The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) has assigned 200 projects to its students across the nation related to novel coronavirus encouraging them to participate and try help control the pandemic in the country. V. Ramgopal Rao, director of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, told Times Higher Education that their start-ups and teams of faculty/student are in the forefront to fight Covid-related technological issues.

He cited their work in personal protective equipment (PPE), low-cost ventilators, detection technologies and analytic tools and said that almost every week for the past two months, a new technology or solution for fighting COVID has been provided by an IITian.

On April 23, IIT Delhi announced that it became the first higher education institution to receive approval from the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) for a polymerase chain reaction test for Covid-19 to scale up testing in India after all the states were asked not to use testing kits from China due to its quality issues. Professor Rao expects the testing kits to be out soon adding that the test will be probe free and low cost. IIT Delhi is issuing non-exclusive licenses to about a half-dozen companies.

Source: Times Higher Education