All Management News

Amidst the quarantine, students of SRM AP and members of NEXT TECH LAB, have exhibited their expertise in HACKNITR, a national level hackathon organized by NIT Rourkela on 21-22 March 2020. The outstanding merit of their project has enabled them to bag the Runner-Up and 2nd Runner-Up position at the hackathon.

Team ASTUTE BOTS, comprising of 1st-year students, Tankala Yuvaraj, Karthikay Gundepudi and Joseph K. Paul, was recognized as the Runner-Up. They used the AI-IoT platform to develop DRONEYES; a prototyped solution that can be used to reduce poaching. It is an aerial reconnoiter which flies in stealth mode and takes the video or photo of a suspected poacher. This is done by the highly trained object detection model called YOLOv3. These eyes not only detect objects on the terra firma but also sends the exact location via GPS. “With the help of cloud technology, we can share the data in real-time so that the user/organization can take the required initiative by locating the exact place of poaching”, explains Karthikay. We were inspired to attend hackathons by Anshuman Pandey, and Next Tech Lab supported this achievement.

Another team PUSH, where Karthik Epperla, 2nd year, and Ishita Agarwal, 1st year, participated, has received the 2nd Runner’s up award. The students worked on an AI-VR-Blockchain based application to help people with autism improve communication, social and other basic abilities required to live in a society. It gives a set of YES/NO questions that are to be answered by either the parent of the child or the adult suffering from Autism and then it matches those answers with the dataset which then returns the level of autism that the child/adult is suffering from. Depending on the level, the user can choose the extremity of VR therapy. When the child goes through the VR session, the parent can view what their child/ adult is doing in the virtual environment using the parent app from anywhere and advise their ward offering extra support to the patient. ” Our application has 3D simulations of real-life situations wherein autistic children/ adults (mostly children) can practice and understand how to behave/react in those situations and overcome their fear while facing a similar situation in real life. “, adds Karthik.

Karthik acknowledges Adithya Ramakrishnan the founder of Next Tech Lab and his lab mate, Lakshmi Vallala for implanting the noble idea that AI can help in the rare medical condition, Autism. They have constantly been in touch with a few special schools and treatment centers to know about the behaviour and nature of autistic people so that they can keep on building different versions of applications.

In the natal stage of their academic career, the students are guided and nurtured in an environment by the Next Tech Lab and the faculty members which inspires them to positively impact the society. The ample exposure offered to the students will not merely encourage them, but also enable them to improve their concepts.

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The novel coronavirus has evolved as a pandemic which forced lockdown in many countries including India. The sudden surge in symptomatic cases requires funding for medicines, diagnostic kits, research to develop vaccines, development of medical infrastructure, as well as assisting daily wagers. The entire nation has risen to assist our Indian government to raise funds for the noble cause. In the premise of supporting the government to combat the outbreak, SRM University AP, Andhra Pradesh has offered its support to the government in every way possible.

The contribution of 25 lakhs was handed over to the Hon’ble Education Minister Dr. Adimulam Suresh by Pro Vice-Chancellor Prof. D. Narayana Rao, Director of Campus Life and Maintenance Venkataachalam and Media PRO, Venugopal. In this distressing scenario, all the citizens of India are requested to combat against this pandemic by staying at home and taking adequate preventive measures. Dr. P Sathyanaranan, President of SRM university- AP said, “The COVID-19 Pandemic has created an unprecedented global catastrophe and a national public health emergency. In this crisis, the measures taken by the Government of Andhra Pradesh under the leadership of the Hon’ble Chief Minister to combat the COVID-19, leaving no stones unturned, is commendable.”

Earlier this week on Monday, responding to this calamity, SRM Group donated 1.15 crore on behalf of the employees of the institutes under the umbrella of the group. Dr. TR Paarivendhar, Chancellor, and Member of Parliament transferred the fund to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s Public Relief Fund.

SRM AP has commenced online classes to ensure that imparting of knowledge to the students is not hindered by the pandemic. View details here

Awareness Campaign on COVID-19: Coronavirus

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Dr Sutharsan Govindarajan’s research papers published in “Nature” and “Nature Microbiology”

Dr Sutharsan Govindarajan, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at SRM University-AP has published two papers in highly reputed journals, “Nature” and “Nature Microbiology”. Both papers involve the discovery of novel strategies used by bacteriophages (viruses that kill bacteria) to overcome the bacterial CRISPR-Cas system, which are molecular scissors that are programmed to cut DNA. His findings have massive implications on the society as it has the ability to reshape the boundaries of the Phage-therapy in curing diseases.

