The value of IIT Madras’ holding is estimated at more than ₹140 crore at the expected valuation, as per market and investment banking officials.
| Photo Credit: B. VELANKANNI RAJ

The story so far: On January 15, IIT-Madras director V. Kamakoti said peer-reviewed journals had substantiated the medicinal properties of cow urine. He was speaking at a goshala in West Mambalam in Chennai, on the occasion of ‘Mattu Pongal’, a festive occasion dedicated to cattle. In a media interaction five days later, Dr. Kamakoti listed five scientific papers that he said validated the “anti-infective” properties of cow urine.

His statements have since gone viral on social media even as many questioned his claims and deemed his observations to be unscientific and inappropriate as the head of a scientific institution. They also drew the ire of Tamil Nadu Congress chief K. Selvaperunthagai, who said he is unfit to continue as the director of IIT Madras.

Nature v. Nature Scientific Reports

One paper titled ‘Peptide profiling in cow urine reveals molecular signature of physiology-driven pathways and in-silico predicted bioactive properties’ was published on June 14, 2021, in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. Contrary to Dr. Kamakoti, Nature and Nature Scientific Reports are two different journals. “The researchers have experimented and presented their findings. Nature is one of the top journals in the United States of America. The output in the research papers is the evidence,” he had said.

Independent experts said the research article itself “does not seem bad” but that it is just an analysis of bovine urine. “Authors say that there are a lot of studies of peptides in human urine, but not much work has been done in the case of bovine urine,” Aniket Sule, associate professor at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in Mumbai, told The Hindu.

“There are also similar studies about donkey urine. Essentially, all mammals pass some peptides in their urine and those peptides give a lot of indications about the health of that individual. That is also the reason why we do urine analysis in pathology labs. So, they are just presenting their analysis of bovine urine. There is no claim beyond that.”

Dr. Sule added that there have been papers from China discussing the use of cow dung as fertiliser. “However, developing a fertiliser from mammal urine/excreta is a different thing from human consumption of urine/excreta,” he said. Dr. Sule quoted the example of US President Donald Trump asking scientists in his first term, during the COVID-19 pandemic, to the alleged benefits of drinking bleach.

“Just because bleach is anti-bacterial on the floor doesn’t mean it is medicinal for humans,” Dr. Sule said.

Gautam Menon, dean of research and professor of physics and biology at Ashoka University in Sonipat, said the paper is “perfectly reasonable scientific work, although whether it is interesting or not is another matter”.

“Checking antibiotic effects on two standard bacterial species is a common thing to do. Their result is not particularly surprising nor is it claimed to be,” he added.

‘Consumption of any urine is dangerous’

The second paper Dr Kamakoti referred to was entitled ‘Benefits of cow urine’ and published in the International Journal of Recent Advances in Multidisciplinary Research on September 29, 2017.

The paper reviews previous research articles describing the medicinal benefits of cow urine, a form of research called a meta-analysis. According to the paper, “Many researches have also be done, which shows its use for treatment of skin diseases, stomach diseases, kidney diseases, heart diseases, stones, diabetes, liver problem, jaundice, athlete’s feet, cyst, haemorrhoid, etc. and show its immunostimulant, bioenhencer, anticonvulsant, anti-cancerous, wound-healing, antioxidant, and antimicrobial properties.”

The abstract of the study concludes by calling for more public awareness of the importance of cow urine.

However, Dipshikha Chakravortty, professor at the department of microbiology and cell biology at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, said in an email to The Hindu, “Consumption of any urine is detrimental and dangerous, including healthy individual urine. Urine contains resident bacteria, and that can be detrimental.”

She added that there have been reports of various types of urine containing bacteria that could be pathogenic.

The prevalence of grammatical and typographical mistakes in the paper indicate the journal’s editors didn’t copy-edit it before publishing, a common symptom – albeit not a conclusive one – of low-quality publishers.

A study of cow urine

In 2022, Bhoj Roj Singh, who recently retired as the epidemiology head at the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Bareilly, led a study that showed the undesirability of humans consuming cow urine. In the study, the team found that fresh urine from cows and bulls contains at least 14 types of harmful bacteria, including Escherichia coli. The study also reported that urine can’t inhibit bacterial growth.

“In case one gets infected from the bacteria, [the infections] can lead to life-threatening infections, particularly among those consumers who are already sick or have weak immune systems,” Dr. Singh said.

He also said proponents of drinking cow urine had criticised the study for using fresh urine while they advocated the consumption of urine distillates. His lab subsequently analysed these distillates as well as packaged urine found in the market.

