about various water sources and condition of these water sources along with their availability. This will be achieved through the Decision Support System GUI developed by us.

Work plan:

?Data Collection and Data Analysis: Data Analysis, Predictions based on statistical data collection (especially

collection of data from Karjat area).

?Database Management at a local-level (village or pada as a small unit) in form of various surveys of different places

and different sources.

?Mapping data on GIS and using the collected data to recommend users about waters sources availability near them

and other relevant information.

?Mapping data to GIS to facilitate data collection and analysis.

?Developing a GUI-based Decision Support System to recommend users about water

?Sources availability near them and other relevant information for appropriate water resources management.

Objectives:The objectives of this project include:-

(a) to understand the challenges faced by the villagers in procuring and storing of water throughout the year, especially during summer season, by considering specific case study area,

(b) to test the hypothesis that rain water in any such unit is a sufficient source of water (for all purposes), both quantitatively and qualitatively for the entire year,

(c) to provide public access to information about water sources and its details in region using GIS as a tool, and(d) to propose methodologies to achieve rainwater management, while accounting for the drainage systems.(e) to develop a GUI based Decision Support System for effective water resource management for the selected study

area.

38

Duration: 1 year

Budget: Rs. 5 lakhs

Need

People in Bhimashankar sanctuary and nearby areas are collecting Hirda (Terminalia Chebula/Haritaki/Harad) from last many years and selling it to local societies at cost of 5-6 rupees per Kilogram whereas the cost of Hirda in retail market is 160-200 rupees per kilogram. After value addition it can be sold at higher prices in market. Hence it is necessary to reduce the big difference in prices what tribal people get and what is sold in the market. The problem can be solved by creating market linkages with companies such as Baidyanath, Ayur, Patanjali etc. because it has many applications in ayurvedic medicine. Earlier Hirda was used in Leather tanning and Boiler industry in large amount, now it has decreased, but these sectors also have large potential for use of Hirda if proper research is conducted. This can be achieved by social entrepreneurship in which hirda can be purchased from SHG of tribal people with minimum base price. A part of profit earned by selling hirda to various companies will again share with SHG of tribal people for community use in education, health etc.


?Report on current supply chain of hirda

?Report on scope for social entrepreneurship

?Social-entrepreneurship model for SHG with help of NGO

?Market linkages with potential customers

Project Details

Our solution is developing an ecosystem; an ecosystem where the primary stakeholders - the tribal people are benefitted as well as the profit that is received by selling the hirda is used for developing the cultivation of hirda plants as well as similar plants further. Our solution consists of the following objectives:

?To estimate total hirda production in Bhimashankar Sanctuary and nearby areas

?To trace current supply chain of hirda

?To create better supply chain to maximize the profit earned by stakeholders

?To study mechanism for collection of hirda at village level and at block level through self-help

groups (SHGs)

Empowering tribal communities near Bhimashankar Sanctuary through

Social EntrepreneurshipPrincipal Investigator : Prof. Anand Rao,

IIT Bombay

Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas

(CTARA),

39

Need

Indian reservoirs with water spread area of 3.15 m ha and yield potential of 50, 20 and 8 kg/ha/yr. from small, medium and large reservoir respectively, leave enough scope of enhancing fish yield from such resources through culture based capture fisheries and aquaculture. Factors such as increasing consumption of fish, declining wild fish stocks and climate change have produced strong interest in fish production from aquaculture. Prioritizing production of fish from reservoirs holds the key for increasing inland fish production in India. Cage culture is being looked upon as an opportunity to utilize existing reservoirs with great production potential to enhance production from inland open waters and posed as an answer to increased demand for animal protein in the country. RuTAG IIT Bombay already redesigned the cages developed by CIFE but costs of cages are high which can limit its uses through funding from various organisations only. Hence to reducing the cost of product will make it more sustainable economically and can be disseminated to inland fisheries society without subsidy.


Modified fish cage structure at reduced cost with

?CAD design

?Prototype

Project objectives

?To design the floating structure for cages that would give the minimum installation plus

operational/maintenance cost (two-three alternative designs, considering different materials)

?To increase safety on the walkways while maintaining the cost affordability

?To check the effectiveness and durability of the proposed design(s) through on-site

implementation and regular operation for one year.

Designing low cost fish cages for enhancement of inland fisheries production in IndiaPrincipal Investigator : Prof. Anand Rao, IIT BombayCentre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA),

Duration: 2 years


40

Duration: 1.5 years

Budget: Rs. 30.24

lakhs

Preamble

CTARA, IIT Bombay has been working in the field of development and various policy issues for the past thirty years. In this context, CTARA would like to explore the possibility of collaborating in the area of sustainability of products like sanitary napkins, tampons, baby and adult diapers. Though there is a very high health, environmental and economic significance of this class of Napkin & Diapers Consumer Goods (NDCG) there have been very few studies to assess their impacts in the country due to myths and taboos associated with it. CTARA has been working on issues related to sanitation and municipal solid waste and would like to extend its work to this class of NDCG, their acceptability, accessibility and affordability in the society. Also, the larger issues of environment and health have to be studied. This proposal is the result of the various interactions and puts forth the requirement of such a study and the various operational requirements.

The Problem Statement

Disposable diapers / napkins are one of the most significant consumer products of the 21st century. The Napkin & Diapers class of Consumer Good (henceforth called NDCG) consists various products for personal hygiene for women, men and babies. These NDCGs include sanitary napkins, baby diaper, incontinence diapers, breast pads and panty liners. The use of NDCGs depends on the price of sanitary products in the countries, the idea of personal hygiene, the amount of disposable income which the individual is ready to use on NDCGs and the use / availability of alternative products for the intended purposes (e.g. re-usable diapers / napkins).

India's changing preference from traditional cloth nappies to disposable diapers / napkins has also propelled growth. In India, the baby diaper market is currently pegged at Rs. 1,400 crore. Supported by favourable demographics with 26 million babies born in India every year, the potential is huge. Disposable diapers constitute the largest market share and are seeing increasing investments by manufacturers in their research and development. (Diaper market grows with more than just baby steps Amrita Nair- Ghaswalla, The Hindu, June 28, 2013)

According to United Nations Population Division, by 2050, the median age will rise to 37 years, and the number of elderly (over 60 years of age) from 100 million now to 300 million—equivalent to the current population of the US. Old age dependency ratio in India will go up from 13% in 2000 to 32.8% in 2050. Incontinence, classified as a disease by the WHO refers to a person's inability to control the evacuation of urine or defecation functions of the body. Incontinence is three times more common in women than men and one fourth of the world's women aged over 35 are expected to be affected by this at some point of time. Thus, an aging population not only needs a well-developed healthcare system to support it but also hygiene products related to old age such as adult diapers.

A study "Sanitation protection: Every Women's Health Right", conducted by AC Neilsen in 2010 showed that only 12% of women use sanitary napkins and the incidents of reproductive tract infection (RTI) is 70% more common among women who use other alternatives like un-sanitized cloth.Hence, there is a huge growth potential of NDCGs in India and presently this market is still underdeveloped. However, NDCGs faces certain shortcomings, on one side issues such as cost effectiveness, functionality, safety, variety and other the other side those related to environmental costs, solid waste management costs, etc.

Cost effectiveness, which means NDCGs, should be available at affordable prices to cater to various income levels. Functionality, which means these NDCGs must be durable and conform to hygiene standards and have sufficient absorption capacity. Safety, which means that they should be safe to use, suitable for all skin types and have no adverse effects. Variety, means in terms of functionality and size and being readily available in the market. Most of the NDCGs sold in the market are not biodegradable. They are often seen as items blocking the underground drainage systems, nuisance in municipal solid waste management.

Socio-Econo-Enviro Study of Napkins &Diapers class of Consumer Goods

Principal Investigator : Prof. Bakul Rao,

CTARA), IIT Bombay


(

41

In the development arena, India has been facing the challenge of provisioning of proper sanitation services in both urban and rural areas. Added to this is the problem of hygiene and health to the entire population. Hence, CTARA is interested in dealing with the sanitation and health issues simultaneously.

ObjectivesThe main objectives of this project are as follows:

1. To carry out a socio-economic study of the pattern, choices, expectations of usages of these NDCGs in Maharashtra2. Market structure, key players in NDCG product categories, current penetration of hygiene products3. Life Cycle Analysis (environmental, socio, and economic) analysis of various types of NDCGs products4. Linkages of NDCGs after usages to the provision of sanitation and solid waste management issues

ScopeThe scope of the project is as follows:

1. Literature Survey : A brief literature survey on the raw materials and processes in NDCGs making technologies2. Prototype Building: Development of prototype would be carried out at CTARA lab.3. Experimental Studies: Experimental studies will be done in CTARA Lab.4. Field Work: To understand the problem faced in sanitation and solid waste management

Expected Deliverables / Expected Outcome

A. Life cycle analysis of NDCGsB. Base work for managing used NDCGsC. Need analysis of NDCGs in rural and urban areas

42

Duration: 1.5 years


Motivation

Farmers in the identified tribal areas of Akole Taluka, Ahmednagar District live a "deprived life" due to inadequate income. Most of the farming activity is subsistance type. Vegetable and Fruits production can provide additional source of income from available land, if the demonstration project can show year round production activity, where water is a constraint

Abstract

Recent work of Mr Sandeep Pawar (M Tech Student at IITBombay) has demonstrated that there is a great deal of interest and excitement among the tribal farmers to grow vegetables and fruits within the area. Currently 3-4 Kitchen gardens (KG) are initiated with the help of agricultural expert from BAIF. The KG Model seems to be self-sustaining. While water availability in monsoon is not a constraint, during months from January till May there is acute shortage of water which hampers the production of vegetables and fruits during non-monsoon months. This also affects the nutritional status of the households. The present project will be done jointly with agronomist from BAIF working in the cluster.

