TechConnect 2009: IIT Bombay showcases its innovations

On 4^th April 2009 the Industrial Research and Consultancy Centre (IRCC) of IIT Bombay celebrated TechConnect, an event that showcased the best in IIT Bombay research and innovation. TechConnect, is the first-ever attempt to present a large number of products coming out of various the IIT Bombay's research laboratories and the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) on a single platform.

In recent years, there has been an increasing emphasis at IIT Bombay on creating technology to reach out to the critical social needs of the country, ranging from the field of power generation for rural areas to high-technology areas of nano-scale drug delivery systems.

Currently IITB has over 1300 PhD students and 450 Faculty members working on diverse research problems - one of the largest concentrations of research groups in India. There is substantial innovation beyond the laboratory as well–the SINE houses multiple successful entrepreneurial ventures both by IITB students and IITB alumni. The institute presently holds more than 80 patents in varied streams of engineering.

TechConnect 2009 was designed to optimize the benefits for industries from each major research sector. Each product on display was a part of an industry cluster which is most likely to be benefited by it. The sectors themselves, in totality, represented the most active fields in research today. These sectors are: Energy and Green Technology, Defence, Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals, Automobile and Transportation, and Information and Communication technology. These research arenas have been chosen so as to simultaneously satisfy the requirements of the industry and maximize the benefit to society. Globally, IIT Bombay is an important source of quality research output in each of them.

TechConnect 2009 is expected to be the first in a series of events that will build up and strengthen IITB's links with the industry, and will hopefully increase awareness, both within and outside IIT Bombay, of the varied and unique innovative scientific/technological content available at the institute.