“We reported those too to be risky and full of microbes (no-quality control practiced). Moreover, the antimicrobial activity detected may hardly be of any therapeutic utility as it may not be feasible to consume such a large amount of urine safely to get its antibacterial action in our bodies,” he said.

A third paper Dr. Kamakoti invoked, called ‘Miraculous Benefits of Cow Urine: A Review’, was published in August 2020 in the Journal of Drug Delivery and Therapeutics. The paper’s abstract states, “Cow urine is a divine medicine and is used for treatment of diabetes, blood pressure, asthma, psoriasis,” and various other conditions, including cancer and AIDS. It also claims cow urine can cure migraines, whose aetiology is not fully understood.

When asked about this study, Dr Singh was forthright: “It is not a research paper but a selective review/compilation from traditional literature or beliefs without any evidence-based scientific study.”

Union Railway Minister shared a video on the microblogging platform X (formerly Twitter) on December 5, showing the completion of a 410-meter Hyperloop test track, signalling significant progress in India’s high-speed transportation ambitions.

The test track, located at IIT Madras’ Discovery Campus in Thaiyur, is an outcome of a collaborative effort between Indian Railways, IIT-Madras’ Avishkar Hyperloop team, and TuTr Hyperloop, a startup incubated at the institute.

The Union Minister captioned the post as “Bharat’s first Hyperloop test track (410 meters) completed.”

In his post, the minister lauded the team for their groundbreaking work, expressing optimism about India’s potential to realise the futuristic Hyperloop technology soon.

“Thumbs up to Team Railways, IIT-Madras’ Avishkar Hyperloop team and TuTr (incubated startup).”

Watch the video here:

Watch: Bharat’s first Hyperloop test track (410 meters) completed.

Team Railways, IIT-Madras’ Avishkar Hyperloop team and TuTr (incubated startup)

At IIT-M discovery campus, Thaiyur pic.twitter.com/jjMxkTdvAd

— Ashwini Vaishnaw (@AshwiniVaishnaw) December 5, 2024

As per a release The Hyperloop team’s central objective is the advancement and commercialisation of Hyperloop technologies for high-speed, affordable, reliable and sustainable transportation. India’s Ministry of Railways is a key partner to this Hyperloop technology development initiative at IIT Madras.

The 410-meter Hyperloop test track at IIT Madras’s Discovery Campus in Thaiyur was the maiden run at a speed of 100 km/h. now the Tests will proceed on the longer track and will make their way to speeds of about 600 km/h from there.

In case things go right, Hyperloop technology could change how cities move, potentially supplementing or complementing India’s own Metro Rail system and changing the transit landscape of this country.

Yakov Eliashberg speaking at the TNQ Distinguished Lecture in Mathematics at IIT Madras on September 26, 2024.
| Photo Credit: B. Velankanni Raj

Russian-American mathematician and Wolf Prize laureate Yakov Eliashberg delivered a public talk at IIT Madras on Thursday, as part of the inaugural annual TNQ Distinguished Lecture in Mathematics.

The talk was part of TNQ Numbers and Shapes, a new initiative by the TNQ Foundation “to advance the study of mathematics and to support mathematical research in India. This will be through a mentorship and collaboration programme that gives students exposure, guidance, and travel support to enable them to pursue cutting-edge research in pure mathematics”. The flagship event of the initiative is the lecture that will be held in Chennai every year during a week-long workshop.

The initiative will focus on geometry and topology, number theory, ergodic theory and dynamical systems, algebraic geometry, and probability and analysis.

Commemorating pure mathematics

Ahead of the lecture, TNQ Foundation head Mariam Ram said, “TNQ launched the Distinguished Lectures in the Life Sciences series in 2008, bringing together well-known life science experts to India and giving students and researchers opportunities to interact with their field’s leaders.”

Ms. Ram said she hoped the Foundation’s new mathematics programme would lead to deeper and more meaningful collaborations between mathematicians in India. “These lectures will commemorate India’s and particularly Tamil Nadu’s long history in pure mathematics,” she said, adding, “Our hope is that TNQ Numbers and Shapes will go at least a little way in inspiring students to produce beautiful mathematics.”

Professor Eliashberg and Simon Donaldson won the Wolf Prize for mathematics in 2020 “for their contributions to differential geometry and topology”.

According to the TNQ Foundation, the emergence of symplectic and contact topology — a field in which Professor Eliashberg is a leader — has been one of the most important and long-term advances in mathematical research in recent decades. He is currently the Herald L. and Caroline L. Ritch Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University.

