BITians during COVID’19 lockdown – Technological Contributions
BITians during COVID’19 lockdown – Technological Contributions
An invisible virus has made our individual actions more visible than ever – and revealed our true power to face societal crises beyond COVID-19.
There are challenges to be met, curves to be flattened. Every action counts in this calculus.
As people around the world working together in this battle, BIT has been relentlessly aiding the fight against Covid-19 through technological, educational, and societal contributions. This article provides a glimpse of the technological achievements of the BIT students even during the lockdown.
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), an infectious disease which originated in China, has affected 6.54 million people in over 200 countries and has claimed over 3.87 lakh lives till date. In India, so far over 2.37 lakh, people have contracted the disease and over 6,600 lives are lost. With solutions yet to arrive, the pandemic is set to induce a larger impact at the global level.
Worldwide, all efforts have been initiated to combat the disease by finding solutions to mitigate its impact on health care, economic, social and employment spheres. These efforts are not restricted to governments and are inclusive of non-governmental organisations, research organisations, educational institutions, and the healthcare industry.
BIT on its part has been putting all its resources to use, in the fight against the pandemic. One effort that stands out among its contributions is the attempts to find innovative technological solutions for the core issue of disease contraction along with other allied issues. These efforts have received recognition and accolades from various organisations. Some of these efforts include:
- Four teams comprising 13 students from the Bioprocess and Bio-products Special Laboratory bagged the finalist position in the Telangana government (T-hub) organised an online contest on “COVID-19 Innovation Challenge” during 27th April – 20th May 2020 and won ‘1-month Remote Summer Internship Program Offered By Smartbridge and IBM, worth a total of Rs.32,500.
- Students of Bioprospecting Research lab bagged the first place worth of Rs. 50,000 cash prize in National Level Online Fight Corona IDEAthon organised by All Indian Council of Technical Education (AICTE), MHRD- Innovation cell & Forge from March 27 to 28, for their idea on “A rapid, portable COVID19 RNA Extraction kit coupled with in-field detection module”.
- Hack O’ Holics team comprising of 5 students of BIT won the Second Prize of INR 8,000/- in the ‘IEEE COVID MOVE – Online Hackathon Challenge: Edition II’ conducted from 17– 19 April 2020, for their project titled VisanuYuddha, under the domain of ‘Detection of the Disease and Surveillance’, an assistive device for the Police and Health Department personnel for detecting and monitoring the disease and ensuring whether the norms and regulations of Social Distancing are followed.
- A team comprising two students from the Molecular Diagnostics & Biomolecule Characterization – Special Lab was shortlisted for the final round in the ‘COVID19 Challenge’ organised by the ICMR – Centre for Innovation and Bio-Design (ICMR-CIBioD), PGIMER, Chandigarh, to overcome the current pandemic situation in India. Their project was on “Dual-monoplex Real-time RT-PCR Assays targeting the ORF1b and N gene Regions of 2019-nCoV-Early Detection Kit”.
With various departments initiating efforts and utilising their resources towards solutions to the various core and allied issues that surround the Covid-19 pandemic induced situation, more innovations are expected to follow.
Article by,
– Jayakumar K, Head / Humanities, BIT
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