21^st January 2022

– Ranjini Raghunath

In recent years, a phenomenon called the quantum Hall effect has emerged as a platform for hosting exotic features called quasiparticles, with properties that could lead to exciting applications in areas like quantum computing. When a strong magnetic field is applied to a 2D material or gas, the electrons at the interface – unlike the ones within the bulk – are free to move along the edges in what are called edge modes or channels – somewhat similar to highway lanes. This edge movement, which is the essence of the quantum Hall effect, can lead to many interesting properties depending on the material and conditions. 

Left panel: Downstream (red lines) and upstream (dashed black lines). Middle panel: Schematic for noise measurement for “upstream” mode detection. Right panel: Noise is detected for fractional quantum Hall states with “upstream” modes whereas it remains zero for only downstream modes (Credit: Authors). 

For conventional electrons, the current flows only in one direction dictated by the magnetic field (‘downstream’). However, physicists have predicted that some materials can have counter-propagating channels where some quasiparticles can also travel in the opposite (‘upstream’) direction. Although these upstream channels are of great interest to scientists because they can host a variety of new kinds of quasiparticles, they have been extremely difficult to identify because they do not carry any electrical current.  

In a new study, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and international collaborators provide “smoking gun” evidence for the presence of upstream modes along which certain neutral quasiparticles move in two-layered graphene. To detect these modes or channels, the team used a novel method employing electrical noise – fluctuations in the output signal caused by heat dissipation.  

“Though the upstream excitations are charge-neutral, they can carry heat energy and produce a noise spot along the upstream direction,” explains Anindya Das, Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and corresponding author of the study published in Nature Communications. 

Quasiparticles are largely excitations that arise when elementary particles like electrons interact among each other or with matter around them. They are not truly particles but have similar particles like mass and charge. The simplest example is a ‘hole’ – a vacancy where an electron is missing in a given energy state in a semiconductor. It has an opposite charge to the electron and can move inside a material just like the electron does. Pairs of electrons and holes can also form quasiparticles which can propagate along the edge of the material.  

In previous studies, the researchers have shown that it might be possible to detect emergent quasiparticles like Majorana fermions in graphene; the hope is to harness such quasiparticles to eventually build fault-tolerant quantum computers. For identifying and studying such particles, detecting upstream modes which can host them is critical. Although such upstream modes have been detected earlier in gallium-arsenide based systems, none have been identified so far in graphene and graphene-based materials, which offer much more promise when it comes to futuristic applications.  

In the current study, when the researchers applied an electrical potential to the edge of two-layered graphene, they found that heat was transported only in the upstream channels and dissipated at certain “hotspots” in that direction. At these spots, the heat generated electrical noise that could be picked up by an electrical resonance circuit and spectrum analyser.  

The authors also found that the movement of these quasiparticles in the upstream channels was “ballistic” – heat energy flowed from one hotspot to another without any loss – unlike the “diffusive” transport observed earlier in gallium-arsenide based systems. Such a ballistic movement is also indicative of the presence of exotic states and features that could help build energy-efficient and fault-free quantum components in the future, according to the authors. 

REFERENCE: 

Kumar, R., Srivastav, S.K., Spånslätt, C. et al. Observation of ballistic upstream modes at fractional quantum Hall edges of graphene, Nature Communications, 13, 213 (2022).  

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27805-4 

CONTACT: 

Anindya Das
Associate Professor
Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
anindya@iisc.ac.in, dasanindy@gmail.com
+91-8022932525, +91-8023602600

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.

28^th January 2022

– Karthika Kaveri Maiappan

 Sleep is fundamental for all animals; when an animal sleeps, the brain sorts and categorises memories, and restores its energy. Urban habitats like cities, however, can hamper an animal’s sleep quality and patterns due to higher temperatures, the presence of artificial structures like walls and buildings built by humans, and artificial light at night.   

 To adapt to these unusual conditions, urban peninsular rock agamas choose sleep sites that resemble their rural counterparts in the type of surface and the amount of light and heat received, a recent study by researchers at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has found. This study was published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. 