The project envisages to install a system of Shed-net house for say 1-2 gunthas that will help enhance the productivities of selected vegetables such as tomato, pumpkin, brinjal etc. Also to ascertain assured supply of water a borewell and solar-assisted water-pump (3.6 kW) will also be installed to reduce electricity charges to farmer.

The project will further accelerate the enthusiasm of local farmers to grow more, feed-better and have a secondary source of income for improved life conditions

Expected Outcome

A well demonstrated system that produces fresh Vegetables that not only provides secondary source of income but also helps in improving nutrition status of tribal population. The added benefit would be diversified cropping system that will help maintain good soil-health.

Demonstration of Water Supply solution to upgraded Kitchen-Garden / ShedNet House

Principal Investigator : Prof. Narendra Shah, (CTARA), IIT Bombay


43

Need

Malnutrition affects the performance of individual by way of eroding growth and physical development which effectively diminishes overall capacity and strength of an individual and eventually of a nation. There is an urgent need to focus on the nutritional and overall developmental needs. Vegetable gardening seems to be the key to address two issues simultaneously: nutrition as well as livelihood option for secondary cash revenue for deprived rural communities. Apart from Monsoon season, due to shortage of water as well as hot weather, the identified rural communities in Akola taluka, Ahmednagar District, Maharashtra are often unable to cultivate vegetables. Shade net house provides protection against sun-heat and drip irrigation ensures optimum use of water. The small farming community in tribal block is constrained to make requisite initial investments to start the activity of “Micro-gardens”. This activity can simultaneously bring employment opportunity within the community.

Deliverables

Say 30 Micro-Vegetable garden units to be built that would comprise of:

?Shade net house (~250 sq.ft) with locally sourced material

?Drip irrigation system for say < 0.5 acre

?Seeds and seedlings

?Fertilizers and pesticides

The fixed cost component (shade net house and drip irrigation system) and recurring cost component for the first cycle (seed, seedlings, fertilizers and pesticides) are covered in this : Rs 20,000/ per unit

Project details

Project is planned initially for a tribal belt in Akole Taluka in Ahamadnagar District of Maharashtra. Project activity mainly deals with installation of Micro-Veg garden system and dissemination to around 30 farmers (Rs. 20 k / farmer). The project looks forward to provide some basic training to the farmers about vegetable cultivation and its benefits. The shade net system is planned to be developed by indigenous people using local/waste materials. Project also aims at designing the market mechanism considering the vegetable production through this vegetable gardening.

Micro Vegetable gardens Towards Enhanced Nutrition-Security Principal Investigator : Prof. Narendra Shah,

IIT Bombay


(CTARA),

Duration: 2 years


44

Duration: 3 years

Budget: Rs. 19.22

lakhs

Need

Ensuring environmental sustainability has become an essential component of most strategic business decision. These decisions include investment in the development/implementation of a technology (renewable and clean energy), project site selection (impacts on society and resource management), selection of processing routes (local raw material availability), and/or impact assessment to identify undesirable components of the value chain. Sustainable development calls for harmonious interactions between its three dimensions i.e. dimensions of sustainability viz. economic, social and ecological. This makes decision making a multi-disciplinary task which must account for multiple spatial and temporal time scales.

Model based tools based on systems dynamics (SD) have been used for sustainability assessment in the past. Prior work by Shastri and colleagues developed an integrated SD model and performed scenario studies to quantify the impact of population explosion and increased per capita consumption. They also used the model to devise policy recommendations for waste discharge fee and reforestation.

Although the analysis provided useful results, the SD model ignored the diversity of the system components. For example, the human compartment in the model overlooked the diversity of human behavior and decision making. This limits the practicality of the proposed study.

Agent-based modeling, one of the tools to analyze complex systems, provides these capabilities, but has not been applied to problems of engineering design. Agent-based models capture the diversity and uncertainty in complex systems that allow more realistic prediction and decision making. These models have been successfully applied in the areas of biomass supply chain, energy systems, agriculture, and so on. The proposed project will extend the SD model studied by Shastri and colleagues to incorporate the agent-based modeling philosophy.

Outcomes/deliverables

?An improved decision making tool for sustainability assessment based on agent-based modeling

and simulation.

?A tool to assess the sustainability impacts of CSR decisions under the environmental

sustainability domain.

?Assist in sustainability assessment of a proposed project during its site selection stage to identify

possible effects on the region as a whole. Some of the parameters such as change in income of local community, development of local businesses, impact on environment, economic disparity, and so on may be of interest in the process of decision making.

Project details

This project will develop agent-based models for complex, integrated technological-economic-ecological systems and use those models to provide design decisions. This will be carried out by considering an existing systems dynamics model as a case study as well as proof of concept. The USEPA developed an integrated ecological-economic-social model that incorporated the key elements of the nature and its interaction with human systems. The integrated model had a strong macroeconomic component governing the human and technological decision. The model (Fig. 1(a)) has been successfully used by Shastri and colleagues for developing scenarios and providing policy recommendations for achieving sustainability. The model has been further extended (Fig. 1(b)) to include energy sectors. These are systems dynamics (SD) model where the entities within a particular compartment are lumped together. However, because of its lumped handling of real world entities, its ability to address emergent phenomenon due to local interaction is limited.

Sustainability Centered Decision Support System for Business and Policy Making

Principal Investigator : Prof. Yogendra Shastri, Chemical Engineering, IIT Bombay

45

The work proposed here, will attempt to address this limitation, and develop a model which can assist in, from sustainability perspective, making policy decisions. The SD model will be modified using the Agent-Based Modeling, and Simulation (ABMS) philosophy, a relatively novel method, in science and engineering. ABMS endows the modeled real world entities with the individuality, and complex behavior emerges from the local interactions. Thus, the proposed model would be able develop deeper understanding of the system by capturing diversity of the real system, and subsequently evaluate whether it is sustainable or not. Further, since this approach also allows use of spatial information, the proposed model may incorporate geographic information as well.

The model development will be followed by developing specific scenarios to simulate. This includes scenarios such as increased consumption of natural resources, replacement of non-renewable sources with renewable sources, increasing manufacturing rate, and decreasing waste generation. Implications of policy development will also be considered.

(a) (b)

Figure 1: The systems dynamics model of the integrated economic-ecological-social system. The original model (a) and the modified model with energy sectors (b).

46

Duration: 2 years

Budget: Rs. 1.19

crores

Need

The pace at which present day industrialization and urbanization is occurring, the environment is getting affected tremendously. This is mainly due to the fact that the by-products (to be read as the manmade resource and not as the industrial waste) coming out of various industries (viz., mining, construction, dredging, manufacturing, textile, processed food, etc.) pose a major challenge in terms of their handling, disposal and management. With the strict rules, regulations and the awareness among the common man, these issues attract a special attention and necessitate 'extensive revision' of the existing laws of the land. One of the most optimal ways in which the millions of tons of this manmade resource, bulk utilization, could be consumed (or utilized) would be their valorization by creating a physico-chemico-mineralogical-geotechnical synergy between the byproducts from different industries for sustainable infrastructure development. Such a philosophy would be a boon in an era in which conventional construction materials (viz., soils, cement, lime, sands and aggregates) have already exhausted or are being recognized for creating environmental imbalance. In this context, the synthetic soils for sustainable infrastructure development would be most welcome, though, their cousins, geo-polymers and green concrete already exist.

The production of such soils would be a sustainable solution as it would entail returning back to the system from where the basic raw materials for the industrial process comes. In this context, efforts are being made to develop synthetic soils for sustainable infrastructure development by IIT Bombay. However, active role of different stakeholders (Govt. of India, CPCB, MOEF, various industries producing by-products and infrastructure developing agencies etc.) for (i) financial support (ii) providing subsidy for bulk transportation of these materials at the project specific sites and (ii) on-site demonstration of technology, is solicited.


The proposed studies will be helpful in bulk utilization of industrial byproducts as a manmade resource, for sustainable infrastructure development. These synthetic soils find their applicability for geotechnical engineer in the field of land reclamation, ground improvement, and vegetation growth in challenging soils. Furthermore, this philosophy would serve as a secondary source of income for the industries.

In short, this initiative would be a panacea for the industries as it would sort out most of the issues associated with the hazardous and toxic waste handling, storage and management. The commercial aspects associated with the selling of the industrial by products would be quite lucrative for the industries. The other advantages would be:

?Byproduct of one industry serves as a raw material for another.

?Economy in terms of storage, transport, management and productivity can be achieved.

A step forward for Sustainable development.

Project DetailsObjective

?Bulk utilization of byproducts (industrial waste) from different industries and manufacturing

units for synthesizing synthetic soils.

?Physical, chemical, mineralogical, thermal, electrical and biological characterization of the

synthetic soils

?Suggestions regarding the most beneficial applications of the synthetic soils.

?Technology demonstration under in-situ (Prototype) scale (viz., soft soil and desert soil

stabilization, reclamation, agriculture and horticulture, and various geoenvironmental cleanup projects.