Symplectic topology

The talk was titled “The Strange and Wonderful World of Symplectic Geometry”. At the heart of symplectic geometry is the symplectic manifold. Simply speaking, a manifold is a space that follows the rules of Euclidean geometry locally but could have a non-Euclidean structure globally. This is like how the earth seems flat to an ant crawling on it but is revealed to be spheroidal when an astronaut looks at it from outer space. (A sphere is a type of two-dimensional manifold.) Symplectic geometry is concerned with the area-related characteristics of manifolds with an even number of dimensions (2, 4, 6, 8, and so on).

Before Professor Eliashberg’s lecture, M.J. Mahan of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, introduced the mathematics that forms the foundation of topology — from Euclid’s proof of the existence of infinitely many prime numbers to the Gauss-Bonnet theorem. “Whether it’s number or shapes, there’s something underlying them that can be worked out with a paper and pencil,” he said.

Professor Eliashberg began with a brief history of the central figures of topology, including Henri Poincaré, Misha Gromov, and William Rowan Hamilton. “Solving serious mathematical problems requires many people,” he said. Then he moved to the geometrical aspects of topology and then mechanics. According to him, “symplectic geometry was born as a geometric language of classical mechanics”.

Students are taught in school to solve classical mechanics problems using Newtonian mechanics. Symplectic geometry is connected with the physics of the real world through an alternative approach called Hamiltonian mechanics. For example, say a ball is rolling down a slope. The state of this dynamical system in Hamiltonian mechanics is given by its position and momentum in three dimensions. The combination of these six variables denotes the ball’s phase space, which can be represented and analysed as a symplectic manifold.

Symplectic topology offers an alternative approach to solving problems involving systems with complicated phase spaces.

As he moved through increasingly involved ideas, Professor Eliashberg also recounted how they have been applied to study problems in thermodynamics, celestial mechanics, and chaotic systems.

Himalayan retreat

TNQ Numbers and Shapes and the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai, organised a four-day workshop that Professor Eliashberg has been conducting since September 23. According to Dishant Pancholi of the IMSc, more than 20 students and mathematicians participated.

After the talk, Professor Eliashberg will lead a small group of Indian mathematicians at a retreat in the Himalayas dedicated to working on solutions to a problem in symplectic topology called the nearby Lagrangian conjecture.

According to a note on the TNQ website, “Various methods have been developed to address this problem, and several partial results have been obtained, but a complete resolution of the conjecture is still a long way off.”

Participants in the workshop and the retreat were selected in a process led by Professor Mahan and Professor Pancholi.

New Delhi:

The presence of IIT Madras director on the National Testing Agency’s (NTA) governing body as an ex-officio member does not amount to conflict of interest, the exam body has told the Supreme Court. This comes against the backdrop of the Centre citing a report by IIT Madras director, Professor V Kamakoti, to stress that there was no malpractice in the conduct of the all-India exam for admission to MBBS courses.

Narendra Hooda, the counsel for the petitioner in the NEET UG case, had said the data analytics report was not reliable and alleged a conflict of interest because the IIT Madras director was a member of the NTA governing body.

Refuting this, NTA has said in a supplementary chargesheet that the director of an IIT that conducts the JEE (Advanced) exam for engineering aspirants is an ex-officio member of the NTA governing body and this year, IIT Madras conducted the exam. However, the core work of NTA is handled by its managing committee. The governing body, it said, only looks at policy matters.

The IIT Madras director, the NTA said, had nominated another professor to attend the governing body’s meetings. And this professor, too, had not attended any meeting since December last year. The IIT Madras director, it said, had not attended any meeting of NTA governing body since December 2022.

During a hearing into the case of alleged irregularities in NEET, which has sparked nationwide protests, the Centre told the Supreme Court that data analytics of results shows that the marks distribution follows the bell-shaped curve that is witnessed in any large-scale examination and there is no indication of an abnormality.

The Centre then said that according to the findings in the IIT Madras report, there is an overall increase in the marks students have got.

“This increase is seen across the cities and centres. This is attributed to 25 per cent reduction in syllabus. In addition, candidates obtaining such high marks are spread across multiple cities and multiple centres, indicating very less likelihood of malpractice,” it said.

New Delhi:

Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra has praised the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras startup that is developing an electric flying taxi, saying that the institution has become one of the world’s most “exciting and active incubators”.

“A company is being incubated at IIT Madras to build a flying electric taxi by sometime next year,” Mahindra posted on X.

Thanking the institution, he further said that with the rapidly growing number of ambitious incubators throughout India, “we’re no longer seen as a country that lacks genuine innovators”.

“Audacious aspirations matter. Accept no limits,” Mr Mahindra wrote.

The eplane company.

