IISC B'luru Student's Invention Wins James Dyson Award 2021 In India

Sep 21, 2021, 12:02 IST

A student at IISc Bangalore has invented an active heart preservation container, which has won the James Dyson Award for 2021 in India.

The national winner and both national runners-up, as well as the 84 national finalists from 28 nations and regions, will now compete at the international level.

LifeBox is a project that aims to explore the use of drones as a means of transporting organs.

James Dyson Award 2021: The James Dyson Awards national winners for 2021 were revealed today. LifeBox, created by Deval Karia of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, was named the national winner for this year's competition.

LifeBox is a project that aims to explore the use of drones as a means of transporting organs. The difficulty of swiftly transferring hearts from donor to recipient is a problem that patients in India face. LifeBox addresses this issue by developing a technology that extends the heart's preservation period, allowing for longer travel times and distances.

Deval Karia, the inventor of LifeBox, said "The project has its genesis in a course taught by Prof. B. Gurumoorthy, Prof. A. Ghosal at CPDM, with a vision to explore drones for organ transportation. However, we soon realized that, without active preservation techniques, drones will not do much to improve the rate of heart transplants in India. This led to a shift in focus: A portable system that can extend the out-of-body viable time of the heart."

LifeBox just beat out the two runner-ups from a tough pool of 77 entries reviewed by the panel chaired by Srijan Pal Singh, the CEO and Co-Founder of the Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Centre.

The national runner-ups from India were Safaa, an invention by Ananaya Singh and Vacha Patel from the National Institute of Design in Haryana, and Diariase, an invention by Nikhil Das from the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad.

The national winner and runners-up, as well as the 84 national finalists from 28 nations and regions, will now compete at the international level. These finalists will be used to generate a Top 20 shortlist by Dyson engineers. The International winner and two runners-up will be chosen by Sir James Dyson.

The James Dyson Award is given out in 28 different nations and areas throughout the world. Each national winner receives a cash reward of Rs 1.90 lakh. The International winner receives a prize of Rs 29 lakh plus Rs 4,80,000 for the winner's institution, whilst the National winner receives a prize of Rs 29 lakh plus Rs 4,80,000 for the winner's university. The winner of the sustainability category will earn Rs 29 lakh, while the two international runners-up will receive Rs 4.80 lakh each.