Synthetic Soils for Sustainable Infrastructure Development

Principal Investigator : Prof. D. N. Singh, Civil Enggineering., IIT Bombay

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Background

An extensive literature survey was carried out to understand the existing cutting-edge technologies, developments that have taken place in the area of utilizing industrial byproducts. It is found that industrial byproducts, have limited applications in infrastructure development.

The main objective of this project is the bulk utilization of byproducts from different industries to produce manmade soil. This necessitates proper understanding of the material in all perspectives (viz., physical, chemical, electrical, mineralogical, thermal and morphological characterization), which would help in right planning and execution of projects.

Scope of the work

Detailed investigations are required to assess the following major aspects related to this work:

?Synthesis of soil at laboratory scale by adopting a novel technology that can consume industrial byproducts (i.e.,manmade resource) as a raw material.

?The precise estimation of various properties of synthetic soils and comparing it with those available naturally.

?Modifications, if necessary, to be done to get desired properties.

?An attempt would be made to study the behaviour of such soils under environmental and adverse conditions.

?Application of such soils for land reclamation, ground improvement and infrastructure development to be investigated.

?Long-term implication of this material on natural environment by Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is to be carried out.

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Duration: 0.9 years

Budget: Rs. 70.08

lakhs

Building Solar Enterprises in Rural Areas

Principal Investigator: Prof. Chetan Singh Solanki, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Bombay

Summary

The Million Solar Urja Lamp (SoUL) program of IIT Bombay has distributed 10 lakh solar urja study lamps (7.35 Lakh lamps from Feb'2014-Feb'2015; 2.65 Lakh from Oct'2015-March'2016) to school going children from rural and backward areas in four states of India, i.e.; Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. Through the localization concept of project, lamps have been assembled and distributed by trained local people. Further, to ensure the life of the lamps and to provide repair & maintenance service during the warranty period, local SoUL repair centres (SRC) have been set up. Now, towards creating a sustainable livelihood, it is envisioned that the SRC personnel should be trained and supported to start rural enterprise in solar products. These enterprises will promote solar energy use in rural areas, create employment and help leverage the awareness created by the Million SoUL program. Entrepreneurship, capacity building and market study are proposed to be carried out to support rural enterprise. The duration of this project is 1 year with a proposed budget of INR 70 Lakhs for 100 rural enterprises across project locations in four states.

Background

India has one of the youngest populations in the world, with 258 million students enrolled in 1st to 12th standard. School education is thus essential for future of the country. Right to education has achieved remarkable success in terms of ensuring school enrolment of children below 14 years of age. However, the dropout rates are significantly high. 40% students drop out at the elementary level. Many students, especially from rural and backward areas, cannot study after school hours because of lack of electricity. This is hampering education and growth of young. As a long-term consequence of it, not many of the rural population could earn a sustainable livelihood. Therefore, with an objective to provide clean light for study purposes to school going children, in the fastest possible way, and in the most cost-effective manner, the Million Solar Urja Lamp (SoUL) Program was initiated. IIT Bombay is the central coordinating agency for the program coordinating with Institutional partners (NGOs) as implementing agencies, vendors for lamp kit supply.

IIT Bombay has developed one such model that focuses on the localisation of solar energy. In order to achieve scale; the model is designed such that it can be replicated in parallel in multiple blocks, across districts and states. To achieve Speed, the assembly and distribution for any block is designed to complete in 90 days. In order to target skill development, rural people are trained in the assembly, distribution and repair of these lamps in their local areas. More than 9.20 Lakh lamps have already been disseminated across more than 10,000 villages from 97 blocks of 23 districts in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan & Orissa, through 1000+ trained manpower. Ensuring smooth functioning of lamps is essential for sustaining impact of the program. In order to do that, 348 SoUL Repair Centres are established and an equal number of local people, called as SoUL Repair Centre Managers (SRCMs) are employed to operate these centres. (Details at: www.millionsoul.iitb.ac.in).

Need for Building Solar Enterprises

Million SoUL program has set up SRCs in order to cater the repair and maintenance needs of the beneficiaries. In order to benefit technically trained manpower in long term, IIT Bombay proposes to set up solar enterprises. Internal impact assessment of the program shows that nearly 48 % of SoUL users are willing to buy various solar products. Considering this unmet need, program team had recently undertaken a study to explore if SRCMs can utilize this opportunity and set up a solar enterprise. The study interviewed 40 SRCMs, from 11 blocks across three states, who have reemphasised that there is good scope for creating solar enterprises and generating sustained source of livelihoods for them. 87% SRCMs are interested in setting up their own small-scale solar enterprises to sale solar products and provide repair & maintenance (R&M) services for the same. 63% of them are ready to contribute a part of investment required. They are looking for support in

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terms of seed grants, capacity building and handholding for some time. Therefore the proposed project to promote sustainable solar enterprises is envisaged.

Deliverables

?250 Solar Energy Enterprises are initiated in Rural areas

?Training material to train SRCMs in five key performance areas (solar technology entrepreneurship, market research

& marketing, finance & banking, accounting)

?Research publication on determinants of successful solar entrepreneurship development in rural areas

Project Details

SRCs are owned and operated by SRCMs, who are usually young undergraduates with good communication skills, willingness to travel and serve SoUL users. Some of the SRCMs are aspiring entrepreneurs running small retail shops. A SRCM typically serves a cluster of 30-40 villages. The R&M is done for free during the warranty period of one year. Through Million SoUL Project, SRCMs are paid a monthly remuneration of Rs 2750 each and provided for free with the spares required to do R&M. After the warranty period some SRCMS continue providing services by charging users for the same. In addition to R&M, the SRCs have also tried selling solar product such as solar lanterns, torch, mobile chargers and occasionally small home lighting systems.

In order to support them in more structured manner, this project of building sustainable solar enterprises has been envisaged. Around 100 SRCMs would be given the following support through proposed Enterprise Phase (EP): (1) understanding market demands, (2) enhancing their personal effectiveness as entrepreneurs, (3) suggesting ways to financing and sustaining their ventures, (4) developing linkages with vendors and organized group of potential users of solar products, such as women Self Help Groups (SHGs), Farmers' Producer Companies (FPCs), Cooperative Societies. Considering local context, needs and capacities, various activities will be performed at block and district level. IIT Bombay would extend support in terms of needs assessment, innovating organizational, financial and operational models. Other stakeholder will be engaged to conduct capacity building workshops and implement other program activities.

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Duration: 5 years

Budget: Rs. 10 crores

(Innovation to save maternal and child lives)

Concept : Good nutrition is the key/soul of social empowerment. If women are illiterate or uneducated will have more likely to lack access to proper food. Furthermore, mothers who are malnourished are more likely to have children who are stunted, which in turn can affect access to education and employment. If we improve the nutritional status of women, this can also lead to better education and higher incomes – raising the social standing of women in their communities.

Proposed Centre : Proposed centre will focus on innovative technology development and over the period will try to bridge the gap for idea stage support, infrastructure availability, nurturing through immersion programme and scaling innovations through effective partnerships, mentorship and social entrepreneurship.

The proposed centre is aimed with the following objects:

?Assessment of child and women malnutrition (Maternal and Child Health)

?Tuberculosis induced by Malnutrition

?Women Health Education

?A panel of experts across multiple disciplines would be part of the centre.

?Management and Personnel

?Executive Committee: Director, Dean: ACR, Professor-in-charge, Director, CEO of the Centre and

Professors from different departments of IIT Bombay.

?The Centre Advisory Committee: Clinicians, Scientists of different areas etc.

Identified Partners/Collaborators : NGOs, RNTCP Labs, SNEHA, and SEARCH Foundations.Close to 1.3 million children die every year in India because of malnutrition (World Health Organization: WHO). India is likely to have 33% malnourished children (end of 2015). According to UNICEF and the Global Health Database maintained by WHO, India has more malnourished children than sub-Saharan Africa and nearly one-in-every-5 malnourished children in the world is from India.

Centre of Excellence for Child & Maternal Health (Malnutrition & associated

Tuberculosis) and Women Health Education Principal Investigator : Prof. Rohit Srivastava and Dr. Vinay Saini, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Bombay

Malnutrition Screening in Children: We plan to use already available weighing machine (ICDS) to screen malnutrition in children. We wish to upgrade this machine for the three parameters: Underweight, Stunting & Wasting to assess the malnutrition status of children between age group of 0 to 72 months based on three W.H.O. growth charts. The data will be updated on the website server in real time. Its automation will ease the operations of Aanganwadi workers, PHCs and upload the data to server instantly without any errors and manual intervention. Body Mass Index Scale will be used for measuring malnutrition in women. It automatically measures weight, height and Body Mass Index and displays, simultaneously, how much over /under weight you are. Alternatively, we propose to develop a multilingual platform to assess and analyze child growth and identify children suffering from malnutrition.

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?The system would consist of a set of devices and a multilingual smartphone application. The devices would digitized

to eliminate any human intervention in data interpretation and entry.

?An artificial intelligence algorithm would be developed to analyze and find trends in data as well as predict

malnutrition status of individuals based related parameters.

?The platform would be appended to an existing CareMother platform (pregnancy care solution) developed by team

members.

Output : Women health education tools would automatically reduce child malnutrition rate by 20%.

Outcomes : In long term, the centre would achieve its target in reducing highest burden of malnutrition& TB.

