On June 28, IITGN concluded its second edition of Invent@IITGN – a unique six-week annual summer programme in inventing which was started for the first time in India by the institute during the summer of 2018. Selected students of IITs from across the country gather at IITGN to ideate, build and prototype their inventions. These inventions address a real societal or consumer need, and are designed to be feasible and practical in terms of safety, size, weight and cost. The programme was initiated started in 2013 in the US at The Cooper Union by Prof Alan Wolf and Prof Eric Lima.
A total of 28 students were selected from nine IITs across the country including IIT Bombay, IIT Dhanbad, IIT Dharwad, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Goa, IIT Guwahati, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras and IIT Palakkad. The students were divided into 14 teams of two members each. In these six weeks, students conceived an invention, its prototype, pitched, wrote and proceeded to file a provisional patent application in India. They will subsequently file their US patent application in the upcoming weeks.
Prabal Vashisht and Parul Sangwan (IIT Palakkad) won the ‘Best Invention’ prize, winning a prize money of ₹2 lakh. R Nambilakshmi (IIT Bombay) and Prathmesh Deshmukh (IIT Kharagpur) won the ‘Second Best Invention’ prize, winning a prize money of ₹1 lakh. The ‘Third Best Innovation’ prize was won by Samruddhi Pataskar and Kalash Nibjiya (IIT Kharagpur) won a prize money of ₹50,000.
It feels really good to win the first prize, seated in front of eminent people and talking to them about our invention. The hard work paid off. There were many ups and downs, and we made four prototypes in the process of making this final invention prototype. This programme has enabled all of us how to think about, develop and patent a product. We will definitely make people join this programme next time.
Prabal Vashisht & Parul SangwanIt was an outstanding journey in Invent@IITGN 2019. We decided to work on a non-technical product to solve the problem of food packaging and made several prototypes before this final design, which is completely leak-proof. We got tremendous support and facilities here at IITGN at every stage. It feels great to develop and pitch a commercially-viable product in six weeks and winning the prize.
R Nambilakshmi & Prathmesh DeshmukhWe are feeling really good to win a prize at Invent@IITGN. We have learnt a lot here! We have met our best mentors in life so far who have trained us for so many things in such a short time span viz. presentations, technical writing, team work, and patience. We will take back all these traits with us from here.
Samruddhi Pataskar & Kalash NibjiyaAll the 14 teams were allocated a budget of ₹50,000 for materials, free access to on-campus equipment like laser cutters, 3D printers, machine shops and machinists to support their inventions. The teams worked directly with Professors Alan Wolf and Eric Lima for the first four weeks, alongside IITGN professors Vineet Vashista, Madhu Vadali and Nithin George. The participants of the programme also received a stipend of ₹10,000 and a certificate of participation.
Other inventions included a storage device to protect spoilage of fruits and vegetables without the use of refrigeration, an automatic device to monitor glucose level and ensure proper dose of insulin, patient transfer tool for the disabled as a wheelchair add-on, Sun protect: a smart sun visor for driving comfort on sunny days, an automatic pill dispenser system for patients with mild dementia, dehydration monitor: a smartwatch to monitor dehydration and warn users, a smart and foldable bicycle carrier add-on, device to clean inexpensive reusable sanitary pads, Heal_IT: a complete wound care device, an emergency food for disaster relief to provide nutritional food under emergency conditions and a robot arm to feed people with disability.
About Invent 2.0
Invent@IITGN is a unique six-week annual summer programme in inventing, which was started for the first time in India at IITGN during the summer of 2018. As a part of this programme, selected students of IITs from across the country gather at IITGN to ideate, build and prototype their inventions. These inventions address a real societal or consumer need and are designed to be feasible and practical in terms of safety, size, weight and cost. The participating students are mentored by Cooper Union Professors Alan Wolf and Eric Lima, alongside IITGN professors Vineet Vashista, Madhu Vadali and Nithin George, on how to invent and develop their ideas into practice. Over the course of six weeks, students present their ideas to different evaluators every week and utilise the comments and suggestions to further improve their inventions. Towards the end of the programme, the students participate in a competition where a panel of distinguished designers, inventors, engineers and patent attorneys choose the best inventions. Besides, all the participating teams also write and file provisional patent applications, first with the Indian and later with the US Patent and Trademark offices.
