21 March 2024
– Sandeep Menon

A new approach by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) seeks to use multiple swarms of drones to tackle natural disasters like forest fires.

Forest fires are becoming increasingly catastrophic across the world, accelerated by climate change.

“A swarm of drones could be the solution,” says Suresh Sundaram, Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, IISc. Although they have not yet been used in India, the use of drones is not entirely new. But in a new study, Sundaram’s team proposes taking the technology a step further: Coordinated multi-swarm drones swooping in to quell forest fires.

“By the time somebody identifies and reports a fire, it has already started spreading and cannot be put out with one drone,” says Sundaram. “You need to have a swarm of drones. A swarm that can communicate with each other.”

The solution was to design a special kind of algorithm that would allow the swarm to communicate with each other as well as make independent decisions. In a hypothetical scenario, when an alarm is raised about a potential fire, the swarms can be sent in, each drone armed with cameras, thermal and infrared sensors, and temperature detectors, to spot the fires. Once the fire is discovered, the drone closest to it becomes the centre of the swarm and attracts others towards it. Interestingly, each drone will also have autonomy to calculate the fire’s size and potential spread, and decide how many drones are needed to quench the fire.

“These decisions are made by the drones,” says Sundaram. “They figure out which cluster of fire is going to spread faster, and allocate the required number of drones to put out that fire while the others look for other fire clusters.”

Multiple swarms of drones for testing the proposed approach for disaster management. The image depicts search and mitigation for two targets illustrated as white circles by three swarms of drones (Photo: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science)

The swarm-based search algorithm developed by the team is key to controlling the drones’ behaviour. Searching for fire cannot be random as the area to explore would be too large. To address this, the researchers took inspiration from the foraging behaviour of a marine predator, a flagellum called Oxyrrhis marina.

“When foraging, it firsts take longer steps to explore the area. Once it feels like it is closer to the food source, it will reduce the step length and then start exploring the area in more detail,” explains Josy John, PhD student at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, and lead author of the study published in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems. The team decided to incorporate this behaviour into their algorithm. “The temperature sensors in the drones look for a minimum [threshold] value. When that is reached, the drones reduce their search step, because the fire is near,” John adds.

The advantage of using drones, Sundaram points out, is that the decision-making is decentralised, based on data, and aimed at maximum efficiency. No more than the required number of drones will be assigned to a fire cluster, allowing others to fan out in search of other clusters.

The researchers have tested specific components of the approach, such as the AI-enabled fire detection using thermal cameras, and accurate payload drop mechanism for fire extinguisher deployment. Full-scale search and mitigation by the swarm is yet to undergo field-testing. Going forward, they plan to combine such drone swarms with unmanned ground vehicles that can carry resources and serve as refuelling stations.

Such drone swarms can also be helpful during other natural disasters like floods and earthquakes, to locate survivors, deliver water, food and medicines; and boost communication.

REFERENCE:

John J, Harikumar K, Senthilnath J, Sundaram S, An Efficient Approach With Dynamic Multiswarm of UAVs for Forest Firefighting, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems (2024).

CONTACT:

Suresh Sundaram
Professor
Department of Aerospace Engineering
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: vssuresh@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91-80-22932755
Website: https://aero.iisc.ac.in/people/suresh-sundaram/

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:
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19 March 2024
– Sankeerthana Avasarala

Sample exhibiting colour change from blue to yellow on bending, by virtue of changing gallium nanostructures (Photo: Mark Vailshery)

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed flexible films that exhibit bright colours purely by virtue of their physical structure, without the need for any pigment. When stretched, the films exhibit a change in colour as a response to the mechanical deformation.

To design these films, the team devised a novel cost-effective and scalable single-step technique that involves evaporating gallium metal to form nano-sized particles on a flexible substrate. Their method allows the simultaneous fabrication of multiple structural colours responsive to mechanical stimuli.

The team has also shown how these films can be used for a variety of applications, from smart bandages and movement sensors to reflective displays.

“This is the first time that a liquid metal like gallium has been used for photonics,” says Tapajyoti Das Gupta, Assistant Professor in the Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics (IAP), and corresponding author of the study published in Nature Nanotechnology.

Some natural objects like gemstones, mollusc shells or peacock feathers are inherently colourful. Their colours emerge from the interaction of light with micro- or nano-structures arranged periodically, such as tiny silica spheres in opal, calcium carbonate-based platelets in mollusc shells, and segmented ribbons atop cylindrical structures in peacock feathers.