Societal Impact: We are having a vision of “Malnutrition free India like Polio”.

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The parameters can be measured using above devices are:

Length/Height; Weight; Head Circum-ference; Arm Circumference; Triceps skin fold measurement; sub scapular skin fold measurement.

CareMother (Pregnancy Care): This is a portable kit with medical devices and mobile application for at door medical care for pregnant mother and child. System early identifies high-risk pregnancy and allows early intervention to prevent complication. As part of the initial trails, 20+ health workers have been trained and equipped with smart tools for providing pregnancy care services at doorstep in Mumbai slums and 60+ villages of Aurangabad. The system consists of a set of devices and a multilingual smartphone application. The devices has been digitized to eliminate any human intervention in data interpretation and entry.

Duration: 3 years

Budget: Rs. 2.966

crores

Need

Commonly employed analytical methods for ionic impurities detection are ion exchange chromatography, electrochemical methods, ICP-MS, titrations etc. The more sensitive the method, it requires more sophisticated instrumentation, skilled personnel, sample preparation procedure which make them expensive, cumbersome and time consuming. At this point, there is an immense need of innovative analytical approach providing high throughput. Conventional purification techniques including ion exchange, cyanide treatment, reverse osmosis, electrochemical precipitation and adsorption have been developed. But some are expensive or not sufficiently effective in the low concentration range. Adsorption is one of the important procedures for the removal ionic impurities from water.

Outcomes or DeliverablesTMThe development of DEiCONT kit will be advantageous for simultaneous detection and removal of

the impurities or contaminants present in water at the source or in the supply/flow process. The TMDEiCONT kit could quantitatively examine the level of contaminants in domestic water supply,

potable water, water supplied to various industries, etc. It will have a huge applicability and market potential, as currently there is lack of single unit which can detect and remove the ionic impurities. This kit will be available at low cost that can be distributed to resource limited settings and the user on their own can accurately detect the level of impurities in the water and purify it on the particular site.

TMAdvantages of DEiCONT kit:

?Portable, point-of-care

?Low cost

?Rapid and high throughput

?Ease of operation

?Accurate and rapid availability of data

?Easy result interpretation

?Scalable

Project detailsTMWe are developing the point of care (POC) platform DEiCONT which can detect and remove

potentially harmful ionic impurities present in water. We will be offering a comprehensive kit for quantitative detection of potentially harmful ionic impurities (such as arsenate, cadmium, chromium, fluoride, iron, lead, mercury, nitrate, selenium, sulphate) in any type of water and its removal.

TMDEiCONT will be a portable, ready to use kit, providing reliable quantification and removal of ionic impurities over a wide concentration range at a reasonable price.

Detection: We will be using the fluorescent nanoparticles (FNPs) for the development of the sensor (showed in schematics below). Surface of FNPs would be functionalized through chemical modification with specific functional groups (functionalized fluorescent nanoparticles-FFNPs). These functional groups have affinity towards specific ions present in the sample offering specificity to the technique. FFNPs would be immobilized on the inner surface of the plastic cuvette using polymeric material. When the sample containing ionic impurity will be added to the cuvette, specific ions would bind to the sensors and remaining would be removed using washing buffer. Fluorescence of FFNPs would be quenched on binding with the particular ions present in the sample. An indigenously developed and programmed portable fluorescence reader will be used to read the results. Quenching of fluorescence intensity will be compared with the control and the difference would be correlated with the concentration of particular ion giving quantitative outcome. Results would be printed on the portable, handheld printer and compared with the standard values provided in handbook.

DEiCONT™ Point-of-care based detection and removal of ionic impurities from water

Principal Investigator : Prof. Rohit Srivastava, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT BombayCo PI: Mr Vivek Borse, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Bombay

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Purification: Indigenously developed carbon based substrate nanomaterial (CSNM) films will have high surface area, stability, supramolecular recognition, high adsorption capability and high enantioselectivity that can facilitate removal of ions from contaminated water. Chelators having specificity towards particular ions would be decorated on the CSNM films. These decorated films could be coated on inner wall of the supply line or could be used as filtration unit. When the contaminated water is passed through the filtration unit, ionic impurities will be pulled by chelators to form a stable complex. Upon saturation, the the adsorbed impurities will be removed and the filtration unit can be reused. Our

TMinnovation DEiCONT aims at developing a cuvette based POC kit for detection and removal of ionic impurities in water. TMThe POC platform DEiCONT includes fluorescence-based assay for detection and CSNM based removal of potentially

harmful ionic impurities present in water.

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Duration: 8 -10 months

Budget: Rs. 2 croresNowadays, dental cavities are one of the most common problems (i.e. 60–90% of school children and nearly 100% of adults have dental cavities leading to pain and discomfort-WHO). For its restoration, Amalgam based dental cavity filling is the most commonly used, however it has reduced its applicability due to potential toxicities caused by mercury, requirement of retentive fractures and drilling out in case of secondary caries. To overcome these side effects, composite resins have emerged as an alternative of amalgams but they are also not spared with cons like polymer shrinkage and high cost. Herein, we synthesized cost effective nanocomposite resin using multifunctional GO-Au-PLGA (gold coated poly lactic-co- glycolic acid polymer nanoshells embedded in graphene oxide sheets) as nanofiller for reducing polymer shrinkage as well delineating the cavity outline (being the contrast agent) in early diagnosis of secondary caries via X-ray.

RATIONALE

Studies have proven that a blend of Bis-GMA (Bisphenol A glyceroate dimethacrylate) and TEGDMA (triethyleneglycol dimethacrylate) are the most frequently used composite resin. However, to further reinforce composite properties, various fillers are being used like SiO , Al2O , ZrO and silicate 2 3 2

glasses. Composite resin incorporated with silver and calcium phosphate nanoparticles already have been reported to enhance its property in enamel/dentin remineralization. In addition, silane modified nanosilica particles and carbon nanotube assimilation in resin have been used for reducing polymerization shrinkage without sacrificing degree of conversion.

Recent findings suggest that graphene could be used as nanofillers because of its non-corroding nature and 200 times more durability than steel without any potential toxicity. It indirectly helps in reducing the polymer shrinkage major cause of secondary caries and enhancing the wear resistance. To further enhance the property of graphene as nanofiller, Au-PLGA NPS (Gold coated poly lactic-co- glycolic acid polymer nanoshells) were attached over it to render photo thermal and contrast properties for better curing of resin (i.e. both by in-depth generation of nanoheat due to NIR light and light curing by blue light) and early diagnosis of secondary caries via X-rays. It would also help in prevention of resistive microbial growth because of photo thermal therapy and delineating the cavity outline up to bottom in case of secondary caries.

Details of Scope

On based over literature survey, composite resin prepared using Bis-GMA and TEGDA incorporating ographene as Nano filler doesn't influence the glass transition temperature of composite resin (~ 99

C). To exploit this, Au PLGA NPS (i.e. photothermal agent) were decorated over graphene oxide (as shown in schematic). Photothermal due to Au PLGA NPS in composite resin would be very advantageous for proper curing (increase depth of curation due to generation of nanoheat via more NIR light penetration than currently used blue light as well blue light could also be used for light curing). As in improper cured resins, monomer leaching cause toxicity hazards to nearby gums. It would also help in photothermal killing and antimicrobial (due to incorporation of TPGS and chitosan in synthesis of Au PLGA NPS) activity against germs in case of secondary caries due to polymer shrinkage (main problem associated with composite resin based dental fillings).

Diagnostic and treatment of dental cavities filled with resistive microbes using

multifunctional GO-Au-PLGA nanofiller based composite resin

Principal Investigator : Co PI : Deepak S. Chauhan, Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Bombay, Mukesh K. Kumawat, Biosciences and

Bioengineering, IIT Bombay and Dr. Kavita Bhandare, Annasaheb Chudaman Patil Memorial Dental College

Prof. Rohit Srivastava, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Bombay,

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Schematic representation of synthesis of GO Au PLGA nanofiller based composite resin for diagnostic and treatment of resistive microbes filled dental cavity

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Generally, toxicity of graphene relies on the method of synthesis. On this account, GO-Au-PLGA was prepared using nontoxic ways and its biocompatibility was also tested over normal fibroblasts cells (L929) which was found to be equal as negative control i.e. cells without treatment (as can be seen below).

A) Quantitative, and B) Qualitative analysis of GO-Au-PLGA nanofillers using MTT assay

To incorporate the GO-Au-PLGA as nanofiller, it would be dispersed in TEGDA/TEGDMA (TEGDMA would be used as control for checking the effect of GO-Au-PLGA in compressibility of composite resin and TEGDA would be used to increase the glass transition temperature) and thereafter mixed with already reported biocompatible and commonly used resin matrix BIS-GMA.

Several conc. of GO-Au PLGA would be tested as nanofiller for preparation of composite resin to obtain homogenous dispersion and to acquire best mechanical, hardness and compression properties in composite resin.

Description of the benefit that the project will accrue

Although, amalgam based cavity fillings are the most commonly used but its potential toxicity due to involvement of mercury, requisite of retentive fractures and drilling out in case of re-filling due to cavity broadening have restricted its usage. To overcome all this and on aesthetic viewpoint, composite resin (white filler) based fillings have emerged and continuously being evolved to make it better in terms of biocompatibility, polymerization shrinkage and wear resistance.