Is the city too hot for lizards (Credit: Maria Thaker)

Hot and cold – thermal image of a sleeping rock agama (Credit: Nitya Mohanty)

Nocturnal sampling for sleeping rock agamas in their natural habitat comprising boulder formations, outside Bangalore city (Credit: Tanmay Wagh)

A juvenile rock agama sleeping in rural Bangalore (Credit: Mihir Joshi)

While scientists have a reasonably good understanding of how animal brains work during sleep, how they sleep in the real world is not well known, says Maria Thaker, Associate Professor at CES and senior author of the study. “We know from human literature that certain conditions allow us to sleep better than others, and some disrupt our sleep. But animals live in the real world with all these conditions … and we wanted to understand where and how they sleep in the wild.” 

 The researchers compared lizard sleep sites in urban and rural habitats to look for differences in the types of surfaces the lizards were sleeping on, the extent of cover, temperature, and amount of light received.  

 “In the rural areas that are undisturbed, we scanned all the rocks, boulders, the ground, and shrubs to look for sleeping lizards. But in [urban] Bangalore, we would go into people’s backyards, because these lizards occupy empty lots or undeveloped plots, where there would be some concrete blocks that they use,” says Nitya Mohanty, first author of the study. Poking around in neighbourhoods at night with headlights and fancy camera equipment often drew a lot of attention from people and the police, and the team had to explain what they were doing to the public on several occasions, he adds.  

 Since urban habitats pose differences in terms of structure and more illumination at night as compared to rural areas, lizards would have to cope somehow, points out Thaker. “One way is to just sleep under these conditions. Or they can cope in another way, by finding conditions that closely match the wild as much as possible. What we found is somewhere in between the two.” 

 The team found that the lizards tend to pick structures that mimicked those in their natural habitat – they were more likely to sleep in rough concrete blocks that resembled their rocky sleep sites in the wild. The temperatures of both urban and rural sleep sites were also found to be similar. Urban sleep sites, however, were nine times more likely to be sheltered and covered as compared to rural sites, and this helped address the light problem in urban areas. This indicates that the lizards try to mitigate urban stressors by being flexible in their sleep site choices, and end up picking sites that resemble their rural sites. 

 Studying animals coping with anthropogenic environments is very important, according to Thaker. “The world is changing, and it is going to continue to change. So, if we know what it is that [other organisms] require to live here, then we can make some choices of our own to help keep them here.”

 REFERENCE

Mohanty NP, Joshi M & Thaker M, Urban lizards use sleep sites that mirror the structural, thermal, and light properties of natural sites. Behav Ecol Sociobiol, 2021, 75, 166. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-021-03101-5 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00265-021-03101-5#citeas 

 CONTACT 

Maria Thaker 
Associate Professor 
Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES) 
Indian Institute of Science (IISc) 
mthaker@iisc.ac.in 
 
Nitya Prakash Mohanty 
Postdoctoral fellow 
Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc) 
nityamohanty@iisc.ac.in 

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. 

3^rd February 2022

Under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has installed and commissioned Param Pravega, one of the most powerful supercomputers in the country, and the largest in an Indian academic institution.

The system, which is expected to power diverse research and educational pursuits, has a total supercomputing capacity of 3.3 petaflops (1 petaflop equals a quadrillion or 10¹⁵ operations per second). It has been designed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). A majority of the components used to build this system have been manufactured and assembled within the country, along with an indigenous software stack developed by C-DAC, in line with the Make in India initiative.

[metaslider id=36683]

Photo credits: Harish Byndoor, SERC, IISc

NSM is steered jointly by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), and implemented by C-DAC and IISc. The Mission has supported the deployment of 10 supercomputer systems so far at IISc, IITs, IISER Pune, JNCASR, NABI-Mohali and C-DAC, with a cumulative computing power of 17 petaflops. About 31,00,000 computational jobs have successfully been carried out by around 2,600 researchers across the country to date. These systems have greatly helped faculty members and students carry out major R&D activities, including developing platforms for genomics and drug discovery, studying urban environmental issues, establishing flood warning and prediction systems, and optimising telecom networks.