Nature-inspired structurally coloured materials have found broad applications in displays, wearable electronics, visual sensors, and anti-counterfeiting tags. In recent years, scientists have been trying to design materials which can change colour in response to an external mechanical stimulus.

Sample exhibiting colour change from pink to green on local application of force with a tweezer tip (Photo: Alwar Samy Ramasamy)

The IISc team began experimenting with gallium, which has not been explored for such applications because its high surface tension hinders the formation of nanoparticles. Gallium is a liquid metal at room temperature and its nanoparticles have been shown to have strong interactions with electromagnetic radiation. The process developed by the team achieves the feat of overcoming the barrier of surface tension to create gallium nanoparticles, by cleverly using the properties of a substrate called polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a biocompatible polymer.

When the substrate was stretched, the researchers noticed something unusual. The material started showing different colours depending on the strain. The researchers theorised that the array of deposited gallium nanoparticles interacts with light in specific ways to generate the colours.

To understand the role of the substrate in colour generation, the team developed a mathematical model.

PDMS is a polymer made by mixing two liquid-like components – an oligomer and a cross-linker – which react with each other to form a solid polymer. What the researchers found is that the unreacted portion of oligomer, which is still in a liquid state, played a crucial role in stabilising the formation of gallium nanoparticles on the substrate. When this substrate is then stretched, the liquid-like oligomers seep into the gaps between the nanoparticles, changing the gap size and their interaction with light, resulting in the observed change in colouration. Experiments carried out in the lab confirmed the model’s predictions. By tuning the ratio of the oligomer content to the cross-linker, the researchers obtained a gamut of colours.

“We show that the PDMS substrate not only holds the structure, but also plays an active role in determining the structure of gallium nanoparticles and resulting colouration,” says Renu Raman Sahu, PhD student in IAP and lead author. Even after 80,000 cycles of stretching, the material was able to show a repeatable colour change, indicating its reliability.

From left to right: Tapajyoti Das Gupta, Renu Raman Sahu, Mark Vailshery and Alwar Samy Ramasamy (Photo: Renu Raman Sahu)

Conventional techniques such as lithography used to fabricate such materials involve many steps and are costly to scale up. To circumvent this, the team devised a single-step physical vapour deposition technique to evaporate the liquid gallium metal and deposit it on the PDMS substrate. This allowed them to fabricate flexible, structurally coloured films measuring about half the size of a palm.

There are various applications possible for such films. The team demonstrated one such application: a body movement sensor. A strip of the film, when attached to the finger, changed colour when the finger was bent, helping to sense movement in real time. Sahu says, “In the future, these materials could be used for energy harvesting applications as well.”

REFERENCES:
Sahu RR, Ramasamy AS, Bhonsle S, Vailshery M, Archana S, Kumar H, Das Gupta T, Single-step fabrication of liquid gallium nanoparticles via capillary interaction for dynamic structural colours, Nature Nanotechnology (2024).

Sahu RR, Das Gupta T, Fabrication of mechanochromic gallium nanostructures by capillary interactions, Nature Nanotechnology (2024).

Sahu RR, Ramasamy AS, Gap-plasmonic tuneable structural colors by capillary interactions.

CONTACT:
Tapajyoti Das Gupta
Assistant Professor
Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics (IAP)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: tapajyoti@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91-80-2293-2349
Website: http://iap.iisc.ac.in/~tapajyoti/

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:
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b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write
to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in.

22 December 2023

– Ranjini Raghunath

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), in collaboration with Aster-CMI Hospital, have developed an AI tool that can identify the median nerve in ultrasound videos and detect carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). The study was published in IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control.

CTS arises when the median nerve, which runs from the forearm into the hand, is compressed at the carpal tunnel part of the wrist, resulting in numbness, tingling or pain. It is one of the most common nerve-related disorders, specifically affecting individuals who perform repetitive hand movements, such as office staff who work with keyboards, assembly line workers, and sportspersons.

Doctors currently use ultrasound to visualise the median nerve, and assess its size, shape, and any potential abnormalities. “But unlike X-rays and MRI scans, it’s hard to detect what’s going on in ultrasound images and videos,” explains Karan R Gujarati, first author and former MTech student at the Department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS), IISc. “At the wrist, the nerve is quite visible, its boundaries are clear, but if you go down to the elbow region, there are many other structures, and the boundaries of the nerve are not clear.” Tracking the median nerve is also important for treatments that require doctors to administer local anaesthesia to the forearm or block the median nerve to provide pain relief.