In the paper, “A bacteriophage nucleus-like compartment shields DNA from CRISPR nucleases”, published in ‘Nature’, researchers from the University of California San Francisco, including Dr Sutharsan of SRM University-AP, discovered that certain large bacteriophages called “Jumbophages” are capable of protecting their genetic material (DNA) from being cut by the bacterial CRISPR-Cas system. In nature, the primary function of the CRISPR-Cas system, which is famous for its genome editing applications, is to cut the DNA of bacteriophages. The researchers made a surprising finding that several CRISPR-Cas enzymes were utterly ineffective in cutting the DNA of jumbophages. Subsequent studies led to the finding that these bacteriophages protect their DNA within a protein compartment called as ‘shell’. The shell provides a ‘safe room’ for the phage DNA and keeps antiviral enzymes, including CRISPR-Cas enzymes at bay. It is the first-time researchers have found that bacteriophages, which are essentially viruses, can employ one strategy to protect its DNA from many different immune systems. Dr Sutharsan says, “usually, this kind of sophisticated DNA protection mechanism is employed by complex eukaryotic cells like humans. However, our findings show that viruses, which have evolved billions of years before eukaryotic cells, also seem to be using a similar strategy. This is mind-boggling”, says Dr Sutharsan, “because our finding is making us to rethink about the current understanding of the evolution of cells on Earth.”

In another finding, which is also co-authored by Dr Sutharsan, the researchers have found a different kind of bacteriophage that protects its DNA by ‘turning off’ the production of the CRISPR-Cas enzymes in bacteria. Thus, this bacteriophage employs an entirely different strategy for the same purpose, i.e., protection of its genetic material. The paper “Bacterial alginate regulators and phage homologs repress CRISPR–Cas immunity”, got published in the journal ‘Nature Microbiology’ very recently.

Dr Sutharsan further explained how his research can play a pivotal role in the application of Phage-Therapy, which is a therapeutic strategy where bacteriophages are used to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria and cure patients suffering from difficult-to-treat bacterial infections. Currently, the success rate of phage therapy is low, and researchers are trying to find the reasons behind this. Dr Sutharsan thinks that CRISPR-resistant bacteriophages, which he studies in his lab, can be a game-changer in phage therapy. However, this idea needs to be tested. Towards this goal, he is currently seeking collaborations with clinicians interested in phage therapy.

When asked about his future research plans, Dr Sutharsan says the “Laboratory of phage-bacteria interaction”, which I am going to establish soon at SRM University – AP, will involve in the discovery of new molecular mechanisms employed by phages and bacteria to defend against each other. Such studies have given us’ Restriction enzymes’, which started the ‘era of gene engineering’, and ‘CRISPR-Cas enzymes’, which started the ‘era of genome engineering’. We hope that our lab at the SRM University – AP will make discoveries that can take us beyond genome engineering.

References:

Nature-A bacteriophage nucleus-like compartment shields DNA from CRISPR

Nature Microbiology- Bacterial alginate regulators and phage homologs repress CRISPR–Cas immunity

Dr Sutharsan Govindarajan- https://srmap.edu.in/faculty/sutharsan-govindarajan/

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Dr. Sutharsan Govindarajan receives prestigious INSPIRE Faculty award

Department of Science and Technology, Government of India has awarded Dr. Sutharsan Govindarajan, Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, SRM University-AP, the prestigious fellowship “Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE)”. This initiative provides funds and a platform to potent young achievers for conducting independent research and strengthening the Science & Technology base. Dr. Sutharsan is to receive a total research grant of 35 lakhs for a period of 5 years as a DST-INSPIRE fellow.

Dr. Sutharsan will establish an independent research lab at SRM University, AP, Andhra Pradesh to focus on CRISPR-Cas biology. “CRISPR technology is a powerful tool for editing genomes. It is capable of changing a single base of DNA out of billions of bases. This invention is potent to cure genetic disorders, enunciating its candidature to receive the Nobel Prize in the future.”, informs Dr. Sutharsan.

