NIT Silchar Fights COVID-19 Pandemic

Circulars/Notices

Research Activities

Expected Outcome: Design and development of movable Covid-19 disinfection chamber based on UV irradiation

Expected Timeline: The desired disinfecting chamber can be produced within two weeks upon arrival of the raw materials/components
Remarks: At the current trying time, the COVID-19 pandemic is the global threat which transcends territorial, political, religious, cultural, and definitely academic boundaries. Healthcare workers and biologists are at the frontline, working for mitigating the outbreak of the disease. Although the current challenge apparently seems far from the physical scientists and engineers who generally deal with inanimate objects, there is a scope for them to contribute to this global crisis. To address this challenge, herein, we plan to set up a movable Covid-19 disinfection chamber operated by UV-C light (wavelength of 200-280 nm in the electromagnetic spectrum) that has been known for long to disinfect a variety of substances including food and water. It works by its germicidal effects, destroying microorganisms such as virus, bacteria by cleaving their DNA structures upon absorption of UV. The intensity of UV-C light and exposure time will be adjusted depending on the dimension of the chamber and the amount of substances to be cleaned. The designed chamber is made of plywood and comprising of wheels that make the system movable and the dimension of the chamber is restricted to 6??6??8?. The current approach is powerful and more convenient in terms of its low cost and non-invasive nature, in comparison to existing wet-chemical methods. This chamber can be used to disinfect a variety of daily used items including groceries, vegetables, wallet, currency, spectacles, luggage, books, pen, mobile phones, wristwatches, leather shoes, specifically the items which are susceptible to be damaged by detergent washing or other wet chemical methods. However, the present approach can only be applicable to disinfect the non-living objects.
Additional Info
PI Details : Dr. S. S. Dhar, Dr. M. A. Zaman, Dr. P. Barman, Dr. N. S. Moyon, Dr. B. N. Ghosh, Dr. B. Adhikari Department of Chemistry National Institute of Technology Silchar Silchar-788010
PI Email id: siddharthashankardhar@gmail.com
Expected Outcome: Affordable sanitizer

Expected Timeline: Already developed
Remarks: Distributed among the faculty, staff and office use of NIT Silchar
Additional Info
PI Details : Dr. SumitBhowmik, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Silchar, Assam, India. and Mr. Krushna Gouda Research scholar Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Silchar, Assam, India
PI Email id: sumit@mech.nits.ac.in; bhowmiksumit04@yahoo.co.in
Expected Outcome: Due to the pandemic like COVID-19 it is necessary to isolate and quarantine the patients to inhibit the spread of the pandemic. Our objective is the development of a system which we can effectively monitor the patient health data, access the data remotely using a GUI based web application and real-time tracking of patient's location and raise a breach alert when the patient wanders out of the specified unrestricted area. The system includes a device which is strapped on the patient so the entire solution is non-invasive. The device includes a GPS module for triangulating the location of the patient, Temperature and ECG Sensors for collecting health data and a microcontroller for processing and transmitting the data wirelessly to the server. The server hosts a Web-app which enables the users to visualize the data through its GUI enriched interface. The system also facilitates the real-time tracking of the patient's location and updates it on the server. If the quarantined patient steps out of the designated area space, an SOS signal is immediately sent to the server and all the responsible authorities are notified pf the breach. Through this system, we aim at containing the patients to a safe-space while keeping track of the health and thus preventing the further spread of the pandemic due to the affected individuals.

Expected Timeline: 30 days or less
Remarks: For development of the prototype the device and the GUI based web-app, successful testing and recording of the test data-sets from the patients to set up the database and deploying the server and it's testing.
URL: https://youtu.be/JY42rCO9mYw
Additional Info
PI Details : Dr. Koushik Guha, Assistant Professor (Grade I), Electronics and Communication Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology Email: koushikguha2009@gmail.com Mob: 9435072274
PI Email id: koushikguha2009@gmail.com
Expected Outcome: A progressive web application (PWA) aimed at consumers and hotel owners to optimize the costs pertaining in the operations, post COVID-19 pandemic situation. Due to the imposed 40 day lockdown for the public safety, various industries are currently in loss and would be finding an optimal solution to this problem. We, in this project, will design a novel technique to monitor the variable costs viz. Electricity consumption, Water consumption, etc. and give an optimization solution for a viable operation in a hotel. The technique will be mapped through a PWA with the enterprise owner and the consumer as well, to monitor the consumption details in real time through IOT sensors. The novelty of the idea lies in the automatic transition of manual optimization to automatic using Deep Neural Networks to enhance the performance, once we have obtained a minimum amount of data. The PWA, unlike usual applications, requires a lot less resources to function.

