NIT all set to launch its air purifier

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 12

Having attained the 52nd position in the NIRF ranking this year from the 113th rank last time, staff of the Dr BR Ambedkar National Institute of Technology is geared up to further improve its perception and reach to the 25th to 30th position the next time.

Dr LK Awasthi, Director, NIT, says he has congratulated his entire faculty and set higher targets for the next year. Discussing how he has been planning to achieve it all, he says, “We already had 500 research publications and several projects lined up for intellectual property rights. We are in the process of commercialising them and making them reach the masses. Our first commercially launched product will be available in the market. It will be an air purifier devised by Dr JK Rattan and Dr KS Nagla.”

He shared that there are at least five products related to Covid-19 that professors of the NIT have come up with recently. “Our faculty from the department of textile technology, Dr Vinay Midda and Dr A Mukhopadhyay, have come up with a new kind of a mask which is in the shape of N95 ones. While this mask costs Rs 250 per piece or so and is non-washable, the price of our mask will be in the range of Rs 40-Rs 50 and it will be washable 30-40 times. N95 becomes a little suffocating, but our mask will be made of polyester and cotton and will be very soft and breathable. The fibres in it will be such that it will restrict the entry of any microbes. It also has an additional feature of quick drying. We are expecting that a Delhi-based company will launch it in another 10-15 days,” said Dr Awasthi. The other newly launched items of the NIT include a single piece PPE kit and shoe sanitisation facility.

Dr Awasthi elaborated other issues on which he is currently working, “We are preparing our students to improve their performance in the national-level examination such as GATE. We are even reimbursing the fee of students so as to assist them financially.” He added, "We are already active on our web portal sharing information of all our achievements. We are also using social media platforms actively for dissemination. We are also highlighting our achievements via a newsletter, which we are circulating to all big institutes across India, including IITs, NITs and IISC- Bengaluru.”

He also plans to rope in the alumni spread across the globe for improving the perception of the institute. “We were already evaluated well on the parameter of outreach, which we want to improve further. We also want to improve on the factor of collaborations with better ranks international institutions. For the same, I had recently gone to the US for an MoU. We are definitely on an upswing path. The ride higher above will be difficult, but we are prepared,” said Dr Awasthi.

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