MIT's DESHPANDE CENTER ANNOUNCES FALL 2009 RESEARCH GRANTS

The fall 2009 grant recipients are: MEMS for Large Area and Flexible Applications : Vladimir Bulovic A flexible paper thin micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) array that can be used for sensing and actuation over large surfaces. Device for Treatment of Cerebral Edema : Michael Cima A drug delivery device to treat brain edema with reduced systemic side-effects typical of conventional treatments.Stable Inorganic-Organic Hybrid Light Emitting Diodes : Karen Gleason Long-lived LEDs on flexible substrates providing energy efficient portable displays. (Renewal from Fall 2008 grant round.) A Novel Device for Label-free Cell Rolling Separation : Rohit Karnik and Jeffrey KarpA device for separating cells that could be used for the monitoring and diagnosis of a wide variety of diseases. A Wearable Sensor for Continuous Glucose Monitoring for Diabetics : Michael Strano A carbon nanotube based, minimally invasive, tissue implantable, glucose sensor. The sensor will allow continuous glucose monitoring for diabetes patients, resulting in improved glucose regulation and better health. Chemical Production of Functionalized Graphene for Enhanced Composite Materials : Timothy Swager The development of a chemical process to produce graphene at a very reasonable cost, leading to the industrial use of new composite materials. Nano-engineered Surfaces for Ultra High Power Density Thermal Management : Kripa Varanasi Heat needs to be removed rapidly from high power electronics or the semiconductors will fail. This project will develop a system to very rapidly dissipate large amount of heat from such devices.New Antibiotic Target : Graham WalkerA project to attempt to isolate lead compounds to develop a new antibiotic.

Schneider Electric Innovation Challenge 2009

Innovation Challenge 2009 closes by October 21st. List of topics:
Power monitoring system for a house
Constructive re-use of waste energy
Intelligent Sensors
Efficient electrical distribution
Power consumption by computers connected on a network.
For details : http://www.schneider-electric.co.in/sites/india/en/group/ic/contest.page

Eclipse open source foundation

Eclipse is an open source community, whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle. The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member supported corporation that hosts the Eclipse projects and helps cultivate both an open source community and an ecosystem of complementary products and services.
The Eclipse Project was originally created by IBM in November 2001 and supported by a consortium of software vendors. The Eclipse Foundation was created in January 2004 as an independent not-for-profit corporation to act as the steward of the Eclipse community.

Patent Lens

Patent Lens is a worldwide, open-access, free full-text patent informatics resource. It serves as the cyberinfrastructure platform for the Initiative for Open Innovation. Some interesting features:

Search technology now independent of language; Chinese (中文) PCTs now fully text-searchable. Search for lapsed, abandoned or expired US Patents. Visualize Patent Families with new graphical trees as PDFs. Patent Landscapes on Influenza Genes, Rice Genome and Adjuvants now online. Protein & DNA Sequence searching of over 77 million sequences from worldwide patent collections.

This initiative is from Cambia, founded by Richard Jefforson, Molecular Biologist at FAO.

Dubzer

Dubzer works in sync with customers existing website and allows them to choose the content that should be modified, define the translation process at a webpage level, and publish all updates on demand. The founding team ( Anjali Gupta, Santosh Dawara )has in its past introduced innovative award-winning products in the Web and Natural Languages domain. These include products such as Lipikaar (www.lipikaar.com) a patented content creation product that has been used by over 25,000 content writers in 18 languages. Lipikaar won the Manthan Award South Asia 2008 for it’s simplicity and mass-appeal, and was featured by the Times of India, DNA, and CNBC TV18.

Capillary Technologies

Capillary Technologies , Bangalore based start-up ,is an end to end CRM solution provider currently serving 400 stores in more than 75 cities across the length and breadth of country.Products include card less loyalty program in touch.

BIOSYM 2009

BIOSYM 2009 , The Symposium on Life Sciences and Technology provides a forum for the researchers from academia and industry to discuss and present the latest technological advances and results. BIOSYM 2009 will be held during 27– 28th of November 2009 at the National Science Seminar Complex, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. There will be an exhibition in concurrence to the symposium showcasing the best of Instrumentation/Equipment for Life Sciences fraternity. contact:
P.M. RavinderProject CoordinatorBiosym 2009 Secretariat
C/o Winmedia Communications Pvt. Ltd.,120,G-Floor, Cunningham Road, Bangalore 560052
+91 80 2234 2611 +91 80 2234 2612
+91 80 2234 2613
+91 90360 36022
pmr@biosym.
www.biosym.in

International Entrepreneurship Challenge

Entrepreneurship cell, Faculty of Management Studies, IIT Mumbai is launching International Entrepreneurship Challenge on 25th of Sept 2009. Watch out:
http://www.ecell-fms.org/

nano satellites

ISRO succesfully lunched OceansatII - designed to identify new fishing regions in the oceans, as well as four other tiny CubeSats: two German , one Turkish and one from Switzerland.

