Research Initiatives
Noteworthy initiatives which reinforce the quality and breadth of our research enterprise
Megaprojects
IIT Kharagpur has launched a set of megaprojects, which are unique in terms of their outreach towards ambitious science and technology missions of national importance. Included in this research portfolio are four projects sponsored by the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD), Government of India:
Future of Cities focuses on technology for the development and maintenance of our cities and future cities.
Signals and Systems for Life Sciences focuses on technology for leveraging biometric signal processing for analysis, prognostics, diagnostics and affordable healthcare.
The Sustainable Food Security project seeks to leverage technology for food production, processing and distribution logistics.
SandHI (Science and Heritage Interface), a science-culture initiative uses technology for preservation, archival, development and scientific exploration of our heritage.
Each of these initiatives brings together researchers from various departments, centres and schools, showcasing the KGP standards of excellence in cross-disciplinary research and collaboration.
Challenge Grants
With a view to encouraging original and pathbreaking research in core engineering as well as cross-disciplinary fields, the Institute has devised an extremely competitive scheme under which seed infrastructure grants are provided to individual faculty members, departments as well as collaborative research groups.
These include:
- Open Competitive Grand Challenge for interdisciplinary research groups
- Competitive departmental infrastructure grants for Departments/Centres/Schools to build research infrastructure in an area of emerging thrust
- Competitive challenge grants for individual research
Institute Scheme for Innovative Research and Development (ISIRD)
This scheme was launched with a mission to encourage and support new faculty members to initiate cutting-edge research in their respective fields of study. The institute provides funds up to Rs 25 lakh to new faculty members to acquire equipment and infrastructure pertinent to their research with an additional amount of Rs 3 lakh for consumables, contingency etc.
Other Research Initiatives under Institute Support
Centre for Excellence in Robotics
The Centre for Excellence in Robotics was set up with an initial funding of Rs 5 crore from IIT Kharagpur in 2015. It is envisioned as an umbrella body, under the aegis of which all robotics-related activities of the Institute will be conducted and coordinated. The main emphasis of the centre is on the design and development of intelligent and autonomous robots and work on research problems and innovative projects that extend the state of the art in robotics. The vision behind it is to promote and encourage student activities, research projects, and relevant courses related to this field. A large number of faculty members as well as students from various departments are part of this centre. For more information on this initiative, click here
Contact: Professor D K Pratihar at dkpra@mech.iitkgp.ac.in
Centre for Microfluidics
The Microfluidics research group is dedicated towards investigating the underlying physics of micro/nano-scale transport processes. Microfluidics has been the gateway to exploring new and fascinating interfacial phenomena, stemming from the high surface-to-volume ratio of the involved systems. These new insights, in turn, have contributed to the development of even more sophisticated application based technologies. These encompass the varied fields of biotechnology, biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, material handling and thermal management of electronic devices/systems.
Presently, the principal research domains being explored by this group include low-cost, high-throughput lab-on-a-CD and paper-based microfluidic platforms for rapid clinical diagnostics, electrically-mediated microdroplet motion and thin film spreading for optimized electronic cooling, droplet-based microfluidic systems for bio-chemical analysis, material handling, targeted drug delivery, and cell-bubble interactions.
The microfluidics research group also addresses challenging problems by implementing state-of-the-art computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and molecular dynamics simulation (MDS) tools. Very recently, the group has ventured into the novel, but very nascent domain of optically induced alteration of microscale interfacial phenomena.
Contact: Professor Suman Chakraborty at suman@mech.iitkgp.ac.in
Centre for Artificial Intelligence for Societal Needs
"Artificial Intelligence for Societal Needs" is an interdisciplinary research initiative under which several projects have been undertaken. These use artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and computational techniques for intelligent decision making for solving problems in the Indian context, related to Energy, Climate, Water, Disaster Management and Traffic. The different projects explore AI and ML techniques for
- Monitoring the dynamics of power systems for generating alarms and mitigating the effects of disturbances
- Short term and medium term climate prediction tasks related to extreme events and monsoon rainfall
- Building an inundation model for the city of Kolkata by using real-time rainfall data and Doppler weather data
- Studying past cyclone tracks to model storm surges and associated coastal inundation
- Parallel real-time implementations of short-term ocean forecast system with advanced initialization and data-assimilative capability for the Bay of Bengal
- Modelling groundwater recharge dynamics for estimating future groundwater trends in the Indian subcontinent
- Building services for different stakeholders in an intelligent transportation system to improve different aspects of logistics efficiency including monitoring, trip-planning and bidding
- Infrastructure planning and management in coastal areas
- Routing decisions related to transportation of hazardous materials and waste, location allocation for waste generation and planning for augmentation of transport network.
Contact: Professor Sudeshna Sarkar at sudeshna@cse.iitkgp.ac.in