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Smart Phone Based Diagnosis and Photothermal Treatment of Cervical CancerPrincipal Investigator: Prof. Rohit Srivastava, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Bombay Team Members: Dr. Aravind Kumar Rengan, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engg, IIT Hyderabad,

ACTREC, Kharghar, Dr. Vinay Saini,Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Bombay and Mr. Anurag Meena, IIT Bombay

Dr. Abhijit De,

Early Diagnosis / Screening of Cervical Cancer (mColpo)

mColpo, which is a low cost, mobile, easy to use device to examine cervical cancer. It uses a mobile phone, it's sensors with a mounted lens and an intelligent optical arrangement to enable colposcopy examination and screening. It also provides additional features such as remote monitoring of the whole process, live video streaming or imaging over the internet.

Colposcope Functions

Colposcope is used to identify visible clues suggestive of abnormal tissues. It functions as a lighted binocular microscope to magnify the view of the cervix, vagina and vulva surface. It has an arrangement for managing zoom or lens power to capture magnified images.

?Low power (2x to 6x) is generally used to obtain general impression of the surface architecture

?Medium (8x to 15x) and High (15x to 25x) to evaluate vagina and cervixHigher the power, it helps to identify abnormalities effectively.

Light Filters and Visualization

Light filters are used to highlight the different aspect of the surface of the cervix. White light is used during Biopsy and Green Light is used during colposcopy. Green filter enables to evaluate vascular patterns of cervix tissues. The squamo-columar junction, or "transformation zone", is a critical area on the cervix where many precancerous and cancerous lesions most often arise. Satisfactory colposcopy is defined as visualization of the entire squamo-columnar junction and margins of any visible lesions. The major objective of the technology will be to achieve this standard.

Proposed Technology

mColpo- Mobile Colposcope aims towards an easy to carry, smart phone integrated colposcope with intelligent mobile application integration for guided image capturing facility for focused regions and mounted lens device with intelligent circuit to adjust focal lengths and light filters.

Features:

?The device will achieve digital zoom upto 40x with adjustable focal length. Also green light LED will

allow focused visualization.

?Mobile Application to smartly capture targeted region, guide for Biopsy region and manage

images and data. This could in future be also used for deploying image processing for automated analysis.

?Smart lens mounting tool and circuit with sensors to identify motion, distance and luminance

?Secure Remote monitoring for specialists to review and diagnose screening tests

?DICOM and HL7 Standard for image, communication and records

?Secure video streaming, video conferencing and image sharing from mobile device using third

party or own developed tools with customized approach

Duration : For first 5 years


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Current Prototype

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Need

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major global health concern. It is the second deadliest infectious disease worldwide, second only to HIV/AIDS. According to the latest estimates done by the WHO, around 9.6 people around the world were afflicted with TB (2013-2014), and accounted for around 1.5 million TB related deaths worldwide. In India, TB is the second infectious cause of death, after lower respiratory infections. According to the WHO, India accounted for the largest number of cases with 23% of the total global burden of TB. According to WHO, India has a total prevalence of 2,600,000 TB cases with an estimated incidence rate of 171 cases per 100,000 and 240,000 deaths in 2013.

Rationale/Justification for the Project

Rapid, economical, and improved diagnostic tests are urgently needed. The proposed tests are more rapid (20-25 minutes compared to 8 to 12 weeks for routine culture), affordable (<$1 compared to $10 for Xpert), does not require equipment and is a point of care easy to use test. Only small amount of sample is needed for the test.

Project Details The project proposal is aimed at the following objectives:AIM 1: Development, evaluation & Scale-up of lateral flow assay for detection of MPT64 in sputum.

Rationale: MPT64 is highly specific to MTB Complex and not found in environmental mycobacteria. MPT64 is secreted by M. tuberculosis in liquid/solid culture media or other biological fluids like sputum as soon as the pathogen starts dividing. It's a very stable protein, accounts for 8% of the total volume of the proteins secreted outside the cell i.e. it's an immuno-dominant secretory protein highly specific to M. tuberculosis complex.

TEST PRINCIPLE

This product consists of a test plate with a carrier strip composed of a sample placing area, a reagent area including a colloidal gold labelled specific monoclonal antibody and a developing area that fixes the specific monoclonal antibody

AIM.2: Development, evaluation & Scale-up of lateral flow Urine strip test for detection of LAM antigen in HIV-co-Infected TB patients.

We plan to develop, evaluate and scale up a newly developed lateral flow test for simple and rapid detection of lipoarabinomannan (LAM) antigen in urine. This Test is based on the detection of mycobacterial LAM antigen in urine which may be emerged as potential point-of-care test for tuberculosis (TB) (http://www.who.int/tb/ publications/use-of-lf-lam-tb-hiv/en/).LAM antigen is a lipopolysaccharide present in mycobacterial cell walls, which is released from metabolically active or

Development, Evaluation & Scale-UP of Non-invasive & Low cost Rapid TB diagnosticsPrincipal Investigator : Prof. Rohit Srivastava, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Bombay

Dr. Joan-Miquel Balada-Llasat, Clinical

Microbiology, Columbus, Prof . M. Singh, Lionex Diagnostics and Therapeutics, Germany , Dr. Dhanji P. Rajani,

Microcare Laboratory and Tuberculosis Research Centre (RNTCP), Surat

Advisor: Dr. U.D. Gupta, National Jalma Institute of Leprosy and other Mycobacterial Diseases

Co- PI : CMO/Medical Superintendent at Sewri TB Hospital, Mumbai

Co- PI : Dr. Vinay Saini, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Bombay,

Figures showing three tests samples of pulmonary TB.

Test results were found to be positive in all samples

(sputum culture filtrate of TB infected patients). Both

bands at control line and test lines were found to be

more intense in Prototype Version II.

Results of developed Prototype I & II

Duration: 3 years

Budget: 580,000 USD / Rs. 3.84 crores

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degenerating bacterial cells and appears to be present only in people with active TB disease. It is a 17.5kDa glycolipid and can account for upto 15% of the total weight of the bacteria.

Rapid TB Urine test

Urine strip rapid test is a membrane-based rapid test for the rapid detection of LAM in urine. This innovative and sandwich type rapid test is based on lateral flow immuno-chromatography.

Properties of the testA special monoclonal antibody is affixed to gold particles (conjugate). A membrane with immobilized LAM specific capture antibodies.

Test Protocol

After the sample is pipette into the sample well of the test device together with the diluents buffer it passes through the gold-marked protein (conjugate). If any LAM is present in the sample it reaches to the conjugate. This LAM-conjugate complex then flows through the membrane to the point where the antibodies to mycobacterial LAM are immobilized (test line) resulting into a pink-coloured band. The remaining conjugate complex then passes through the membrane until it reaches the control zone. Again, a pink-purple band appears, indicating that the test has been performed properly.

Advantages

Urine-based testing would have advantages over sputum-based testing because urine is easy to collect and store. This test obviates the biohazards associated with sputum collection and provides an alternative diagnostic tool in sputum-scarce patients. It may be a useful tool for detecting sputum smear negative patients. We can diagnose both pulmonary

7and extra pulmonary TB from one convenient urine sample. Results can be interpreted within 25 minutes .

Evaluation

Sensitivity and specificity (external validation is to be done).

Storage Conditions

For above tests strips- Don't freeze or subject to extremely high temperatures. Test strips can be stored at room temperature and should be protected from light.

Potential market of new TB tests (Global)

Potential markets (large): 80 million/Year is for POCT, 50 million/Year is for Smear replacement & 20 million tests/Year for Culture replacement tests.

Future Perspectives

Around 60 - 90 million people (~40% from India, China and South Africa) get tested globally for active TB per year. There is huge potential of Point of care Test (TB) in global market.

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Need

Ophthalmoscope is a routinely used diagnostic tool which serves the purpose of viewing fundus of the eye. The instrument helps to detect multiple problems like; diseases affecting blood vessels from acute to chronic disease which includes diabetes, papilledema, glaucoma, hypertension, macular degeneration, cytomegalovirus, optical nerve damage, melanoma, retinal tear or detachment, increased intracranial pressures, and several retinal vascular disease and cerebrovascular accidents. Concerned with the current system of ophthalmoscope it has numerous demerits like cost of the equipment, field of view, prolonged learning curve, image quality, lack of patient co-operation, high risk of spreading infections between the health care doctors and patients, inter observer variability, inability to store data for future references and with complex design. Currently direct ophthalmoscopy doesn't have an option to save the data on examination. Recorded data helps clinician's to track the progression of the disease process as well as lack of documentation findings for medico legal and educational purposes.

Concerned with Innovation, it focuses in overcoming the challenges faced by health professionals in current scenario. We are trying to make a device through which we can connect an ophthalmoscope to a smart phone which would help us detect the problems affecting the eye at an early extend. Thus clinicians will be able to keep a track of the disease progression in patients as well it could be beneficial in research and educational processes.

Outcomes/ Deliverables

Fundoscopy is the basic examination to be done in medical patients as well as trauma patients irrespective of age, gender and race. Ophthalmoscope is a basic instrument used by physicians on a daily basis. To put in an apt way the complete support in a health care system comes when there is a combination between telecommunication and information technology. Thus designing a teleophthalmoscope could be beneficial in providing good quality images and videos which could identify acute to chronic problems in a minute process saving millions of life. Thus a basic ophthalmoscope detects not only eye diseases but severe illness like Pappiledema, Meningitis, Hypertension, Haemorrhage, Diabetes retinopathy etc.

