With 208 R&D Projects, IITs Lead India’s Fight Against Covid-19

NEW DELHI: India’s scientific effort to contain and eliminate the threat of the novel corona virus is being led by 18 IITs with experts engaged in 208 dedicated R&D projects under seven different categories. As some of their work starts yielding results, IIT-Guwahati has shown the way cornering the biggest pool of projects, followed by IIT-Madras and IIT-Hyderabad. Nearly 50% of the key research in India’s premier technical schools are happening in six of the old IITs.

Majority of the researches are happening in the field of personal protective care equipment (45 projects), followed by sanitisation (33) and treatment, both pharmacological and non-pharmacological (30). The other areas include testing kits, medical equipment/ robots, surveillance and data analytics, AI to model epidemic patterns and disease dynamics. IIT-Madras and IIT-Guwahati are researching in all seven categories.

With projected funding of over 120 crore in the next 18 months for these research projects, even the comparatively new IITs are pitching in. The year-old IIT-Mandi has three research projects, IIT-Palakkad is researching in 10 key areas and IIT-Goa in one. Many of the researches are at advance stage. According to T G Sitharam, director, IIT-Guwahati, “Various projects are already in production stages, like the commercialised ones which include full PPE suits, UV-LED disinfectant, drone technology for disinfection of large areas which is not in use in a few states. Then there is full face protective shield which is being manufactured and being delivered on daily.” The IIT is also ready with prototypes of antiviral spray for PPE, hydrophobic coatings for masks, gloves, robots for waste collection and delivering medicine to patients in isolation wards.

A diagnosis and vaccine development research has also been signed with a company for commercialisation. Sitharam added that “If all the submitted projects are to be implemented successfully it would require an investment of up to 3 to 4 crore initially.”

On the research underway at the IITs, V Ramgopal Rao, director, IIT-Delhi said: “There’s a lot of research happening in IITs. Almost every week we are releasing something to the society. If institutions don’t do it now it is not justifiable. ”-Times Of India