National Centre for Biosensors to be set up at Alagappa University

Office of Principal Scientific Advisor to fund it

Karaikudi

Sudeesh Kumar Vasudeva, Consultant, Defence Technologies, Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor (PSA) to the Government of India, New Delhi, has said the office of PSA would be willing to fund for the promotion of a National Centre of Excellence for Biosensors at the Alagappa University.

Addressing the three-day international conference on ‘Nanomaterials Driven Advances in Chemical and BioSensors (NanoSe 2019),’ which drew to a close on Friday, he said biosensors played a vital role in the security applications in addition to several other areas and the university could chip in with the promotion of biosensors.

“Nano-biosensors made of nanomaterials are very sensitive and surpass even the intelligent sniffer dogs,” he said.

Miniaturised portable high performance biosensors were essential in the areas of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and Advanced Defence Technologies, he said.

Addressing the conference, organised by the Department of Bioelectronics and Biosensors in association with the Biosensor Society of India (BSI) and Materials Research Society of India (MRSI), Trichy Chapter, N. Rajendran, Vice-Chancellor, Alagappa University, said the university was willing to support Start Ups and venture businesses – both financially and logistically to promote device designs and developments.

He said the University’s Department of Biosensors covered subjects such as physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, electronics engineering, agriculture and food technology, environmental monitoring, and defence technology.

The department has produced several sensors which could be scaled up and marketed in the near future, he said.

Stressing the need for an interdisciplinary research for innovation and product development, he said this would go a long way in the era of Industry 4.0 – the fourth industrial revolution towards automation and data exchange. The Vice-Chancellor released a compendium containing research articles on the occasion.

Stating that there was greater demand for sensors in the day-to-day life, Prof. C. Raman Suri, Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT) Ropar, said there were different types of sensors, which helped to operate smart phones and various electronic gadgets. The global sensor market was growing at a compound annual growth rate of 9.5% and the trend would sustain till 2025, he said.