Merits of Invention

i-Inspector is that direct ophthalmoscope is a routinely used physical diagnostic tool the medical students especially undergraduates are less proficient in identifying the problems to a clear cut extend. Thus a glut of merits lies in the i-Inspector for medical students in such away that the skills could be improved through taking the images which could be conveyed to their trainers and getting self confidence in treating patients and detecting chronic problems which could be a severe threat to patient population, besides the examination paves way in saving patients from great disasters.

Though ophthamoscopeis a simple and common physical diagnostic instrument used by Physicians in their day today life it helps in tracking multiple life threatening problems which can lead to death, if early diagnosis and prevention is not observed. To quote an example is the Diabetic retinopathy and hypertension which can lead to permanent blindness if not diagnosed and proper precautions not met. As per statistical analysis of 2016, the rural areas are 60% short of health practitioners, so there is an increased demand of struggle of existence among patients over there, lack of equipments is of major concern over there, the simple i-inspector when provided in rural areas could help practitioners to identify any problems and take precautionary measures or rectify those at an early extend without worsening it more as well as helps to reduce the economic burden. Same is the case when compared to urban population, in the increasing rate of population and busy life none wants to spend more of their time in hospitals, thus with an aid of i-Inspector the image could be clicked within minutes and the problems could be tracked the result is available on patient email. Thus patients- doctor

I-Inspector : OphthalmoscopePrincipal Investigator : Prof. Rohit Srivastava, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT BombayCo-PI : Dr.Vimal Rohan K, Pariyaram Medical College, Kerala and Bavya M C, Senior Research Fellow, IIT Bombay.

Duration: 2 years


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compliance is upto 100%. Apart from this mass screening could be done with the i-Inspector to detect major problems like diabetic retinopathy, CNS infections, especially in papiledema patients which may lead to increase in intracranial pressure resulting in swelling of optic disc leading to permanent blindness. Thus a cocktail of illness could be screened out with i-Inspector which could lessen the mortality /morbidity rates on earlier examination.

Project Details/Implementation

Background study analysis reported that there are no such devices available at a reasonable cost which could be equally beneficial to the urban and rural population. Recently a company Welchalyn has introduced Ophthalmoscoipe connected to a i-phone which is more expensive and could not be afforded in a developing country like India. Considering the facts we decided to develop a cost saving hitech i-Inspector ophthalmoscope beneficial for all groups. As per the study the cost of a normal ophthalmoscope ranges from 8000-11000 rupees. So our aim is to develop a high resolution i-inspector which is able to store and save data (patient history of disease progression with good resolution lens) which could be made available at reasonable cost preferably the same price of the existing normal ophthalmoscpe. Therefore it is implacable to develop an i-Inspetor with affordable price in an advanced version which could succor urban as well as rural population, resulting in steady decrease of the morbidity as well as mortality rates.

Ophthalmoscope introduced by Welchalyn. Wherein a direct ophthamoscope is connected with an i-phone. Cost of an i-phone starts from Rs 27,989 and so on. Plus additional cost of handle and high resolution lens (Rs 50,000) and ophthalmoscope (Rs 8000). Totally which goes around 90,000 to a lakh, which could not be accessible to normal population.

Project is implemented in such away that the re-structuring of an already existing direct ophthalmoscope to a normal phone in which fundus images could be recorded for future purposes with high resolution lenses which could be made available at the same cost of a normal already existing direct ophthalmoscope.The basic principle involved is reflection of light. When the light emits from ophthalmoscope to patient's eyes, the light reflects the eyes, thus the photodiode gets into action and selects the reflected rays and gives the result. The proposed design of instrument is such that consisting of a handle which is 10-15centimeters long, near which the switches are situated on the light head, lens bank, viewing apertures and series of filters which can be selected accordingly using a front dial. The light is absorbed through fluorescence. Size of aperture could be varied

accordingly based on the size of pupil. Thin or short light gives a deep view. The side dial consists of a dial to measure the strength of the lens for fundus view. Plus and minus lens are arranged accordingly. Plus lens consists of green, yellow and black placed clockwise and minus lens consists of red placed anti-clockwise. Minus lens play a role in short sighted and lack of refractive error patients. Designed in such away that 6 step process in eye observation can be done with the help of optic disc to comment on Colour , Cup and Contour followed by 4 vascular arcades superotemporal, Inferotemporal, superonasal and inferonasal. Thus it helps in designing a safe and secured cost effective treatment.

The innovation part lies in saving 1) clear and good resolution images whereby the doctors could save the images in phone and patient's could access the images in their mail to keep a record of disease progression as well as saving time and money. 2) Secondly the rate of person's progress in learing skills could be improved (learning curve). 3) High quality and durability of lens guaranteed 4)As a result 100% clinician-patient compliance is achieved.

Principle of Ophthalmoscopy

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Need

A 6-h post implantation “decisive period” has been identi?ed during which prevention of bacterial adhesion is critical to the long-term success of an implant. Over this period, an implant is particularly susceptible to surface colonization. Prosthetic joint and implant infection is a major complication in orthopedic surgery and is a common cause of re-operation and increased morbidity and treatment cost to the patient.

Long-term administration of intravenous antibiotics may lead to a risk of antibiotic resistance and toxicity. Local use of antibiotic delivers a bactericidal concentration that is much higher than that allowed by systemic route, so antibiotic blood concentrations remain low and reduce the chance of adverse effects while the local drug concentrations are above the minimal inhibitory concentration for desired time period. In this way, resistance to antibiotics caused by low drug dosage is avoided. Thus we are trying to develop a biodegradable local antibiotic eluting implant for the prophylaxis and treatment of prosthetic joint and implant related infection.


Demand for infection prevention products and services is forecast to increase 5.1 percent annually to $21.4 billion in 2018. The market for orthopaedic devices in the emerging countries (China, India and Brazil) is expected to grow at CAGR of 8%, reaching revenue of $3.1 billion in 2017. The estimated cost of infected revision surgery is projected to be as high as $1.6 billion by 2020.

The FDA recently approved the use of the low-dose premixed and hand mixed cements, which contains different antibiotics but the release obtained was below sub-inhibitory concentration leading to resistance. Collatamp® and Septocoll® are the commercially available gentamycin eluting collagen sponges are widely used. But these are fast releasing systems for short period of time.

Hence, our hypothesis is that infection related to implants or prosthetic joint are best prevented by eradicating bacteria at the earliest stage during contamination, by deploying effective counter-measures locally for the longer period, so that bacteria does not propagate further and lead to infection till complete recovery.

Project Details

The present innovation is related to development of local antibiotic eluting sponge for the prevention and treatment of implant related/surgical site infection in orthopaedic surgery. Antibiotic release from sponge is tuned according to the requirement of patient and to meet up this requirement chitosan sponge is loaded with a drug loaded particles/layered assembly of microparticlesetc. Another alternative is that we can load two different types (hydrophilic and hydrophobic) of drugs into the matrix. So that depending upon need (say days, weeks and months) we can have a controlled release of antibiotic which enable to maintain aseptic condition at the site of surgery for a longer duration of time and helps to achieve complete recovery without any complication.

Stage of the product development

We have successfully done the in vitro and in vivo efficacy testing of the delivery system. Next we repeat the in vivo experiment using Pig/Cow as a testing model to prove its efficacy in prevention of surgical site infection

Prevention and Control of Surgical Site InfectionPrincipal Investigator : Prof. Rohit Srivastava, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT BombayCo PI: Ms. Vaishali Pawar, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Bombay

Figure Schematic representation of the sponge containing dispersed microparticles, layered microparticles and two different drugs respectively

Duration: 2 -3 years

Budget: Rs. 3-4 crores

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Duration : 3 years


RATIONALE

In the recent times we have seen the outbreak of H1N1, Ebola, Zika etc. Vaccination is the critical component for the preparedness against such pandemic or epidemic. Also, regular mass immunization is required for many vaccine preventable diseases.

More than 17 million people die every year from infectious diseases, particularly in the developing world. Vaccines are important for an effective infectious disease control strategy. According to the press release by Centre for Disease Control (CDC), Immunization is one of the most cost effective public health interventions and largely responsible for reduction of under-5 mortality rate. However, vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs) are still responsible for over 5 lakh deaths annually in India.

According to World Health Organization (WHO)/UNICEF estimates, vaccination coverage in the South-East Asia and Africa regions remained relatively low at 77%. In India, the coverage was even lower at 61%. The unprotected children under one year of age who did not receive vaccination for vaccine preventable diseases worldwide are 21.8 million. Total number of children died from vaccine preventable diseases, currently recommended by WHO are 1.5 million.

Unfortunately, the use of vaccines is severely limited in the poorest countries where vaccine prevented infectious diseases account for more than half of all deaths. For temperature sensitive compounds like vaccines and antibiotics, maintaining the cold chain is critical for adequate bioactivity. Cold chain requirements represent a major economic and logistical burden, particularly in lower resource settings, where refrigeration and electricity can be limited. The cold chain alone can account for 80% of the financial cost of vaccination and is estimated to cost vaccine programs $200–300 million per year. Deficiencies in the process frequently occur even in developed countries. Failures in the cold chain result in loss of nearly half of all global vaccines. Such failures can also result in the delivery of ineffective, sub-therapeutic doses, a major public health concern.

