Projects by SPPU students win at Anveshan for diabetic wound care and farm mechanisation

Pune: A probiotic-based dressing system for diabetic wounds and a multi-purpose mulching paper-laying machine for farmers were two of the four projects that won students from Savitribai Phule Pune University top awards at Anveshan, west zone research competition. The event was held at Sardar Patel University in Gujarat's Anand on Jan 20 and 21.Anveshan, an initiative by the Association of Indian Universities, aims to identify and nurture the research aptitude of students in higher educational institutes. Some of the selected projects will compete at the national round, dates of which are yet to be announced.
Shivam Deokar and his team's project was born out of necessity. Hailing from farming backgrounds, Shivam and his friends in fourth year of mechanical engineering at Sanjivani College of Engineering, Kopargaon, knew the backbreaking labour required in farming. Deokar's team designed a high-performance, multi-purpose mulching paper-laying machine, which won them the third prize in the agricultural sciences category. The instrument, made within the college workshop, performs four tasks — bed preparation, drip pipe laying, material feeding (fertiliser), and mulching paper bed laying — simultaneously."If a farmer does these activities individually, he or she has to spend Rs 4,500 per acre and it takes almost two-three days to complete manually. If they rent our machine, it will cost them between Rs 1,200 to Rs 1,500, including diesel cost, and can complete the work within three-four hours," said Shivam. Interestingly, Shivam's team already secured the design patent for the machine and applied for a utility patent.Siddhi Joshi and Tanisha Kasbe, third-year B pharmacy students of AISSMS College of Pharmacy, won the first prize in the health sciences category for their probiotic-based dressing system. "If there is an injury in a diabetic patient, especially foot injuries, it becomes very difficult to heal and mostly ends in amputation. The dressing we designed has a special design with two components — the super-absorbent layer and polyurethane foam," said Tanisha.The exudate from the wound is absorbed and transported into the foam using capillary action, while the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), or the drug, is directly applied to the wound. "This API can be in a gel form and incorporated into the foam using a syringe. One needs to change the dressing twice a day," added Tanisha, based on the results they received in their experiments in the laboratory.Vidhi Baldota and Anurag Mehta, who won second prize in the basic sciences category, are third-year students of BSc in physics at Nowrosjee Wadia College. Their project, Predictive Analysis for Human Vision by Biopotential Signals, is a result of three years of hard work, said Vidhi."At first, we wanted to do something with nasal signals, but that did not work out. We have a department for visually impaired students in the college, and every time during exams, they find it hard to get writers. We read more about visual impairment and found that many such cases are preventable if detected at the correct time and if the right medical attention is received. So, we built a system that checks the signals from the eyes and tells the quality of the eye," said Vidhi. At present, they have a small dataset and cannot predict underlying diseases based on the eye signals, but with enough data, Vidhi thinks that one day they can even predict diseases like Parkinson's by analysing eye signals.Rudra Hatte, Srujan Deshmankar, and three other students from Modern College of Engineering's fourth-year batch of AI and data sciences won the second prize in the social sciences, humanities, commerce, business management & law category for their project, My Law Book (www.mylawbook.in). Rudra said the platform allows students and lawyers to simulate moot courts where they can practise arguing their cases, and also has animated videos for common people to understand the Constitution better."We used data from different law colleges to simulate courtroom scenarios where one can argue with an AI lawyer, and finally an AI judge will give the verdict. We are now expanding the dataset to include Supreme Court orders, etc," said Rudra.