13 state university students head to UK to work on research projects – Times of India

By: Shivika Kumar
BENGALURU: Thirteen students of three state public universities have won a chance to visit the University of Dundee (UoD) in Scotland for a week and work on their research projects there.


Five students from Gulbarga University and four each from University Visveswaraya College of Engineering (UVCE) and University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Bengaluru, have been selected to participate in the exercise, organised by Karnataka State Higher Education Council (KSHEC) in collaboration with UoD. Supported by the British Council, this joint effort aims to foster academic excellence and multidisciplinary research.

UoD had proposed a collaborative model — a student competition-based exercise — to higher education institutions in Karnataka. Accordingly, a call was published to all state public universities, and three responded. Each identified research-based projects and assembled an inter-disciplinary team of 4-5 students and a mentor from an academic background. The duration of the project was four months (March-June) and the students were trained together by UoD and their parent institutions.

Avinash Vishwanath Maroor, Shravankumar, Monika, Arati, and Sanjana Hibare of Gulbarga University are working on a project titled ‘Assessment of gut microbiome profile and antimicrobial resistance pattern in the local tribal population of Kalaburagi region’. “Our project is multidisciplinary. Science students will focus on research, arts on social life studies, commerce on geographical analysis,” Avinash said.

Rakshitha PV, Vighnesha, Chinmoy Kalita, and Risha Subbaiah Biddanda from UAS are engaged in developing a cost-effective solar-based sensor automatic irrigation system for remote areas of Karnataka. UVCE’s Arul Abhishek Marshall, Nischitha Tiwari, Chiranjeevi Vaniganahalli Muniraju, and Adi Vedanth Devegowda are conducting an experimental investigation on the usage of plastic oil and used cooking oil as alternative fuels in diesel engines. By collecting waste cooking oil from street vendors and discarded plastics, they’ve converted waste cooking oil into biodiesel.

The students will be travelling from June 25 to July 2.