A company being incubated at IIT Madras to build a flying electric taxi by sometime next year…

IIT Madras has become one of the WORLD’s most exciting and active incubators.

Thanks to them and the rapidly growing number of ambitious incubators throughout… pic.twitter.com/Ijb9Rd2MAH

— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) May 10, 2024

Since being shared, his post has been viewed by more than 190K times. Several users also shared their thoughts in the comments.

“Exciting times, this is audacious thinking taking root. With our immense talent pool and a supportive environment, Indian innovators are truly taking flight,” a user wrote.

“India’s incubators are hatching the future, and IIT Madras is leading the charge with their electric flying taxi project. This is the kind of innovation that puts a country on the map and inspires the next generation of dreamers and doers,” another user said.

Earlier this week, IIT Madras said that it raised an all-time high amount of Rs 513 crore in funding from its alumni, industry and individual donors during the financial year 2023-24.

The institute also attracted total new pledges of Rs 717 crore from alumni and corporate partners during FY24.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Indian Institute of Technology- Madras in Chennai. File
| Photo Credit: VELANKANNI RAJ B

 The Indian Institute of Technology Madras has established a Centre for Tech Excellence to cater to the micro, small and medium enterprises with support from Walmart.

The centre aims to train MSME units in the use of artificial intelligence and internet of things technology quickly and effectively to develop their business. An agreement to this effect was signed on Wednesday. 

Institute Director V. Kamakoti said the MSMEs, which determine 30% of the Indian industry sector, required guidance to deploy technology. In the coming years, Indian companies would have to adhere strictly to Sustainable Development Goals for which the MSMEs must be equipped, he said.

The centre would use technology to help MSMEs with overall product evaluation, which in turn would improve economic growth, he said. “This is a kind of a venture that can be scaled to a 1.5 billion population whose needs are varied. There are varieties of MSME in fields such as agriculture and medicine (as well). We are introducing a common portal,” he said.

The Institute had started focusing on MSMEs since last year. It launched a centre with the financial company Kotak and many MSMEs had benefited. The institute’s study would be released as a report in a couple of months, Mr. Kamakoti added. “Similarly, we plan to empower and encourage MSMEs, through the tech centre,” he explained.

The centre would also offer solutions to many research problems as faculty from various disciplines and departments would be involved. 

Walmart’s chief technical officer and chief development officer Suresh Kumar, who is also an alumnus of the institute, said the company had been engaging with the institute since 2022. “First, we focused on students and research. This is the second collaboration between Walmart and IIT Madras,” he said.

In the next three years the Institute will take up 15-20 MSMEs who will be helped to leverage AI and IoT technology and form a case study for the institute.

Image for representational purposes only.

Researchers have developed an India-specific artificial intelligence model to precisely determine the gestational age of a foetus in the second and third trimester of pregnancy. 

The model has been designed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad.  

It is part of an interdisciplinary group for advanced research on birth outcomes — the DBT India initiative (GARBH-Ini) programme. The Garbhini-GA2 is the first late-trimester GA estimation model to be developed and validated using Indian population data. Currently, models used for the Western population are in use which could prove erroneous when applied in the later part of pregnancy due to variations in the growth of the foetus in the Indian population, the researchers say.  

The Garbhini-GA2 accurately estimates the foetus’ age, reducing error by almost three times.  

Appropriate care

The Indian data would help to provide appropriate care for pregnant women and determine the precise date of birth, thus reducing maternal and infant mortality rates.  

Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, Rajesh Gokhale said GARB-Ini, the department’s flagship programme, was being validated across the country.  

Several investigators, including Himanshu Sinha, associate professor, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras, Shinjini Bhatnagar, principal investigator of the programme and a distinguished professor at THSTI, were involved in the project. 

The findings were published in the peer-reviewed Lancet Regional Health Southeast Asia. 

Mr. Sinha said advanced data science and AI/ML techniques were used to build tools to predict unfavourable birth outcomes and the first step is to develop accurate GA models that perform significantly better than currently used models designed using western populations.  

End-to-end partnership

Ms. Bhatnagar said the application of sophisticated data science tools was not sufficient. Ensuring that technological advancements yield tangible benefits in the clinical realm lies in the end-to-end partnership between clinicians and data scientists. “Such collaboration ensures that the development of solutions is not only technically sound but also clinically relevant and seamlessly integrated into healthcare workflows,” she said. 

The study was conducted in partnership with Gurugram Civil Hospital, Gurugram, Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi, Christian Medical College, Vellore and Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences, Puducherry.  

Additional funding for the project came from the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and the Centre for Integrative Biology and Systems Medicine at IIT Madras.