IIT-Hyderabad students win Samsung Innovation Awards

​Hyderabad: Samsung India conducted the eight editions of the Samsung Innovation Awards 2018 at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hyderabad in association with its Entrepreneurship Cell. Samsung Innovation Awards aim to recognise and reward innovations that have the potential to revolutionise everyday living.

The first prize went to Kannan Chandrasekaran for his self-learning bot that can read through and understand data in an extremely short time and provide responses for questions asked about that data in any form or language, making it easy for users to find information in an easy manner. 

The second prize went to V Sushmitha, Anand Kadu and Sushmee Badhulika for developing a low cost platform for personal healthcare that is enabled by easily available devices such as a smartphone and could be mounted on a wearable device as well. The vision of the team is to enable easily accessible and low cost healthcare in remote parts of India. 

A team comprising G Hanu Phani Ram, Praveen Kumar Poola and Prasanth Panta won the third prize for their idea of using a smartphone-based method to study cells for early detection of oral cancers.

The awards were presented by Aloknath De, Senior Vice President, Samsung R&D Institute, India – Bangalore. The top three winners received prizes worth INR 1.5 lakh, INR 1.2 lakh and INR 80,000 respectively, while the other four finalists received awards of merit from Samsung. 

This year’s awards received a strong response, with 22 teams submitting their ideas. The final teams demonstrated their projects to jury comprising Dr. Aloknath De, MV Panduranga Rao, Associate Professor and Head, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Hyderabad and Dr. Ajit Bopardikar, Senior Chief Engineer, SRI-B during the course of the event.

“Since its inception eight years ago, Samsung Innovation Awards have witnessed highly creative solutions with great technological and social applications. Bright young minds of the country need to choose impactful problems think of innovative solutions and pursue step-by-step implementation. This year too, students of IIT-Hyderabad have submitted powerful ideas that made short listing winners a difficult yet delightful challenge. Samsung has been supporting deep-tech innovation over the years and we believe such opportunities alongside joint courses and emerging technology labs at top institutions will help take our vision forward,” said Aloknath De, Senior Vice President, Samsung R&D Institute, India – Bangalore.

The 8th edition of Samsung Innovation Awards was initiated seven months ago. Students from IIT-Hyderabad were invited to submit their innovative ideas in IoT and related technology areas. The short listing process was jointly conducted by professors from IIT-Hyderabad and researchers from SRI-B, who selected the seven finalists. 

The winning projects were selected based on the degree of implementation of the proposal, prototype implementation, final product realization, business/market impact and the demo.  “Established in the year 2008, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH) has taken huge strides in research and education. Invention and innovation has been the governing vision for IIT-H. 

Over the past 3 years, IIT-H has an active collaboration with Samsung India on various academic activities, including jointly offered courses and hands on labs. This year, Samsung Innovation Awards is being conducted here and the spirit and theme of this event is very well aligned with our vision. We are grateful to Samsung India for the continuing collaboration,” said Professor Antony Franklin, Faculty Member at IIT-Hyderabad.

Samsung Innovation Awards, which was conceptualized in 2011, seeks to support and encourage young talent who showcase an innovative approach, improvise different systems and processes and develop indigenous products, services and sustainable solutions that can benefit society.

Over the years, it has become one of the most eagerly awaited ideation contests at IITs due to enthusiastic participation from the student community. The last edition in 2017, held at IIT-Kanpur, had also witnessed great interest from students. Samsung continues to provide the next generation of Indian innovators and entrepreneurs an avenue to showcase and advance their engineering and innovation skills.