To develop their tool, the team turned to a machine learning model based on transformer architecture, similar to the one powering ChatGPT. The model was originally developed to detect dozens of objects simultaneously in YouTube videos. The team stripped the model’s computationally expensive elements to speed it up, and cut down the number of objects it could track to just one – the median nerve, in this case. They collaborated with Lokesh Bathala, Lead Consultant Neurologist at Aster-CMI Hospital, to collect and annotate ultrasound videos from both healthy participants and people with CTS, to train the model. Once trained, the model was able to segment the median nerve in individual frames of the ultrasound video.

“Imagine a video of an autonomous car. If the car is moving on the road, you want to track the car,” explains corresponding author Phaneendra K Yalavarthy, Professor at CDS. “In the same way, we are able to track the nerve throughout the video.”

Left: Ultrasound machine showing the median nerve. Right: Machine learning model running in laptop and segmenting the median nerve in real time (Photos courtesy: Aster-CMI Hospital)

The model was also able to automatically measure the cross-sectional area of the nerve, which is used to diagnose CTS. This measurement is performed manually by a sonographer. “The tool automates this process. It measures the cross-sectional area in real time,” explains Bathala. It was able to report the cross-sectional area of the median nerve with more than 95% accuracy at the wrist region, the researchers say.

Although many machine learning models have been developed to screen CT and MRI scans, very few have been developed for ultrasound videos, especially nerve ultrasound, explains Yalavarthy.

“Initially, we trained the model on one nerve. Now we are going to extend it to all nerves in the upper and lower limbs,” says Bathala. He adds that it has already been deployed as a pilot test in the hospital. “We have an ultrasound machine connected to an additional monitor where the model is running. I can look at the nerve, and at the same time, the software tool is also delineating the nerve. We can see its performance in real time.”

Bathala says that the next step would be to look for ultrasound machine manufacturers who can integrate this into their systems. “This kind of tool can assist any doctor. It can reduce the inference time,” he says. “But of course, the final diagnosis will need to be done by the physician.”

REFERENCE:
Gujarati KR, Bathala L, Venkatesh V, Mathew RS, Yalavarthy PK, Transformer-Based Automated Segmentation of the Median Nerve in Ultrasound Videos of Wrist-to-Elbow Region, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, And Frequency Control (2023).

CONTACT:
Phaneendra K Yalavarthy
Professor
Department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: yalavarthy@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91-80-2293 2496
Website: https://cds.iisc.ac.in/faculty/yalavarthy/

Lokesh Bathala
Lead Consultant Neurologist
Aster-CMI Hospital
Email: drlokesh.b@asterhospital.com
 

Karan R Gujarati
Former MTech student
Department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Associate Data Scientist, Strand Life Sciences
Email: karang@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91-8866586188

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:
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1^st March 2022

COVID-19 vaccines have been a game-changer in the current pandemic. Several vaccine candidates have conferred a high degree of protection, with some reducing the number of symptomatic infections by over 95% in clinical trials. But what determines this extent of protection? The answer to this question would help optimise the use of available vaccines and speed up the development of new ones.

An artist’s rendition of SARS-CoV-2 viral particles with their spike proteins (orange) blocked by different antibodies (smaller floating objects of different colours) generated in an individual following vaccination.
Image credit: https://www.lensmedical.com/

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) in Australia have now addressed this question by developing a mathematical model that predicts how antibodies generated by COVID-19 vaccines confer protection against symptomatic infections. The study was published in Nature Computational Science.  

The researchers first analysed over 80 different neutralising antibodies reported to be generated after vaccination against the surface spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. These antibodies are typically present in the blood for months and prevent virus entry by blocking the spike protein. The researchers hypothesised that these 80 antibodies constitute a ‘landscape’ or ‘shape space’, and each individual produces a unique ‘profile’ of antibodies which is a small, random subset of this landscape.

The team then developed a mathematical model to simulate infections in a virtual patient population of about 3,500 people with different antibody profiles, and to predict how many of them would be protected from symptomatic infection following vaccination.

“The reason predicting vaccine efficacies has been hard is that the processes involved are complex and operate at many interconnected levels,” says Narendra Dixit, Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering, IISc, and the senior author of the study. “Vaccines trigger a number of different antibodies, each affecting virus growth in the body differently. This in turn affects the dynamics of the infection and the severity of the associated symptoms. Further, different individuals generate different collections of antibodies and in different amounts.”

