Pollution sensors and black carbon study earn 2 IISc professors Infosys awards

BENGALURU: Imagine your

smartphone

alerting you about air pollution hotspots. This could well become a reality once IISc professor Navakanta Bhat’s innovation is implemented.


Bhat, one of the six persons selected for this year’s Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) awards, has developed novel biosensors which can detect pollutants and dangerous gases in the air and send real-time phone alerts to road users about pollution levels at various traffic junctions. These sensors are likely to be deployed across Bengaluru in a year’s time.

Bhat, a professor and chairperson of the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, IISc, has won the annual award in the ‘Engineering and Computer Sciences’ category. “Though many people are aware of rising pollution levels today, there is not much clarity on the concentration of dangerous gasses and key pollutants such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere ,” he told TOI.

“With gas sensors, your cellphone will be able to tell you the levels of these key pollutants in the air as you begin to approach a traffic junction, and also give you a list of air pollution hotspots. We have created a tiny chip which can detect these polluting gases and are currently carrying out field tests for the same. In the next year or so, we plan to commercialise this in collaboration with the state government and industry players. The vision is that every traffic intersection in the city and across the country should have such sensors deployed and the information gathered by them can be accessed via Bluetooth on smartphones,” said Bhat, who is from Belagavi in Karnataka.

Bhat has been conferred with several accolades in the past, including the Dr Abdul Kalam Technology Innovation National Fellowship (2018) and the Prof Rustom Choksi Award for Excellence in Research in Science and Engineering (2017).

Black carbon

and climate change

Another professor from IISc’s Centre for Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences, SK Satheesh, received the award in the ‘Physical Sciences’ category for his work in the field of climate change. “We are currently working on understanding the effects of light-absorbing black carbon particles which can act as a warming agent if they are present in large quantities in the stratosphere. This will affect regional climate such as monsoon and cloud formation. Vehicular emissions, in fact, account for nearly 40 per cent of the black carbon concentration across India today. In Bengaluru too, the presence of these particles ranges between 50 and 100 microgm/m3 of air at various locations, while WHO standards prescribe a concentration not greater than 60 microgm/m3,” said Satheesh.

Satheesh is currently the director of Divecha Centre for Climate Change and executive director of South Asia regional office for the Future Earth initiative. Originally from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Satheesh has been living in Bengaluru for the past 20 years.

The ISF awards recognise the achievements of the recipients in science and research in six categories — Engineering and Computer Sciences, Humanities, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Social Sciences. This year, the prize will include a gold medal, a citation and a taxfree prize purse of $100,000 (around Rs 72 lakh). The prizes will be distributed at an event slated to be held in the city in January.