President Ram Nath Kovind awards Pallabi Das and Kasturi Sarmah, research scholars of Tezpur University, in New Delhi on Monday

Tezpur: President Ram Nath Kovind inaugurated the Festival of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and presented the Gandhian Young Technological Innovation (GYTI) Awards to grassroots innovators, including two research scholars of Tezpur University (TU) at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Monday.

The festival, an initiative to recognise, respect and foster a supportive ecosystem for innovators, is being organised by Rashtrapati Bhavan in association with the department of science and technology, government of India, and the National Innovation Foundation from March 19 to Friday.

Pallabi Das of the department of environmental science and Kasturi Sarmah of the department of chemical sciences, TU, were awarded the GYTI Award for their innovative work on largescale synthetic routes to manufacture iron (oxalate) capped metal oxide nano materials that are wonderful soil conditioners for increasing micronutrient availability to plants with least toxicity.

The materials augmented crop production by three to four folds with eight to 10 folds lower dose than traditional micronutrient fertilisers and other overall high economic benefit.

Last year, the award was bagged by another research scholar of TU, Iftak Hussain of the department of physics.

Das and Sarmah were conducting the research under the guidance of Satya Sundar Bhattacharya, department of environmental science and Sanjay Pratihar, department of chemical sciences, TU. The whole team was felicitated during the function. The GYTI Award comprises a memento, citations and a project grant of Rs 15 lakh. The award celebrates the spirit of student innovation in all the fields of engineering, science, technology and design through extremely affordable/frugal solutions or the ones pushing the technological edge.

Harsh Vardhan, Union minister for science and technology and earth sciences, Ashutosh Sharma, secretary, department of science and technology, R.A. Mashelkar, chairperson, National Innovation Foundation and Anil Gupta, vice-chairperson, National Innovation Foundation were present on the occasion.