“This diversity of antibody responses was a challenge to comprehend and quantify,” adds Pranesh Padmanabhan, Research Fellow at QBI, the first author of the study.

The model developed by the team was able to predict the level of protection that would be conferred after vaccination based on the antibody ‘profile’ of the individual, and the predictions were found to closely match efficacies reported in clinical trials for all the major approved vaccines.

The researchers also observed that vaccine efficacy was linked to a readily measurable metric called antibody neutralization titre. This opens up the possibility of using such models to test future vaccines for their efficacies before elaborate clinical trials are launched, the authors suggest.

Dixit, however, cautions that the study is based on current vaccines which have been designed to work on the original SARS-CoV-2 strain. “Our formalism is yet to be applied to the new variants, including Omicron, where other arms of the immune system and not just antibodies appear to be contributing to vaccine efficacies. Studies are ongoing to address this.”

REFERENCE:  

Padmanabhan P, Desikan R & Dixit NM. Modeling how antibody responses may determine the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. Nature Computational Science (2022)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43588-022-00198-0

CONTACT: 

Narendra Dixit
Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering & Chair, Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
narendra@iisc.ac.in
+91-80-2293-2768

Pranesh Padmanabhan
Research Fellow, Queensland Brain Institute
p.padmanabhan@uq.edu.au

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:

a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.in or pro@iisc.ac.in.

4^th March 2022

The automotive industry worldwide has been facing a serious shortage of chips in recent times, beginning from early 2021. There are several reasons that contribute to this shortage, one of which is the increasing demand for automotive and consumer goods (most of their parts are driven by electronics). Like the rest of the world, Indian automotive manufacturers have also been affected by this shortage significantly.  

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have been collaborating with a semiconductor foundry under the IMPRINT programme of the Government of India, which could provide a solution to address this issue. The IISc team embarked upon developing an indigenous technology platform for manufacturing automotive (analog) chips to be used for commercial and strategic applications. 

Output characteristics of 40V and 80V LDMOS devices developed under this joint effort 

Automotive chips are different from the conventional processor chips used in devices such as smartphones and laptops. An automotive chip (also referred to as a power ASIC) needs to handle various tasks simultaneously, including instrumentation, sensing and control of various electro-mechanical parts. The electrical interface to these parts operates at higher voltages (5V-80V) compared to a processor chip, which only requires a low voltage switch or transistor (0.9V-1.8V). Developing a technology platform that can offer the wide range of capability required by automotive chips has always been a challenge for the industry and can take 5-6 years, unlike the processor technology platform which typically takes about 1.5-2 years. However, this extra time investment can pay off in terms of a significantly lower obsolescence rate – such chip technologies can last for 15-20 years without having to be replaced.        

Automotive chips require high-voltage switches or transistors built onto the chip. These transistors are called Laterally Diffused MOS (LDMOS). Silicon LDMOS devices are a type of field-effect transistors which can operate at much higher voltages than regular transistors. They can also be integrated with billions of other transistors inside a chip. This requirement is also particularly important for space and defense applications.  

Keeping these requirements in mind, the IISc team and its foundry partner have been working on developing a range of LDMOS devices (from 10V to 80V) with characteristics matching current industry offerings. The collaborative effort has led to the development of a robust high voltage automotive technology platform.  

Technology platforms available in the industry have enabled the capability of developing circuits that can handle voltages ranging from 7V to 80V, significantly increasing the earlier capabilities of domestic partners of 3.3V. Extending this portfolio to 80V by importing technology would have cost tens of millions of USD. This collaborative effort has augmented the baseline process and enabled the development of devices capable of operating at 80V, at a cost of less than 0.5 million USD.  

“IISc and its partners worked pretty much like an industrial R&D team and handled the fundamental issues differently, which industry usually handles empirically (by trial-and-error),” explains Prof Mayank Shrivastava (Department of Electronic Systems Engineering) who led the project from IISc. “For example, we could delve deeper into some fundamental issues related to these devices, like Quasi-Saturation behaviour, which hasn’t been completely understood/solved in the past 40+ years. Thanks to the IMPRINT programme for enabling such a development, which is turning out to be a win-win for IISc and its foundry partner.”  

Shrivastava adds that the devices developed have been rigorously tested and found to be robust. “These LDMOS devices can now become standard offerings (like any other industry), which will help our foundry partner develop a range of VLSI products in-house. Besides, the technology/knowhow can be transferred to other semiconductor foundries that want to scale up their process from baseline CMOS to an automotive process.”   