We can expect more and more student designed nano satellites with Cubesat standard and kits

2009 Global clean tech 100 list

The Guardian and Cleantech Group, annouced the Global Cleantech 100 – the first ever list of this scale highlighting the most promising private clean technology companies around the world. See the list:
http://cleantech.com/news/awards/globalcleantech100

villgro Innohub

Villgro Innohub invites innovators ( max 30) to participate in this unique event in Chennai, where they will get an opportunity to meet potential business partners and investors. Agriculture, energy,water are the 3 sectors. Villgro (formerly known as Rural Innovation Network) is working to provide planned face to face interaction between innovators and their potential partners in such a way to maximize the chances of a business deal.
Last date for application:21st October 2009. event date: 11th &12th December 2009.
contact: Rajeev Surana, 9381755790(M)

Benchmarking IT competitiveness 2009

The report from Economist Intelligence Unit on global ranking of nations competitiveness places India at 44 of 66 nations. India does not figure in top 20 in any category other than Human Capital. As expected India scores 2nd lowest on IT infrastructure, a shade better than Bangladesh. Can be seen as opportunity area for investors due to low penetration of broadband / internet. Also known but generally ignored is our limited strength in R&D-India's 2nd lowest score is on R&D environment.
Any suggestions on improving our ranking in this critical area?

Global water challenge competition

Winners announced for this competition organised by Ashoka's change makers and Global water challenge on innovative approaches to providing access to safe drinking water and sanitation.
details :http://www.changemakers.com/en-us/node/1828/finalists

Foundation for MSME clusters

The Foundation for MSME Clusters was conceptualised to contribute towards the process of cluster based development of MSMEs and thus enhance their competitiveness, generate sustainable employment and alleviate poverty. At the suggestion of the Ministry of Small Scale Industries, Government of India, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) conceptualised and initiated the process of creating the Foundation for MSME Clusters. Subsequently, the Foundation was legally constituted as a non-government, non-profit registered trust under the auspices of the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI), Ahmedabad, in the year 2005.

The institute has been awarded a project by DST to develop sustainable model for Innovation clusters. Under Phase-2, proposals are invited from entrepreneurs, academic and research institutes.
Details: http://innovationclusters.org/proposals.html

Innovation for India awards 2010

Marico Innovation Foundation (www.maricoinnovationfoundation.org) will hold its 3^rd edition of the Innovation for India Awards to be held on 12^th March 2010 in Mumbai. Any Indian company, social organization, government body and/or individuals who have successfully conceptualized and nurtured a brilliant idea, made it work and brought it to market is eligible to participate.

The three categories under which Innovation will be awarded are – Business Innovation (Products/Services, Business Model and Innovation in social space by a business organisation) and Social Innovation (innovation by a social organisation). Public Services Innovation (innovations by Central or State governments or any wing of the government including public-private partnership) The Award winners will get felicitated in Mumbai in the presence of industry stalwarts and some of the best innovators in the country. Besides cash prize of Rs 1 lakh, the Foundation would also extend its illustrious Governing Council’s support as mentors to the winners and a platform with VCs and angel investors.

To apply for the Awards visit http://www.maricoinnovationfoundation.org/.

The wall Street Journal 2009 technology innovation awards

Vihaan Networks Limited (VNL) promoted by Telecom veteran Rajiv Mehrotra won the bronze prize in the WSJ 2009 Technology Innovation awards for their solar powered GSM base station. Read details:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574399714096167656.html

WRENCH Enterprise for NPD

Wrench Enterprise is one of the commercial firms supported by TDB, which so far provided more than Rs 1000/- crores as soft loans for technology commercialisation. Wrench , started with Project Life Cycle Management for engineering and manufacturing sector, is one of the successful firms. The product range includes product for NPD (New Product Development). Read the L&T case.

kafgon novel herbal remedy for cough

As she is getting older, Mrs Raj Katyal of Jalandhar gets concerned about health- of others. She inherited traditional knowledge for herbal treatment of several common problems like cough from her forefathers and did not want the knowledge to disappear with her. After a period of hesitation, she subjected her work to validation by scientific community. The result is scientifically validated unique herbal product , tested at NIPER , funded under TePP of DSIR and released in market by Synkrom Healthcare.
Kafgaon, patented and registered under Trade Mark contains a unique mixture of 5 herbs- Acorus calamus (vach), Alpina galanga (Kulanjan), Psoralea corylifolia (Bavchi), Piper nigrum (Kaali Mirch) and Piper longum (Pippli).

The geography of Innovation

Read the advocacy paper on President Obama's proposal to support regional clusters in USA. Authors- Jonathan Sallet and Ed Paisley.
courtesy: science progress

Philips designed Chula gets Index 2009 award

Philips designed Chulha creates a safer environment for indoor cooking in several ways.

• It traps smoke and heat inside a locally cast housing in such a way as to heat two pot-holes with a high rate of efficiency to require less fuel;

• It then directs the smoke through a chimney chamber that includes a stack of slotted clay tablets – they capture particulates as the smoke moves through, cleaning the exhaust before it ever leaves the assembly; and

• The Chulha’s chimney then includes an indoor access for cleaning, eliminating the need seen in previous devices for a family member, usually the mother, to climb on the roof and attempt cleaning. This has been blamed for many accidents, along with the toxicity of the smoke.

Stefano Marzano, CEO and Chief Creative Director for Philips Design (who developed the Chulha) says that Philips Design will spend the award on further supporting the availability of the Chulha in India.