Dr. Sutharsan’s research work has the potential to nullify the single limitation of the CRISPR technology- ‘off-target’ effects i.e., unintended base changes that affects the accuracy of DNA editing. Through his research titled “Discovery of novel CRISPR-Cas silencing proteins”, he and his team intend to prevent ‘off-targets’ by identifying and characterizing the novel anti-CRISPR proteins that can inhibit in CRISPR-Cas proteins. Dr, Sutharsan believes, “This will improve the efficiency of CRISPR technology which will be highly useful for gene editing technologies, alleviating a wide range of genetic disorders and diseases in the future”.

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“Evening is a time of real experimentation. You never want to look the same way,” said fashion guru Donna Karan. You think, the Queen of luxury fashion is talking about appearance and personal style presentation, when you have another kind of display on your mind. The one you have to make the next day. Many young students are bogged down by presentations, case studies, assignments and deadlines every day of their college life. But that’s all the more reason to let your hair down, experiment, rejuvenate, and live your life to the fullest in the evenings. SRM University AP campus is the sanctuary to do just that.

Evenings are the perfect time to take stock of your day. They offer you the breather to unwind, relax, and rejuvenate. They are also a precursor to the promise of the night, which brings with it a new dream. It is the beautiful cusp of a moment and at SRM University AP you can shape it exactly according to your interests. They say, some of the best evenings are unplanned, random, and spontaneous. We say, plan your evenings and make the most out of the avenues we have in store for you. Here are 6 fun, cool, exciting things you can do under the campus skies after 6 pm. And we assure you, the sky is limit for the creative, cultural and culinary satisfaction you can get on campus.

Walkabouts are in

Designed by Perkins + Will, American architecture firm, the name behind some of the visually stunning educational institutions around the world, SRM University AP is a sight to behold. The natural beauty is enhanced by eco-friendly spaces that create a soothing ambience perfect for leisurely strolls. Go for a walkabout exploring the hidden gems on campus or head for evening walks with friends and make memories to last.

Time for a Gym-jam

All fitness enthusiasts and beginners can band together in state of the art gymnasiums on campus. It’s time to throw your weight behind your overall wellness. Pushups, pull-ups, cardio, aerobics; you name it. Go for the workout of your choice and engage with fellow fitness fans. Then there are Yoga rooms to channel your energies, meditate and recuperate from the daily rigours. Sources for your physical and emotional wellbeing are thus covered on campus.

Display your sporting attitude

Don’t see yourself working out in the gym? No sweat. SRM University AP campus boasts of the best facilities for sports including badminton, basketball, volleyball, athletics, cricket, soccer, table tennis and more. Want to pick up a new game or want the best platform to showcase your sporting prowess? Dive into the avenues we have in store for you and be a good sport!

Mentoring – Extra innings

The residential campus of SRM University AP is home not only to students and scholars but to many of our experienced faculty members. You can pick the free time in the evenings to engage with them on topics of the curricular and beyond. Our approachable and affable faculty members have been the guiding force behind many transformative journeys. Now you get to have an extra helping of that mentorship while building lasting relationships too.

For Foodie two-shoes

Extra helpings remind us of all the delicious options you can devour on campus. The lip-smacking delights available at the night canteen will satiate all your culinary cravings in style. You can also hop over to the truck shop to get your supply of foodie goodies packed with chips, cookies, chocolates, cold drinks and ice creams. Now can there be a more mouthwatering prospect?

Go clubbing

And we are only talking about student clubs that create exciting platforms for you to pursue your interests. Passion-photography society, drama club, dance club, music room, sessions of next tech lab, python in pyjamas, debate sessions, women in Machine Learning, movie screenings are just some of the engaging outlets you can enjoy. The Night League by the Gaming Club is a raging success amongst our shining Knights.

We told you life after 6 on campus is all fun and games with enough food for thought!

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Football Team of SRM University-AP

There is a famous saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Therefore, here at SRM University-AP, students are always encouraged to go beyond the limits of curricular activities. The Students of SRM-AP have proven to be all-rounders by winning several cups in various segments of different Inter-College Sports Meet. VIT-AP and MVR College of Engineering and Technology have recently organised the Inter College Sports in their respective campuses. Students of SRM-AP merrily participated and successfully bagged winner’s trophy in football and cricket and the runner-up trophy in lawn tennis in Vitopia, Sports Tournament of VIT-AP. They have also secured the winner’s trophy in cricket, and the runner-up trophy in badminton in the Inter-college Sports Championship organised by MVR College of Engineering and Technology.