 CONTACT:

Prof Mayank Shrivastava
Associate Professor
Department of Electronic Systems Engineering (DESE)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
mayank@iisc.ac.in 

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:
a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
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9^th March 2022

– Ranjini Raghunath

 Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed a paper-based sensor for detecting even tiny volumes of hydrogen peroxide. This chemical is used widely in household and healthcare products like hand sanitiser as a disinfectant, in rocket fuel as a propellant, and is also found in biological cells.

The technique they used involves preparing a gel from a solution containing a specially designed molecule, treated with a liquid that has hydrogen peroxide, and air-drying them on a thin paper disc about 0.45 cm in diameter. The paper disc emits green light when placed under a UV lamp, only in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. The intensity of the light was found to be directly proportional to the concentration of hydrogen peroxide.

“You can actually visualise this green emission (photoluminescence) with the naked eye. You don’t need any sophisticated instruments. All you need is a simple UV light source,” explains Arnab Dutta, PhD student in the Department of Organic Chemistry and first author of the study published in ACS Sensors. 

Because the paper disc is low-cost, biodegradable and easy to use, it could serve as a powerful tool in low-resource settings, even for testing biological fluids like blood. Detecting hydrogen peroxide efficiently is also crucial in other fields; peroxide-based explosives, for example, can be traced using hydrogen peroxide which is sometimes used as a starting material.

Schematic depicting the process to detect hydrogen peroxide Credits: Arnab Dutta

When the researchers used their technique to randomly test five different hand sanitiser brands, they found that only three of them contained the level of hydrogen peroxide mandated by the World Health Organisation – 0.125%. A fourth appeared to have much lower than 0.125% and one had almost zero hydrogen peroxide.

“Hydrogen peroxide can be detected on a larger scale using titration and other experiments, but those are cumbersome and require training. This method is easy because of its simplicity,” says Uday Maitra, Professor in the Department of Organic Chemistry and senior author of the study.

Maitra’s lab has been working on developing several ‘sensitiser’ molecules that turn on the photoluminescence of elements called lanthanides in the presence of specific chemicals or compounds. They have previously developed paper-based sensors for detecting specific antioxidants in green tea – and thereby testing its quality – as well as sensors for various enzymes.

The sensitiser molecule they designed in this study enables a metal called terbium to emit green light under a UV lamp. When the sensitiser is combined with a masking agent, the green light vanishes. When hydrogen peroxide is added to this combination, it unmasks the sensitiser molecule, making it glow green once again. “The way we designed the mask, that is where the thinking process comes in,” says Maitra. “The molecule we have designed is very specifically unmasked by hydrogen peroxide.”

Currently, the team is working on cutting down the reaction time; it takes a bit longer if the concentration of hydrogen peroxide is lower.  Maitra adds that they are also working on developing a small portable device where the detection can be done in a more automated manner. “We are in touch with a start-up company in Chennai. We have a few prototypes made with UV LEDs and a camera, to generate the emission, take a photograph, and use an image processing app to quantify the amount of hydrogen peroxide.”

REFERENCE: 

Dutta A, Maitra U, Naked-eye detection of hydrogen peroxide on photoluminescent paper discs, ACS Sensors 2022, 7, 513-522.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssensors.1c02322

CONTACT: 

Uday Maitra
Professor, Department of Organic Chemistry
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
maitra@iisc.ac.in
+91-80-2293-2690, 2360-1968

Arnab Dutta
PhD student, Department of Organic Chemistry
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
arnabdutta@iisc.ac.in

Arnab Dutta in the lab

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17^th March 2022

The Centre aims to provide dual degree MPH-PhD and MPH-MTech (Research) programmes to nurture education and research in the area of public health. The Centre will create a niche for health data science and analytics through close collaboration with the existing world-class computer science and data science departments at IISc. 

Quess Corp Chairman Ajit Isaac and wife Sarah Isaac with Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Director, Indian Institute of Science at the MoU signing ceremony to set up the Isaac Centre for Public Health at the IISc Campus

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, India’s premier institute for advanced research and education, today entered into an MoU with Mr Ajit Isaac, Founder and Chairman of Quess Corp, and Mrs Sarah Isaac, for establishing a Centre for Public Health at the IISc campus.

Mr and Mrs Isaac have committed a sum of INR 105 crore towards setting up this Centre, which will be called the Isaac Centre for Public Health (ICPH), and will be a part of the postgraduate Medical School soon to be established on campus. The Centre will be operational by 2024 and is expected to encourage aspirants to pursue careers in clinical research to develop new treatments and healthcare solutions driven by a bench-to-bedside philosophy.