Expected Timeline: 60 days or less
Remarks: A prototype of the PWA and related IOT hardware can be ready for the trial implementation and data acquiring within the designated timeline

URL: https://youtu.be/kKN5zYvZGpU
Additional Info
PI Details : Dr. Koushik Guha, Assistant Professor (Grade I), Electronics and Communication Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology Email: koushikguha2009@gmail.com Mob: 9435072274
PI Email id: koushikguha2009@gmail.com
Expected Outcome: This outcome would help at what environmental conditions this Covid-19 favorably grows or affects the human, and necessary precautionary measure could be taken by the citizen or Govt. to break the chain and thereby helping to mitigate such human disaster consequences

Expected Timeline: 1 year
Remarks: As per WHO, the whole world has an emerging health risk of the epidemic and there is a need to assess the transmission dynamics of influenza due to Covid-19 so that the necessary precautions and care could be taken to contain it. The incubation rate and reproduction rate concerning the different atmospheric conditions prevailing across the globe are to be assessed to reduce the medical surge.
Additional Info
PI Details : Dr. Arjun SilDept of Civil Engineering NIT Silchar, Assam, India, 788010
PI Email id: silarjun@gmail.com, arjun@civil.nits.ac.in
Expected Outcome: This research work will be beneficial not only to prevent the spread / infection of COVID 19 but also other pandemic diseases in future

Expected Timeline: 06-08 Months
Additional Info
PI Details : Dr. Malaya Dutta Borah Assistant Professor Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, NIT Silchar, Assam
PI Email id: malayaduttaborah@gmail.com, malayaduttaborah@cse.nits.ac.in
Conference Publication : States Categorization in India Based on Health Security Capacity with Machine Learning Technique by D Ashmita Roy Medha (B.Tech(CSE) 7th Sem) , Malaya Dutta Borah and Zakir Hussain (PhD Scholar) accepted in the International Conference on Data Science, Machine Learning & Applications (ICDSMLA 2020)
Book Chapter : Forecasting Probable Spread Estimation of COVID-19 using Exponential Smoothing Technique and Basic Reproduction Number in Indian Context by Zakir Hussain (PhD Scholar) and Malaya Dutta Borah accepted in the edited book "Health Informatics: A Computational Perspective in Healthcare" to be published in Studies in Computational Intelligence

Social Initiative and Outreach Activities

1. NIT Silchar has prepared indigenous hand sanitizer as per WHO guidelines and distributed among security personnel, housekeeping staffs of the institute.
2. Grocery relief distributed to 600 families in nearby adapted villages under Unnat Bharat Abiyan.
3. Grocery relief distributed to 500 families in nearby adapted village by Alumni association of NIT Silchar.
4. Hand sanitizers prepared and distributed to district administration for the local people and people engaged in emergency services.
5. Logistic supplied to district administration in initial phase for quarantine centre.
6. NIT Silchar through the students of the Gyansagar unit of the institute had taken an initiative to prepare homemade masks and distribute them to the local villagers.
7. NITS Silchar student fraternity have generously donated Rs. 6.74 Lakhs in PM Care fund for fight against COVID 19 Pandemic.

Student Activities


A Short Film on Lockdown - Advay, Dramatic Club, NIT Silchar



Gyansagar Report on COVID-19 and Foundation Week of Gyansagar
Eco Club Report on COVID-19

Lockdown Funk by Dance Club, NIT Silchar



Eco Club organized three online competitions on the occasion of WORLD EARTH DAY 2020 (22/04/2020)

A. Online Article Writing Competition
Theme : Climate Action
Winner :Pushpasri Roy (NIT Silchar)

B. Online Sketch Making Competition
Theme : Face of Nature in Lockdown
Winner :Emon Kalita(NIT Silchar)

C . Online Quiz Competition
Theme : Environment
Winner : Arindam Kashyap Ray , Jalukbari , Guwahati
For more details visit https://www.facebook.com/nitsecoclub/