IIT Jodhpur creates platform to pursue ‘Moonshot Projects’ on innovative and disruptive ideas

NEW DELHI: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur has created a platform called “Moonshot Projects” to encourage its faculty and researchers to pursue innovative and disruptive ideas. It is a platform where large scale projects can be developed in order to improve health, societal, economic and environmental issues, according to the IIT press release.

“The institute aspires to stimulate new research initiatives to foster creativity and team-building alongside addressing urgent problems and paving the way to a sustainable future,” IIT Jodhpur said in a statement.

Faculty members of the institute organised the “Moonshot competition” for aspirants to present their ideas through a pre-recorded video presentation.

Emphasizing the unique aspects of this innovative platform, Santanu Chaudhury, director, IIT Jodhpur, said, “The main objective of the competition is to encourage a moonshot culture and future-driven mindset in the institute, leading to transformational technologies and effective interventions for responding to societal challenges and aspirations.”

Some of the solution-oriented ideas selected at the Moonshot Competition are given below.

• Debanjan Guha Roy - Harvesting an asteroid microwave assisted rock pulverize and electrostatic separator which is related to space microwave.

Debanjan Roy, assistant professor at IIT Jodhpur, said, “The international community has gradually started accepting the idea of deep space exploration, human settlement in space, and resource generation from celestial bodies.”

“In the past few years, multiple governments and space agencies have invested in developing technology and formulating regulatory frameworks for this purpose. India is in a unique position to leverage its space expertise to pioneer resource exploration on the moon and asteroids. We need strong support from the industry and government to be a leader in this domain,” he added.

• Sumit Kalra - Personal Independent Digital Twin related to AI

Speaking about his innovation, the IIT assistant professor Sumit Kalra said, “Personalized Independent Digital Twin is the next big revolution after the Internet and AI that has the potential to impact our society on each and every level. The intervention can result in highly optimized decision-making and execution of tasks.”

• Sankalp Pratap, Romi, GV Reddy, Dibyadyuti Roy - BRBL (To create countless 'Birbals' through technology intervention in Education) related to education-AI

“BRBL aims to work on the stated ideals of NEP 2020, providing high quality nuanced inputs to children from all strata of society employing innovative technology”, said Sankalp Pratap, IIT Jodhpur.

• Suchetana Chakraborty and Ankita Sharma submitted - ‘ExPoPsych: Experiencing positivity at the face of psychological vulnerability.’ which is related to AI and Psychology.

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