The Centre is poised to create world-class post-graduate education and research programmes in public health to redefine healthcare models for India and for the rest of the world. It will offer dual degree programmes such as Master of Public Health (MPH)-PhD (5-6 years) and Master of Public Health (MPH)-MTech Research (3 years). The total annual student intake will be about 10 per year with a steady-state student population of about 40 over time. The Centre will also host state-of-the-art biomedical research computing infrastructure to host the data, develop and test big data analysis methods tailored for public health.

Commenting on the occasion, Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Director, Indian Institute of Science, said, “There is an acute need for India to have a world class centre for clinical and academic research in public health to be able to make quicker and more impactful strides in realising the goal of quality healthcare for all. The proposed Centre will interface between all the departments of the IISc Medical School, and also other science and engineering departments of IISc in the context of public health research. In particular, the Center will create a niche for health data science and analytics through close collaboration with the existing world-class computer science and data science departments at IISc, putting it on par with international counterparts like the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. We are grateful for such contributions from philanthropic leaders like Mr and Mrs Isaac who make it possible for us to move from aspirations to actually realising our goals.”

Quess Corp Chairman Ajit Isaac and family at IISc during the event announcing the setting up of Isaac Centre for Public Health, slated to be operational in the campus by 2024

The proposed Isaac Centre for Public Health will be located in the IISc Medical School’s Academic and Research block and span one floor spread over 27,000 sq ft. The Centre will be equipped with research labs and computational facilities to cater to the academic and research programmes. In addition to providing courses in statistics, epidemiology, and data science, the students will also get exposed to impactful research leading to a PhD degree or MTech (Research) degree. In particular, the MTech (Research) programme will be tailored towards deep domain expertise in data science, public health data analytics, and AI/ML techniques.

The funding also supports international fellowships for students, scholarships, Visiting Chair Professorships and endowed Chair Professorships. In addition, the Centre will provide funding for carrying out impactful research projects in public health, including bio-surveillance, digital health, as well as mobile-based diagnostics.

Earlier this year, IISc announced the establishment of a post-graduate Medical School and Bagchi-Parthasarathy hospital in its Bengaluru campus in line with global examples of integrating science, engineering, and medicine under a single institution. The Centre for Public Health is an extension of this commitment towards collaborating with like-minded institutions and visionaries who seek to shape the future of healthcare in the country.

About IISc:

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) was established in 1909 by a visionary partnership between the industrialist Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, the Mysore royal family, and the Government of India. Since its inception, the Institute has laid a balanced emphasis on the pursuit of knowledge in science and engineering and applying its research findings for industrial and social benefit. In 2018, IISc was selected as an Institution of Eminence (IoE) by the Government of India, and it consistently figures among the top Indian institutions in world university rankings. According to the QS world university ranking 2022, IISc has secured the top place in the world in the citations per faculty metric, which is a measure of research impact.

About Ajit Isaac: 

Ajit Isaac is an entrepreneur and a philanthropist who is a gold medallist and a British Chevening Scholar from Leeds University. He founded Quess Corp Limited in 2007, which is today India’s largest domestic employer. Under his leadership, Quess has accelerated the transition of informal jobs to formal platforms. He also founded the Careworks Foundation, which supports education for about 14,800 students in 61 schools across India. Ajit was nominated for the ‘India Forbes Leadership Award’ in 2011 and was the finalist for the 2016 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.   Along with employment creation, the focus area for Ajit has been health & education and he believes that a healthy future for society cannot be the responsibility of the Government alone.

Media Contact: 

For IISc – IISc Office of Communications | news@iisc.ac.in

For Ajit Isaac – Zainab Nazim| zainab.nazim@adfactorspr.com | 99957 99242

02 March 2023

–Gowri R

In a recent study, researchers from the Department of Organic Chemistry (OC) and Materials Research Centre (MRC), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), show that surface modifications of two-dimensional molybdenum disulphide (2D-MoS₂) nanosheets can make them highly effective for applications like delivering drugs to diseased cells.

Nanomaterials usually need to be modified or customised depending on the application to improve their efficiency. Typically, they are chemically modified through a process called functionalisation, which involves attaching ligands (small or large molecules) to the surface of the nanomaterial.

