Faculty Awards

National Institute of Technology (NIT) Rourkela has been awarded two research projects under the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) of the Ministry of Education, Government of India, with a duration of two years.

The first SPARC project, “Smart Exoskeletons in Healthcare: Principle and Practices for Developing Scalable Exosuits for Rural Applications” (₹95.16 lakh), is led by Dr. Anup Nandy, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, as Principal Investigator (PI), with Dr. Ratnakar Dash, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, as Co-PI. The project is being implemented in collaboration with the University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA, with Prof. Mukul Mukherjee as Foreign PI and Prof. Philippe Malcolm as Foreign Co-PI.

This project focuses on developing wearable robotic devices, known as exoskeletons, that assist individuals in regaining or improving mobility following illness or injury. Researchers from NIT Rourkela will be working to design affordable, scalable, easy-to-use exosuits tailored for elderly individuals and post-stroke patients, particularly in local clinical and rural healthcare contexts. The wearable systems aim to support lower-limb movement and use smart sensors and artificial intelligence to analyse patient motion and assist in correcting movement patterns during rehabilitation.

The second SPARC project, “Novel Disruptive Technology: Design and Development of Smart and Sustainable Technology for Agri-Food Systems” (₹87.24 lakh), is led by Dr. Madhuresh Dwivedi, Associate Professor, Department of Food Process Engineering, as PI, with Prof. Rama Chandra Pradhan, Professor, Department of Food Process Engineering, as Co-PI. The international collaboration involves Dr. Anubhav Pratap Singh, Foreign PI from The University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada, and Dr. Anika Singh, Foreign Co-PI affiliated with UBC, Canada, and the British Columbia Institute of Technology, Burnaby, Canada.

This project aims to develop a simple, rapid, and non-destructive technology for assessing the quality and safety of agri-food products, without cutting, cooking, or chemically testing them. Scientists will be collaborating to create a smart sensing system that uses mild electrical signals to evaluate food quality, similar in principle to a medical scan, but applied to food products. By making food testing quicker, more reliable, and field-deployable, the project seeks to improve food safety, reduce wastage, and support farmers, food processors, and consumers, particularly in resource-limited environments.