The Param Pravega system at IISc is a mix of heterogeneous nodes, with Intel Xeon Cascade Lake processors for the CPU nodes and NVIDIA Tesla V100 cards on the GPU nodes. The hardware consists of an ATOS BullSequana XH2000 series system, with a comprehensive peak compute power of 3.3 petaflops. The software stack on top of the hardware is provided and supported by C-DAC. The machine hosts an array of program development tools, utilities, and libraries for developing and executing High Performance Computing (HPC) applications.

IISc already has a cutting-edge supercomputing facility established several years ago. In 2015, the Institute procured and installed SahasraT, which was at that time the fastest supercomputer in the country. Faculty members and students have been using this facility to carry out research in various impactful and socially-relevant areas. These include research on COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, such as modelling viral entry and binding, studying interactions of proteins in bacterial and viral diseases, and designing new molecules with antibacterial and antiviral properties. Researchers have also used the facility to simulate turbulent flows for green energy technologies, study climate change and associated impacts, analyse aircraft engines and hypersonic flight vehicles, and many other research activities. These efforts are expected to ramp up significantly with Param Pravega.

More details about Param Pravega including technical specifications at:

http://www.serc.iisc.ac.in/supercomputer/for-traditional-hpc-simulations-param-pravega/

14^th February 2022

Founded in 1909, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is India’s premier institute for advanced research and education, with equal emphasis on science and engineering. In line with global examples of integrating science, engineering and medicine under a single institution, IISc will be setting up a Postgraduate Medical School along with a multi-speciality hospital in its Bengaluru campus.

The academic centrepiece of this initiative will be an integrated dual degree MD-PhD programme aimed at creating a new breed of physician-scientists, who will pursue careers in clinical research to develop new treatments and healthcare solutions, driven by a bench-to-bedside philosophy. They will be trained simultaneously in the hospital as well as in the science and engineering laboratories at IISc.

The key enabler of this endeavour would be the not-for-profit, 800-bed multi-speciality hospital, catering to the clinical training and research activities of the academic programme. To construct the hospital building, designed by Ahmedabad-based architects Archi Medes (I) Consultants Pvt Ltd, IISc today inked a pathbreaking partnership with philanthropists Susmita and Subroto Bagchi, and Radha and NS Parthasarathy. The couples will collectively donate INR 425 crore (equivalent to about USD 60 million) for the project. After its founding, this is the largest single private donation received by IISc. The hospital will be named as the Bagchi-Parthasarathy Hospital.

Speaking on the occasion, Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Director, Indian Institute of Science said, “We are extremely grateful to Susmita and Subroto Bagchi, and Radha and NS Parthasarathy for their magnanimous gesture. Their generous contribution will help us realise our vision of seamless coupling between clinical sciences, basic sciences, and engineering technology disciplines, all anchored within a vibrant university campus, enabling cross-disciplinary training and research opportunities for young minds. We hope that this creates a new template for institution building in India, particularly in medical research.”

Speaking on behalf of the Bagchis, Ms Susmita Bagchi said, “We are grateful for the opportunity to partner with IISc. In a country like ours, medical research and delivery cannot be left to government or the corporate sector alone. The time has come for more people like us to engage. With IISc, we find shared vision. It is an institution with depth, competence, leadership, and capacity to deliver in scale. We are greatly confident of the lasting, beneficial outcome of our donation.”

Speaking on behalf of the Parthasarathys, Ms Radha Parthasarathy said, “IISc’s larger vision to integrate science, engineering, and medicine in one campus is very new to India. This is an exciting opportunity for us to collaborate. IISc’s global reputation and network will attract outstanding talent to create breakthroughs in research and delivery of medicine that must impact the masses. The pandemic we are living through has established the need for urgency in creating universal access and equity in medicine. We are grateful to be a part of a new journey in the history of India’s most respected research institution.”