In the new study, the researchers modified the surface of 2D-MoS₂ nanosheets with thiol (sulphur-containing) ligands. They found that these thiols can be exchanged with naturally-occurring thiols in biological systems, which could allow drugs attached to these nanosheets to be released. These chemically-modified nanosheets were also found to be safe to use inside living cells.

a) Schematic representation of thiol exchange scheme which shows the fluorescence DOX released in presence of Glutathione (GSH) molecule. b) Selectivity of thiol exchange with thiols compared to disulphides. Precipitation was clearly observed for thiols like Cysteamine (CSA), Glutathione (GSH), Mercaptopropionic acid (MPA). However Lipoic acid (LA), a disulphide shows no precipitation which indicate no significant thiol exchange. c) Release of fluorescent DOX in cancer cells confirmed through confocal imaging. d) Canonical score plot for successful discrimination of various bio-thiols.

“Our study shows that thiol exchange on 2D-MoS₂ nanosheets is effective, and the nanomaterial is stable in the presence of various biomolecules. This is an important observation as it will make this nanomaterial highly beneficial for biomedical applications like drug delivery,” explains Mrinmoy De, Associate Professor at the Department of Organic Chemistry and senior author of the study published in ACS Nano.

The team first used a fluorescent thiol called boron-dipyrromethene (BOD-SH) to modify the surface of the 2D-MoS₂ nanosheets in order to create a functionalised version (BOD-MoS₂). Then, they tested the possibility of thiol-to-thiol exchange on BOD-MoS₂ using glutathione (GSH) – a naturally occurring thiol found in abundance in cancer cells. They found that GSH molecules swapped places with BOD-SH on the surface of the nanosheet – a process that they confirmed using fluorescence techniques.

When the researchers attached an anti-cancer drug named doxorubicin (DOX) to the nanosheet surface, they found that thiol exchange could also happen between GSH and DOX, allowing DOX to get dropped off at the diseased site. Because the exchange happens only in the presence of high concentrations of GSH found in diseased cells, drugs like DOX can be delivered specifically to cancer cells without affecting normal cells, which can also potentially reduce any side effects.

Previous efforts have focused on using gold nanoparticles for such biomedical applications, according to the researchers, but these nanoparticles are expensive and have limited efficiency due to their non-selectivity between mono thiols and disulphides. “Our experiments show that 2D-MoS₂ nanosheets can be an effective substitute for gold nanoparticles, and they will be greatly beneficial in the field of nanomedicine,” says Pradipta Behera, a postdoctoral research scholar at IISc and the first author of the study.  The MoS₂ nanosheets were found to be stable in the presence of biofluids. They also have a higher surface area than gold nanoparticles, which means that they can be more efficient.

Moving forward, the team plans to work on improving the stability of the nanomaterial in the presence of various thiol-containing liquids and exploring alternative surface modification approaches to customise the nanosheets for other applications. “This work on 2D-MoS₂ nanosheets can be developed in the future as an alternative to RNA and DNA delivery applications, which can be useful for detecting and treating infections such as COVID-19,” adds Behera.

REFERENCE:

Behera P, Karunakaran S, Sahoo J, Bhatt P, Rana S, & De M, Ligand Exchange on MoS₂ Nanosheets: Applications in Array-Based Sensing and Drug Delivery, ACS Nano (2022).

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.2c06994

 CONTACT:
Mrinmoy De
Associate Professor
Department of Organic Chemistry
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Email: md@iisc.ac.in
Phone: +91-80-2293-2042 (Office) / 2436 (Lab)
Website: https://orgchem.iisc.ac.in/mrinmoy_de/

Credit: Pradipta Behera

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:

1. a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
2. b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write tonews@iisc.ac.inor pro@iisc.ac.in.

9th March 2023

– Ranjini Raghunath 

Soils are reliable sinks for trapping carbon, which is key to mitigating the effects of climate change. Grazing by large mammals favours soil carbon storage in grasslands, but around the world, wild herbivores are gradually being replaced by livestock. In the Spiti region of the Himalaya, researchers at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have found that grazing by livestock leads to lower carbon storage in soil compared to grazing by wild herbivores.

Part of this difference appears to be due to the use of veterinary antibiotics such as tetracycline on livestock. When released into the soil through dung and urine, these antibiotics alter the microbial communities in soil in ways that are detrimental for sequestering carbon. In such areas, “rewilding” the soils – restoring beneficial microbes lost due to antibiotics – could help offset the damage, the researchers say. Quarantining animals that are given antibiotics until the medicines pass out of their system could also help reduce their impact on soil.