Hence, getting new drug delivery methods for prophylactic vaccination which address the problem of dependency on cold chain, need of trained personnel, bringing down pain and patient discomfort during vaccination, low cost and simplified logistic is of utmost importance.

SIGNIFICANCE, BENEFIT AND TECHNICAL DETAILS

Such prophylactic vaccination would get benefited from improved immunogenicity, elimination of cold chain, reducing need of trained personnel, bringing down pain and patient discomfort during vaccination, low cost and simplified logistic.

Here we introduce silk nanoparticles encapsulated vaccine system reinforced self-disabling dissolving polymer microneedles patch.

This targets the large number of epidermal Langerhans cells and dermal dendritic cell for greater immunogenicity by means of epidermal vaccination using microneedle patch. Thus, it requires fewer doses to elicit antibody titers. Correspondingly, microneedles do not penetrate deeper than the epidermal skin layer with a typical thickness of 120 µm, to contact nerves and blood vessels and therefore, they are painless and less associated with the risks of device contamination guarantying patient comfort. No special training or skills are required hence can be self-administered. Thus, it takes care of dependency on skilled healthcare worker.

We addresses the mechanical fragility of the polymeric microneedle structures by reinforcing them using silk nanoparticles which has inherent mechanical robustness due to highly networked β-sheet structures. In addition to that enhancement of mechanical strength is endorsed to larger surface area which transfers the load from polymer matrix to silk nanoparticles.

Vaccine is encapsulated in the synthesized silk nanoparticles which provides thermal shield to vaccine and prevent it from getting denatured hence preventing its bioactivity. This is by the virtue of

Prophylactic vaccination facilitated by microneedle patch of reinforced polymer

with vaccine-in-silk nanoparticles Principal Investigator : Prof. Rohit Srivastava, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Bombay

Co PI: Mr. Bhushan Kharbikar, Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Bombay

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highly thermodynamically stable nature of silk which is attributed to extensive physical crosslinking, highly hydrophobic protein and high glass transition temperature. This reduces the dependency on cold chain maintenances and eases the logistic as well.

Figure 1: Cartoon depicting silk nanoparticle encapsulated vaccine system reinforced polymer microneedles patch for prophylactic vaccination

The proposed system is simulated, synthesized, fabricated and characterized. The results suggest that it brings in the complete set of attributes addressing all the challenges which impacts the prophylactic vaccination. Thus, the novel system revolutionizes the vaccination with multifold increase in the effectiveness and coverage of vaccination.

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Duration: 3 years

Budget: Rs. 3.85

crores

RATIONALE OF THE RESEARCH PROJECT:

(A) The unmet need (statistics):

Bone-soft tissue fixations devices viz. screws, plates, rods, nails, pins, wires, suture anchors, etc.are widely used in orthopedic practice for bone-soft tissue anomalies viz. fractures, soft tissue fixations, arthrodesis, osteotomy, etc. There is ever-growing need of such fixations devices in world orthopedic market driven by the increasing aging population across the world, as there is direct correlation between fractures and elderly population according to National Health Statistics Report published in 2010 by CDC (Centre for disease control and prevention). Fractures account for an estimated 46 million visits a year to hospitals in India alone. Out of these, around 5-10% of these are fixed with osteosynthesis procedures utilizing various bone fixation devices. The annual number of spinal fusion cases increased to around 6,50,000 in India. The total number soft-tissue fixation surgeries viz. cruciate ligament fixations, rotator cuff repairs, small joint fixations, meniscal repairs, etc., of each in India is estimated to be around 5,00,000 per year. Therefore, there is an increasing demand for orthopedic devices, E.g. it is estimated that more than 100 million screws are used for bone or soft-tissue fixations per year.

(B) Problem statement

?Metallic devices owing to their obvious limitations of revision surgery and stress shielding are

being replaced by their polymeric counterparts mitigating said issues being resorbable in nature, but suffer from few shortcomings viz. poor bioactivity (required for bone apposition to implant surface and new bone formation), slow degradation kinetics not matching bone healing rate, etc. which could be addressed by ceramic filler incorporation.

?Stress shielding during soft tissue fixations (mechanical properties mismatch): Young's modulus

of polymer used in marketed products (PLLA, PLGA) is well above required for soft tissues viz. ligament, tendons, etc., resulting in tissue laceration and loosening limiting its applications in soft tissue tear repairs

?High melting point PLLA, PLGA (160°C) makes processing (melt-mixing) difficult.

?Implants may suffer from infections in-vivo due to susceptibility of implant surface for microbial

attachment and growth. Antibiotic coating on implant surface is strategy being employed, but, may suffer from inadequate efficacy, resistance, etc. and also adds to final cost of the product being expensive.

?Cost: Major set-back in case of bone screws currently available and being used for ACL

reconstruction is its cost factor. Bioabsorbable interference screws available for orthopedic practice are way too expensive viz. interference screw, suture anchors, etc. in the orthopedic market is 10,000 to 20,000 approximately, due to costly raw material (PLLA: 5 gms- 20,000 INR) and dominance of foreign market players in terms of manufacturing, marketing and distribution viz. Smith & Nephew, Stryker, Biomet, etc. and acquisition of important Indian orthopedic implant manufacturers viz. Adler Mediequip (Sushrut Surgicals) acquired by Smith & Nephew in 2013.

Hence, there is a strong need for indigenously developing affordable resorbable bone screws of high performance to meet international standards and to provide optimal medical care for needy patients.

© Solution:To overcome aforesaid limitations, the inventors have developed orthopedic biocomposite material comprising of silk fibre reinforced, Magnesium oxide bioactive nano-filler loaded bioresorbable polymer polycaprolactone. (I) All three components have different roles to play owing to following characteristic advantages:

Bioabsorbable Screws for soft tissue fixation

Principal Investigator : Prof Rohit Srivastava, Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Bombay and

Medical Advisors : Dr. Arun Mullaji and Dr. Gautam Shetty

In collaboration for

Prof Jayesh Bellare, Chemical Engineering, IIT BombayCo PI: Mr. Ajay V Suryavanshi, Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Bombay, Mr. Kunal Khanna, Centre for Research in

Nanotechnology and Science, IIT Bombay,

Bombay Veterinary College, Parel, Mumbai

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1) PCL was selected as bulk polymer owing to its following advantages over PLLA, PLGA:

?Tunable mechanical propertiesMechanical property (Young's modulus) of human tissues viz. Cancellous bone, ligament, tendon, etc. ranges from 0.02-1.5 GPa, most of polymers viz. PLLA, PLGA, etc. ranges from 2-3 GPa which is well above upper limit of required range while that PLC is 0.2-0.5 GPa which can be tuned to match required mechanical properties by required concentration of filler reinforcement with ceramic particles, natural fiber, etc. or variable ratio of polymers in polymer blends (PCL: PLLA/PLGA).

?Lower melting point makes its processing easier

?It is nontoxic, biocompatible polymer

?Good thermo-plasticity and moldability

?Good compatibility with wide range of polymers

?Tailorable degradation kinetics: The PCL has slow degradation rate (>12 months) owing to high degree of

crystallinity that limits its application, however, its degradation rate can be tailored by addition of hydrophilic fillers which results in degradation by both bulk and surface erosion (unlike, only surface erosion in case of neat polymer), hence, enhanced degradation rate. Thus, its mechanical properties, degradations kinetics, bioactivity, etc. are tailorable based on filler concentration.

2) Degummed silk is FDA-approved natural fibre; extracted from Bombyx mori improves mechanical properties (ductility, stiffness) of PCL by reinforcement.

3) MgO nanoparticles are explored as potential ceramic fillers to impart bioactivity, in addition to improving mechanical properties of PCL and tapping its unique antibacterial property as MgO nanoparticles are proven as an anti-infective agent against Gram negative bacteria like Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Gram positive bacteria viz. Staphylococcus aureus, which are major causative pathogens responsible for implant-related infections.

(II) Overall cost of prototype screw is very low as compared to marketed products owing to following factors:

1) Use of cheaper raw materials (PCL is 1/5th the cost of PLLA or PLGA-Sigma Aldrich, also precursors for synthesis of MgO nanoparticles and degummed silk fibres i.e. MgCl salt, NaOH pellets and Bombyx morri cocoons, respectively, are 2

very much inexpensive and readily available.

2) In-house capability for injection molding polymeric devices using custom-made molds (developed from machine tool workshop) and micro-compounder and injection molding facility.

DETAILS OF SCOPE

(A) Technical Description:

Initially metallic implants (made of stainless steel, titanium alloy, cobalt-chrome alloy) were developed for internal and external fixations of bone-soft tissue anomalies. These are generally in the form of plates, screws, rods, pins, wires, intramedullary nails, suture anchors, etc. The major problems with such devices are revision surgery and stress shielding. Subsequently, polymeric devices (composed of PLLA, PLGA, etc.) were introduced into orthopedic practice, obviating need of revision surgery being resorbable, also preventing stress shielding. However, such devices also suffer from certain disadvantages viz. inadequate mechanical properties, poor bioactivity, high degradation period and release of acidic degradation byproducts responsible for inflammatory reactions. To overcome said shortcomings, biocomposite devices were developed which comprise of FDA-approved biodegradable polymer and ceramic filler which imparts bioactivity, neutralizes acidic byproducts and increases mechanical strength and degradation rate. The widely used biomaterial compositions for making orthopaedic devices are PLLA, PLGA, PLDLA polymers with HA, β-TCP, etc. fillers.

