Soon, BIRAC to open its E-YUVA centre at SHUATS

The over 114-year-old premier institution, Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences (SHUATS) is being further strengthened by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC). BIRAC is a non-profit company established by the Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India.

BIRAC has decided to provide a grant to establish its ‘Empowering Youth for Undertaking Value Added Innovative Translational Research (E-YUVA) Centre’ within the SHUATS campus at Prayagraj, informed university officials.

This will give a boost to the faculty, their research and the student community at SHUATS, they added.

This will also boost the industry-academia interface and implement the mandate of BIRAC through a wide range of impact initiatives. The mandate of the E-YUVA scheme is to promote a culture of applied research and need-oriented (societal or industry) entrepreneurial innovation among young students and researchers, explained Prof DM Denis, director (Innovation, Projects and Consultancy) at SHUATS, under whose leadership the project was submitted for approval.

The scheme provides funding support (through fellowship and research grant), technical and business mentoring, exposure to bio incubation model, orientation to entrepreneurial culture etc to students at various levels including undergraduates, post-graduates and post-doctoral, they explained.

Through this scheme, a dedicated hub called E-YUVA Centre (EYC) will be housed within the university and set up and mentored by a BIRAC Bio-NEST-supported bio-incubator. EYC will act as an anchor and extend requisite support and mentoring to students.

Prof Denis said that the EYC will have a BIRAC-supported pre-incubation space which offers infrastructure and equipment for basic research and experimentation by selected students. Advanced research needs are fulfilled through bio-incubator-connect. This scheme provides support to BIRAC’s Innovation Fellows, he added.

The areas that fall in the domain include healthcare, life sciences, diagnostics, medical devices, drugs, vaccines, drug formulations and delivery systems, industrial biotechnology, bioinformatics, agriculture, secondary agriculture, waste management, sanitation, clean energy and artificial intelligence (AI).

It calls upon the use of Internet of Things (IoT)/ Automation applications in all innovation, said Prof Denis, A Bourlog and World Bank awardee. He said that this project would help all the students in the state and beyond including both urban and rural who can innovate and will provide a platform for promoting startups in the state. This will nurture the dreams of students to be a job creator instead of job seekers, thus nurturing the culture of entrepreneurship in different disciplines, he maintained.