One reason why soil health deteriorates under grazing by domestic livestock compared to wild herbivores is because of antibiotics (Credit: Sumanta Bagchi)

“Today, livestock are the most abundant large mammals on Earth,” says Sumanta Bagchi, Associate Professor at CES and corresponding author of the study published in Global Change Biology. “If the carbon stored in soil under livestock can be increased by even a small amount, then it can have a big impact on climate mitigation.”

In a previous study, the researchers had shown how grazing by herbivores plays a crucial role in stabilising the pool of soil carbon in the same region. In the current study, they set out to ask the question: Are livestock such as sheep and cattle similar or different in how they affect the soil carbon stocks compared to their wild relatives such as the yak and ibex?

To answer this, the researchers studied soils over 16 years in areas grazed by wild herbivores and by livestock respectively, and analysed them for various parameters including microbial composition, soil enzymes, carbon stocks, and the amount of veterinary antibiotics. “This is part of a long-term study on ecosystem functions and climate change in the Himalaya, which was started in 2005,” explains Bagchi.

Although soils from the wild and livestock areas had many similarities, they differed in one key parameter called carbon use efficiency (CUE), which determines the ability of microbes to store carbon in the soil. The soil in the livestock areas had 19% lower CUE.

When they probed further for potential explanations, the researchers found that the soil microbial composition in areas with livestock was different from the areas with wild herbivores. Finally, they also found higher levels of antibiotic residues in soil under livestock. “This highlights how human land use, antibiotics, microbes, soils, and climate change are deeply connected,” says Dilip Naidu, PhD student at the Divecha Centre for Climate Change, IISc, and an author of the study.

“What is interesting,” Bagchi adds, “is that antibiotic usage in pastoral ecosystems like Spiti is fairly low.” The situation could be worse in areas where livestock are reared at large scales, and where they are often given antibiotics even when they are not sick, he points out. Antibiotics such as tetracycline are long-lived and can linger in the soil for decades. “Their unregulated use not only threatens climate but also poses the risk of evolution of antibiotic resistance in pathogens that can cause difficult-to-treat infections in humans and animals,” says Shamik Roy, former PhD student at IISc and lead author of this study.

“We do not yet fully understand the details of the underlying mechanisms of how soil microbial communities respond to the antibiotics, and whether they can be restored easily,” adds Roy. In future studies, the researchers plan to investigate how better management of livestock can mitigate their negative impacts on the environment, alongside microbial restoration.

REFERENCE:

Roy S, Naidu DGT, Bagchi S, Functional substitutability of native herbivores by livestock for soil carbon stock is mediated by microbial decomposers, Global Change Biology (2023).

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.16600

CONTACT: 
Sumanta Bagchi
Associate Professor
Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
sbagchi@iisc.ac.in
080-22933528

NOTE TO JOURNALISTS:

1. a) If any of the text in this release is reproduced verbatim, please credit the IISc press release.
2. b) For any queries about IISc press releases, please write to news@iisc.ac.inor pro@ac.in.

17 March 2023

The State Bank of India (SBI), under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities, has partnered with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, towards the construction of the Orthopaedics Wing of the Bagchi-Parthasarathy hospital coming up on campus. An MoU was signed by SBI and IISc at the Institute on 16 March 2023.

The not-for-profit multispecialty hospital planned at IISc will support the world class clinical training of MD-PhD/MS-PhD students, while providing an unprecedented platform for advanced research at the intersection of science, engineering and medicine. In addition to delivering the highest quality care to society at large, the hospital aims to also provide state-of-the-art facilities for diagnostics, treatment and research. There will be 832 ward beds split into general beds and special beds (single and shared occupancy). The hospital will have 19 major Operation Theatres (OTs) for super specialty surgeries, and 6 minor OTs. Advanced radiology and imaging services such as CT, MRI, PET-CT, Mammography, USG and Doppler, and X-ray would be available.

SBI will provide a CSR donation of Rs 24 crore for the establishment of the Orthopaedics Wing, including the required biomedical equipment. The project will be completed by 2025.

Dignitaries present at the MoU signing ceremony included Mr Nand Kishore, SBI Chief General Manager; Mr Sandeep Bhatnagar, General Manager (Network-II); Mr Alok Kumar Dwivedi, Deputy General Manager and Circle Development Officer; Mr Murali Krishna VRM, Deputy General Manager (B&O), Bengaluru North, and Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Director of IISc, as well as other SBI officials.

CONTACT 
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