Dr. Mitradip Bhattacharjee’s [Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences] research group has developed a high-performance flexible sensing circular ring antenna designed for smart packaging applications. The antenna, which operates at approximately 3.9 GHz in the C-band, is fabricated on a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate using a coplanar waveguide (CPW) feeding technique. It exhibits sensitivity to bending deformations, with frequency shifts and variations in return loss (S11) that allow for qualitative and quantitative strain measurements. The study records sensitivities of 8.25 and 7.37 for different longitudinal bending conditions and 16.8 and 15.22 for transverse and longitudinal packaging deformations. The antenna was successfully integrated into a smart chemical packaging system, detecting lateral and longitudinal bending deformations up to 1.5 cm with a resolution of 25 mm. The experimental results demonstrated that changes in S11 were more reliable for quantitative analysis, while frequency shifts could be used for qualitative detection. The paper also highlights the advantages of flexible antennas in IoT applications, wearable electronics, and structural health monitoring. The proposed antenna outperforms prior designs in terms of sensitivity and adaptability, making it a promising solution for real-world smart packaging and deformation monitoring applications. More details at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10740059

Dr. Mitradip Bhattacharjee’s [Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences] research group has developed and characterized a flexible and printed graphene field-effect biosensing (Gr-FET biosensor) platform to detect ferritin. The Gr-FET based biosensor demonstrates a stable transfer characteristic with Ag/AgCl gate. A significantly low gate leakage current of 0.06 % of the drain current is observed for this Gr-FET. Further, the proposed Gr-FET shows 1.5 - 3 times higher transconductance (gm) with a value of gm,hole up to 400 µS and gm,electron up to 250 µS, compared to the reported printed electrolyte-gated Gr-FET. The Gr-FET operation is also optimized to have a minimal hysteresis effect for reliable sensing operation. The Gr-FET shows considerably linear characteristics at a low ferritin concentration (0.05-0.5 µg/lt) with sensitivity as high as ~230 mV/(µg/lt) and a very low limit of detection (LOD) ~27 ng/lt. Given the cost-effective fabrication process and scalability, the proposed printed Gr-FET biosensor can be deployed on a large-scale for early diagnosis of iron deficiency anemia. More details at https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/admt.202401292

Dr. Akshay Agarwal’s “Trustworthy BiometraVision Lab”, Department of Data Science and Engineering has developed a novel adversarial patch detector, AdvPatchXAI, that significantly strengthens modern security AI systems against physical adversarial threats. Adversarial patch attack is a process of adding a patch in an image that can fool any AI systems. Unlike conventional defenses, AdvPatchXAI employs a patch decorrelation strategy to reduce feature redundancy, enhancing robustness and interpretability. It excels at detecting and neutralizing unseen adversarial patches, even under corrupted conditions, thus aligning model decisions more closely with human perception. Additionally, its self-supervised approach provides clearer insights into how the model identifies threats. This groundbreaking work has been accepted for publication in the prestigious IEEE/CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR2025), marking a major step forward in securing AI systems. More details at https://tbvl22.github.io/website

Research group of Dr Dimpy Kalia, Department of Chemistry developed BHoPAL (Baylis Hillman orchestrated Protein Aminothiol Labelling) technology to link chemical tags to proteins for facilitating drug development.

Dr. Rohit Gaddam’s lab from Chemical Engineering Department as developed a novel sodium-ion battery (NIB) cathode material NaFe1.93Al0.07(PO4)(SO4) that outperforms current benchmarks in terms of energy density (372 Wh/Kg) and durability for such NASICON-type cathode.

On the journey toward sustainable energy and wastewater treatment, urea electrooxidation is paving the way to cleaner energy solutions. Research group of Dr Sankar Chakma, Department of Chemical Engineer , IISER Bhopal published the research entitled ‘Physical insight into the enhanced urea electrooxidation using Ni and Fe-based LDH, LDO, and hydroxides under different dissolved gas saturation conditions in electrolyte’ in International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2024.08.380).

Recent collaborative research work carried out by Dr. Sankar Chakma, Chemical Engineering, IISER Bhopal and Dr. S K Sonkar (MNIT Jaipur) demonstrated the utilization of industrial waste as photocatalysts to produce carbonate to Acetic Acid under various monochromatic light sources.

IISER Bhopal secured research projects under National Quantum Mission funded by the Department of Science and Technology, India.