New Delhi, Mar 22 (ENA) IIT Kharagpur teams received the highest number of laurels among 276 participating universities and institutes across the country at the Gandhian Young Technology Innovation (GYTI) award ceremony held recently at Rashtrapati Bhawan here.

GYTI 2016 was a pan India competition with over 2363 innovation entries in 50 technology domains from 276 Universities/Institutes belonging to 26 states and 2 Union territories, an official release from IIT Kharagpur said.

After four rounds of evaluation 19 teams were selected for innovation awards and 24 for appreciation.  Of the 19 awards, 15 awardees in "Medical and Biotech" innovations category received DBT sponsored (BITAC-SRISTI) grant of Rs. 15 lakhs each to further their prototypes.

All awards that IIT Kharagpur bagged were for "Medical and Biotech" innovations which received grants worth Rs 15 lakhs each.  In addition, the institution received appreciation under "Engineering" category.

The top seven institutes that bagged laurels at the event were IIT Kharagpur (3 Awards, 1 Appreciation), IIT Kanpur (2 Awards, 1 Appreciation), IIT Madras (1 Award, 2 Appreciations), IISc Bangalore, IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay (2 Awards), and IIT Hyderabad (1 Award, 1 Appreciation).

IIT Kharagpur received three BITAC-STISTI awards under "Medical and Biotech" innovations. One was for simple cost-effective titanium foam for skeletal tissue reunion with a team that included Kausik Kapat and Pavan Kumar Srivas under guidance of Prof. Santanu Dhara (SMST).

Another was for energy efficient combined process of microbial fuel cell (MFC) and membrane bioreactor (MBR) for high efficiency and reliable treatment of organic wastewater.  The team for this innovation comprised Sreemoyee Ghosh Ray and Gourav Dhar Bhowmick under guidance of Prof. M. M. Ghangrekar (Civil).

The third award was for a flexible, biodegradable and anti-microbial new advanced form of Intra Uterine Contraceptive Device (IUCD) by Bhuvaneshwaran Subramanian under guidance of Prof. Sujoy K Guha (SMST).

Appreciation under "Engineering" innovations was given for cost effective mechanical testing equipment for characterising creep behaviour of materials under combined tension-torsion loading by Vineesh K P and Manish Dev under guidance of Prof. Vikranth Racherla (Mechanical).  (ENA Bureau)