(B) Current Project stage:

We are able to achieve following milestones:1) In-house injection molding capability to prepare desired shaped polymeric articles/devices by means of micro-compounder and injection molding facility: We have designed and fabricated custom-made injection molding mold and pocket-pin assembly (using different tool workshop machines viz. CNC lathe, EDM discharge, etc.) to prepare medical bone screw (both, cannulated and non-cannulated).2) Proof-of-concept: We have developed range of biodegradable bone screw with and without cannulation, which can fit to regular hexagonal Allen keys of different head diameters (Figure 2: I).

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Figure 1: Schematic representation of preparation of biocomposite orthopaedic fixation devicesFor preparation of bone screw, pre-determined quantities of fillers are melt-mixed with desired polymer during micro-compounding and molten biocomposites extrudate is injection molded to get desired shaped devices.

This technology can be explored to indigenously manufacture other bone-soft tissue fixation devices viz. suture anchors, pins, endo-buttons, staples, clips, tacks, arrows, washers, plates, etc.

Figure 2: I) Different types of biodegradable medical bone screws developed, II) Flow of semitendinosus graft harvest and ACL reconstruction with interference screws for pull-out strength test; A) Cadaveric porcine leg, B) Harvested semitendinosus graft, C) Looped graft prepared by suture, D) Inserted graft into tibial tunnel, E) Fixing with interference screw, F) Mounting to pull-out strength testing jig assembly for bio-mechanical studies & III) Hemocompatibilty studies; A) As-prepared bone screw incubated with human blood, B) Hemolysis test with T= test sample (triplicate), P= Positive control (physiological saline) and N= Negative control (1% Triton-X)

3) Novel orthopedic biomaterial composite development: We have successfully assessed physico-chemical, mechanical and biological properties (in-vitro) of as-prepared biocomposite by melt-mixing ceramic bioactive nanofillers, natural fibre reinforcement in biodegradable polymer matrix. As-developed biocomposite material and screw both are hemocompatible i.e. it has no harmful effect on human blood cells viability and coagulation properties (Figure 2: III A, B). We are presently working on ex-vivo biomechanical studies to assess pull-out strength on cadaveric porcine knee model (Figure 2: II A-F) and in-vivo biosafety studies on rabbit models by subcutaneous implantation.

4) Intellectual property protection: Patent specification for biomaterial composition is being filed by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

5) Industrial collaboration opportunity: Meril Orthopedic (www.merillife.com/orthopedics_ home.aspx) and OmniMed (www.omnimed.co.in) have approached us to collaborate, license and commercialize the technology and/or product.

DESCRIPTION OF THE BENEFIT THAT THE PROJECT WILL ACCRUE

(I) Novelty/advantages:

(A) Novel biomaterial composition:

(1) Bioabsorbable: no need of revision surgery like metallic implants; (2) Bone repair and replacement capability at fixation site by osteo conduction;(3) Tunable mechanical, biological properties (as per filler loading) for various clinical applications based on

implant site requirement;a) Matchable strength to bone or soft -tissue (tendon, ligament, etc.): no stress-shielding b) Higher bioactivity (biomineralization) and biocompatibility c) Tailorable biodegradation to match bone or soft tissue healing rate

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(4) Localized infection resistant due to antibacterial properties of MgO nanoparticles: no need of antibiotic coating;(5) No local inflammatory reactions (Like PLLA implants) due to neutralization effect of alkaline Mg + ions on 2

acidic degradation byproducts;

(B) Improved bone screw design:

(1) Screw head shape: Cannulated hexagonal head for regular Allen key insertion,(2) Thread tip design: Threads extend from head till distal tip, easing screw insertion, (3) Thread profile: Improved hemispherical threads for better bone anchorage

(C) Cost-effective: Our innovation provides affordable solution to unmet need of bioresorbable orthopedic implants owing to following points:

(1) In-house development capability: We have fabricated injection molding mold to prepare bone screws, however, we can develop bioresorbable implant of any size and shape for desired biomedical application, by changing shape and size of cavity in the injection molding mold, thus, proving cost-effective technology to develop different bioabsorbable implants

(2) Cheaper and readily available/ easily synthesizable raw materials like cocoon silk, PCL and MgO nanoparticle, hence, affordable biocomposite for orthopedic application(3) Well-established manufacturing process: Preparation of biocomposite material from micro- compounder and

injection molding facility available at IIT Bombay lab(4) Local manufactured parts for fabrication and testing: molds for injection molding and jigs for biomechanical studies

(pull-out strength testing) are machined at local tool workshop facility using CNC lathe machine(5) Obviating need of antibiotic coating owing to antibacterial MgO nanoparticles incorporation, thus, bioactive filler

itself serving anti-infective role, hence, reducing cost burden on final product.

(II) In the purview of above key advantages of our technology, we foresee following benefits of the project:

1) Outcome - one technology for all devices: For preparation of bone screw or any other bioresorbable implant, predetermined quantities of fillers are melt-mixed with desired polymer during micro-compounding and molten biocomposite extrudate is injection molded to get desired shaped devices. This technology can be explored to indigenously manufacture other absorbable polymer composite-based bone soft tissue fixation devices viz. suture anchors, pins, endo- buttons, staples, clips, tacks, arrows, washers, plates, etc.

2) Socio-economical impact on public health: unmet socio-economical medical need of poor end-user would be addressed by significant reduction in price per screw which can be achieved by:

i) Use of cheaper and readily available raw materials for affordable pricingii) In-house development and manufacturing of bioresorbable bone-soft tissue fixation devices iii) Wide-spread availability to penetrate at base of pyramid iv) Obviation of revision surgery, thereby reducing the overall cost of treatment in addition to faster recovery with fewer clinical complications

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Duration: 2 years


Rationale

With stressful lives that people lead, mental health issues have increased at an alarming rate more than ever. In urban India, this has also led to clinical mental health problems, suicides, and a general decline in mental well-being of communities. Physical devices such as physical fitness tracking wrist bands are becoming popular. Analogous to these devices that measure physical health, we propose EmoMonitor, an application that tracks mental health. EmoMonitor will be a mobile phone (Android/iPhone) application that is linked to social networking accounts of the individual. It will be a real-time monitor of a person's mental health and well-being. To the best of our knowledge, no such application exists. As per the notification from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, EmoMonitor aligns with 'promoting preventive health care', mental health in this case.

Scope

EmoMonitor will be a mobile phone-application where the user first logs in with his/her social networking accounts (such as facebook, twitter, etc.). Appropriate consent of the user is taken. EmoMonitor monitors text entered by the user on these apps in real-time. Without storing any textual content, the app records key parameters such as: the emotion of the user (i.e. the user is happy), the emotional connections of the user (i.e. user X had an angry argument with user Y), etc. These parameters will be displayed on interactive graphical displays to the user. These include: (a) a timeline of change in user's mood over time (where a line graph represents different emotions), (b) a network graph showing how relationships between this user and other users are (where each user is a node), a pie chart showing proportion of emotions that this user expresses in a given granularity level of time.

Our expertise

Center for Indian Language Technologies (CFILT) has several projects with government and private agencies. These include Department of Science & Technology, Xerox Research, Samsung Research, Aol. India, etc. The sentiment & emotion analysis group at CFILT, IIT Bombay has published research in the best forums in Natural language processing such as Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), Empirical methods in natural language processing (EMNLP), etc. We have allied with Aol. India in the past on a sentiment search engine project. There are currently two faculty members, two PhD students, three Masters students and two undergraduate students associated with the sentiment & emotion analysis group.

As a proof of concept, we have developed EmoGram, a timeline-based monitor for emotional content of users. We have demonstrated three applications of EmoGram as well. This work has been published as a paper:

Aditya Joshi, Vaibhav Tripathi, Ravindra Soni, Pushpak Bhattacharyya, Mark J Carman, 'EmoGram: An Open-Source Time Sequence-based Emotion Tracker and its innovative applications', KET at AAAI 2016, Phoenix, USA, February 2016.

An example snapshot of EmoGram is given below. The snapshot shows how three kinds of emotion change towards a product, Maggi, over time. This snapshot is from the paper above. In EmoMonitor, the timeline will be mapped to an individual user's timeline of posts in social media.

EmoMonitor, a proposed mobile phone-based application

Principal Investigator : Prof. Seeta Vashee & Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharya, IIT Bombay

Computer Science and Engineering,

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Benefit

EmoMonitor will be a beneficial mobile phone-based app that will let families and communities stay updated about each others' mental health. The targeted uses of this app are:

Individuals: Individuals use the app to monitor their mood changes and mental health signals themselves. With personal devices like physical fitness tracking wrist bands, the community will see value in using such an app.

Families and closed circles: Families and loved ones close to individuals can help individuals if they know that the individual is undergoing stressful situations that may hamper their mental well-being. Hence, it is useful for them to know how their friends are doing. This also fosters a community culture where families and closed ones are a part of watching out on each other's mental health.

Mental health professionals: If an individual consults a mental health professional for medical help, EmoMonitor will provide parameters to the professional. This will enable the professional to frame their discussion with the individual better. This holds true in cases where the individual may not know a behavior as symptom and hence, not describe it, but it shows up in EmoMonitor.

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For further details, please contact :

Sarang Nandedkar,

Dean (Alumni & Corporate Relations) Office

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076

Email : [email protected], [email protected]

Tel : +91-22-25767023 / +91-22-25764882

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