Giving leads to aspirational scholars

Dr. Monika Setia, Regional Officer, Fulbright India, United States-India Educational Foundation, visited SRM University, Andhra Pradesh for a talk on the fellowships offered by the foundation. This binational body is renowned for attracting the best minds and providing them the adequate infrastructure to bring out exemplary research results. The fellowships are equally funded by the foundation and the government of India under the flagship of Fulbright-Nehru fellowships for Indian citizens. Every year among hundreds of applicants, few scholars with exceptional acumen are sent to the United States to pursue research in collaboration with the US-based universities and institutes.

Dr. Monika speaks of the 4 primary activities of Fulbright, which is to administer, promote dialogue between participants, offer advice to aspirants, and establish links between the US and India. She emphasizes, “Looking beyond academic excellence, Fulbright fosters cultural exchange between the two nations. The culturally adaptable interdisciplinary researchers driven to contribute to the society, community, and nationality are curated by the selection panelists of Fulbright”.

The attendees of the session were given a heads up regarding several fellowship programs dedicated to master’s students, doctoral students, and post-doctoral scholars. The process of application, eligibility criteria, project timelines were thoroughly explained to the faculty and Ph.D. scholars of SRM AP, adhering to which will escalate their chance of being selected for the prestigious fellowship. The fellowship will give foreign exposure to the scholars, enable them to work with excellent infrastructure in the US, and use their research inferences to improve the society as a whole, across national boundaries.

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Cost-effective solution to Global Warming

Renowned publishing house Elsevier is publishing Energy Saving Coating Materials-Design, Process, Implementation and Recent Developments (1st Edition), a book edited by Dr Goutam Kumar Dalapati, Associate Professor, Department of Physics, SRM University- AP and Dr Mohit Sharma, Scientist, A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research), Singapore. The book is about their collaborative research on Thermal Management with the application of coating materials.

Countries in tropical and temperate belts such as India, Australia, Middle Eastern and African countries receive most of the sunlight. The heat generation is naturally high in these countries. Studies show that the usage of air-conditioner is also very high in these countries to maintain the desired comfort in both home and office spaces. “Air-conditioners need a huge amount of electricity to be operational. Statistics says, globally, out of hundred units of electricity, almost 35-40 units are used for air-conditioning for either heating or cooling purposes. It also has other drawbacks as it generates air-pollutants which aid in global warming. Our Study in the lab of A*STAR shows that even a one-degree change in the air-conditioner’s temperature settings can save a significant amount of electricity. In our study, we have focused on ways of passive cooling, i.e. how the indoor comfort can be maintained without electricity.” Dr Dalapati said.

Dr Dalapati’s book is about developing new materials and process which can effectively reduce temperature inside the buildings. With a vision of having zero-emission buildings in the future, this book focuses on materials, interactions of these materials with sunlight, and then how these materials can be used productively to reduce the temperature in a building, minimising the thermal budget. His team has proposed different type of materials along with different type of techniques. One of those innovative techniques is, Solar Smart Film, which he has a patent for. When applied on the glass, Solar Smart Film is an effective coating material to block the infra-red radiation, which causes the heat, and it allows the visible light only. When applied on concrete, the coating (cool paint) reduces the heat there too. This smart film can reduce the increment of temperature from 2 to 10 degrees centigrade. The usual product available in the market is silver based, hence highly priced. Dr Dalapati’s team has replaced silver-based products with alternative materials like copper or copper-like materials which are cheap in cost, environmentally stable, non-toxic and can be found easily. The process to develop low cost solar films is also explained in his book.

When asked how the idea of publishing a book came to his mind, Dr Dalapati replied, “At first, we published a 100-page article on a similar topic in Progress in Materials Science, a reputed International Review Journal with an Impact Factor of 23.72. Later we thought of publishing a book because whereas an article’s reach is limited within the researchers only, through a book many more people will come to know about our research and its impact on the well-being of the society. It will help in creating a general awareness among common people as well as young minds like high school and college students will be provided with opportunities for brain-storming.”

Dr Dalapati is currently busy in making his product commercially available. He is also developing apparatus for human applications, which will protect the body from thermal heat waves in summer. A patent application has been filed to the Government of India in this regard. In the Future, he also plans to publish further editions of this book where more complex problems will be discussed.