Summary
Sampad Laha will receive the award conferred by Indian National Academy of Engineering in December
He was also the recipient of the Prime Minister’s Research Fellows (PMRF) Scholarship in 2020
A research scholar from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur has been selected for the Indian National Academy of Engineering’s INAE Innovative Students Project Award 2021.
Sampad Laha has been recognised for his master’s thesis on ‘The Dynamics of Blood on Paper Matrix and its Implication in Point-of-Care Diagnostic’.
Laha has been working to make a point-of-care testing mechanism with the help of fluid mechanics wherein an individual will be able to perform tests for anaemia at home.
“I used to visit rural areas for field projects and there I noticed the lack of diagnostic centres. People had to wait for medical camps or travel to the nearest town for medical tests. That is when I realised that something like this was necessary,” Laha said.
Laha’ s research paper aims to solve this problem.
Suman Chakraborty, professor of mechanical engineering at IIT Kharagpur under whom Laha is a research scholar, explained how the device works. “One will have to put a few drops of blood on the filter paper and wait for the blood to make a pattern on it. The pattern can be scanned with a smartphone app and it will tell whether the patient is anaemic. The result provided will be highly accurate,” Chakraborty said.
“Laha is a hardworking man and what I appreciate about him is that he asks questions. This indicates his willingness to keep learning. His research paper will contribute greatly to the field of diagnostics and bring a revolutionary change in the well-being of the society,” Chakraborty said.
Sampad Laha with professor Suman Chakraborty. IIT KGP
Laha is at present working on inventing a microchip that acts like human body organs and reacts the same way to various medical experiments.
The Indian National Academy of Engineering started the Innovative Students Project Award in 1987 to recognise innovative research projects of engineering students and scholars. The projects/thesis are assessed at three levels — BE/BTech, ME/Mtech and PhD. For each of the three levels, 10 awards are presented to selected candidates.
The cash prize is Rs 25,000 at the doctorate level, Rs 15,000 at the master’s level and Rs 10,000 at the bachelor’s level.
Recipients of the award are inducted into the INAE Annual Convention as “student-members” for five years. The awards will be handed over at the convention held in December.
Last updated on 01 Nov 2021