The Bagchi-Parthasarathy Hospital will be built within the existing IISc Bengaluru campus, taking full advantage of the co-location with the science and engineering faculties and labs. The ground-breaking is planned for June 2022 and the hospital will be operational by the end of 2024. The Bagchi-Parthasarathy Hospital will have advanced facilities for diagnostics, treatment and research. The clinical and surgical departments in the hospital will facilitate comprehensive treatment and healthcare delivery in several specialities including oncology, cardiology, neurology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, nephrology, urology, dermatology and plastic surgery, organ transplant, robotic surgery, ophthalmology, and so on. In addition, according to National Medical Commission norms, students admitted in specific MD/MS and DM/MCh programmes will also be trained in appropriate sections of the hospital along with their classroom and laboratory training. The hospital will also implement advanced digital technologies and solutions, such as integrated Electronic Medical Record systems and a comprehensive telemedicine suite with haptics interfaces.

The impact of the IISc Medical School and Bagchi-Parthasarathy Hospital would go beyond science and solutions. It is also expected to set the tone for sustainable health goals and policies for the nation, and serve as a model of clinical research and training that can be emulated nationwide. This ambitious endeavour will be a gamechanger in addressing the future healthcare needs of the country.

For more information, please contact Prof Phaneendra Yalavarthy (yalavarthy@iisc.ac.in).

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 basic 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.

Media Contact: 

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

Soumya P | Soumya.P@genesis-bcw.com

Click here for kannada version.

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

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

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.

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

7^th April 2022

– Monmita Bhar

Additive manufacturing (AM), also known as metal 3D printing, creates objects by addition of material, layer by layer. A major source material for AM is metal powder, which is predominantly produced using a technique called atomisation, in which a molten metal stream is broken up into fine droplets using air or water jets. However, despite its widespread use, atomisation returns poor yield, is expensive, and is inflexible in the types of materials it can handle. A team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) led by Koushik Viswanathan, Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has identified an alternative technique to produce metal powders that side-steps these problems. This has interesting implications for AM processes in general, including areas such as the manufacture of biomedical implants.

In the metal grinding industry, the material removed – called swarf – is often discarded as a waste product. It is commonly stringy in shape, like metal chips, but it often also throws up perfectly spherical particles. Scientists have long theorised that these bodies go through a melting process to take up the spherical shape, thus posing some interesting questions – does the heat from the grinding cause the melting? Is there melting at all? Viswanathan’s team showed that these powdery metal bodies form as a result of melting due to high heat from oxidation, an exothermic reaction, at the surface layer. They then refined this process to produce large quantities of spherical powders, which are collected and processed further to be used as stock material in AM. Their study shows that these particles perform just as well as commercial gas atomised powders in the context of metal AM.

Priti Ranjan Panda, a PhD student at IISc’s Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing and one of the authors of the study, adds, “We have an alternative, more economical and inherently scalable route for making metal powders, and the quality of the final powders appear to be very competitive when compared with conventional gas atomised powders.”

About the applications of their findings, Viswanathan explains, “There has been significant recent interest in adopting metal AM because by nature, it enables significant customisation and allows design freedom. However, the large cost of stock metal powders has been the stumbling block. We hope that our work will open new doors to making cheaper and more accessible metal powders.”

“Reducing the cost of the AM process (via economical powders) can widen the range of materials in situations such as manufacturing of biomedical implants, which could become cheaper and more accessible,” adds Harish Singh Dhami, a PhD student at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and co-author of this study. The researchers say that making metal powder using abrasion also has potential in other high-performance applications such as in aircraft engines, where a high degree of specificity and sophistication are required.

Currently, metal powders are typically produced at an atomisation facility, requiring transport for casting and recycling, thus setting up a big supply chain. This works for abundant metals like aluminium, Viswanathan points out, but for strategic materials (such as tantalum and lithium), where extraction alone is a complex process, it would be favourable to have a scalable process for producing metal powders. Then, in principle, the entire supply chain can be housed within a single facility – a possibility that their technique could offer.

REFERENCE:

Harish Singh Dhami, Priti Ranjan Panda, Koushik Viswanathan, Production of powders for metal additive manufacturing applications using surface grinding, Manufacturing Letters, Volume 32, 2022, ISSN 2213-8463

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mfglet.2022.02.004

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Koushik Viswanathan
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
koushik@iisc.ac.in
+91-80-22932670

Harish Singh Dhami
PhD student, Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
harishdhami@iisc.ac.in
+91-9447789656

Priti Ranjan Panda
PhD student, Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing (CPDM)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
pritipanda@iisc.ac.in
+91-9525076428

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.

11^th April 2022

– Praveen Jayakumar

 Pollutants like microplastics may be causing growth defects in fish, including skeletal deformities, in the Cauvery River, a new study reveals. Published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, the study was led by Upendra Nongthomba, Professor at the Department of Molecular Reproduction, Development and Genetics (MRDG), in the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

Nongthomba likes his fish. “Over the years, I have cherished going to the backwaters of the Krishna Raja Sagara [KRS] Dam and having fried fish on the Cauvery River bank,” he says. But in recent times, he has been noticing physical deformities in some of them. He began to wonder whether the quality of water may have something to do with it.

“Water is essential for everyone, including animals and plants. When it is polluted, it is capable of causing diseases, including cancer,” adds Abass Toba Anifowoshe, a PhD student in Nongthomba’s lab, and the first author of the study. Nongthomba’s lab, therefore, conducted a comprehensive study of pollution at the KRS Dam and its potential effects on fish. They collected water samples from three different locations with varying speeds of water flow – fast-flowing, slow-flowing, and stagnant – since water speed is known to affect the concentration of pollutants.

In the first part of the study, Nongthomba’s team analysed the physical and chemical parameters of the water samples. All but one of them fell within the prescribed limits. The exception was dissolved oxygen (DO), whose levels were much lower than they needed to be in samples collected from the slow-flowing and stagnant sites. Water from these sites also had microbes such as Cyclops, Daphnia, Spirogyra, Spirochaeta and E. coli, well-known bio-indicators of water contamination.

The researchers went further. Using a technique called Raman spectroscopy, they detected microplastics – minute pieces of plastic often invisible to the naked eye – and toxic chemicals containing the cyclohexyl functional group (a functional group refers to atoms in a compound that determine its chemical properties). Microplastics are found in several household and industrial products, and chemicals containing the cyclohexyl group, such as cyclohexyl isocyanate, are commonly used in agriculture and the pharmaceutical industry.

In the second part of the study, Nongthomba’s team investigated whether pollutants in water could account for the developmental abnormalities seen in wild fish. They treated embryos of the well-known model organism, zebrafish, with water samples collected from the three sites, and found that those exposed to water from the slow-flowing and stagnant sites experienced skeletal deformities, DNA damage, early cell death, heart damage, and increased mortality. These defects were seen even after microbes were filtered out, suggesting that microplastics and the cyclohexyl functional groups are responsible for the ailments in the fish.

The researchers also found unstable molecules called ROS (Reactive Oxygen Species) in the cells of the fish that developed abnormally. ROS build-up is known to damage DNA and affect animals in ways similar to what Abass and Nongthomba saw in fish treated with water from the slow-flowing and stagnant sites. Other studies have shown that microplastics and chemicals with the cyclohexyl group lead to decreased DO, which in turn triggers ROS accumulation in animals like fish.

A recent study from the Netherlands has shown that microplastics can enter the bloodstream of humans. So, what do the results from Nongthomba’s lab mean for the millions of people who use Cauvery water? “The concentrations we have reported may not be alarming yet for humans, but long-term effects can’t be ruled out,” he says. But he also admits that before they answer the question conclusively, they need to understand how exactly microplastics enter and affect the host. “This is something which we are trying to address now.”

REFERENCE: 

Anifowoshe AT, Roy D, Dutta S, Nongthomba U, Evaluation of cytogenotoxic potential and embryotoxicity of KRS-Cauvery River water in zebrafish (Danio rerio), Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, Volume 233, 2022, 113320, ISSN 0147-6513,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2022.113320

CONTACT: 

Upendra Nongthomba
Professor, Department of Molecular Reproduction, Development and Genetics (MRDG)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
upendra@iisc.ac.in
+91-80-22933258

Abass Toba Anifowoshe
PhD student, Department of Molecular Reproduction, Development and Genetics (MRDG)
Indian Institute of Science (IISc
anifowoshea@iisc.ac.in

 IMAGES Credits: Abass Toba Anifowoshe and Upendra Nongthomba

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.