The department has 7 active research groups working on various areas of Instrumentation Machine Sensing and Artificial Intelligence based stress diagnosis of plants Plants being verbally mute to abiotic and biotic stress factors, offers visual and olfactory response to these stresses affecting their health. Visual responses include change in physical properties viz. colors, size, shape, while olfactory responses includes changes in Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) emission. The Research aims at analyzing these specific responses using machine sensing technique which are otherwise illegible for human perception. The research group have converged on Machine olfaction technique for sensing the VOC emission profile alteration on stress affected plants, using array of gas sensors, colloquially called “e-nose”. Sensor responses acquired by the data acquisition system developed are put through Machine Learning based decision making classifier algorithms to predict the stresses present in the plant. Research Group: Prof. Utpal Sarma, Instrumentation and USIC, Gauhati University Ms. Chayanika Sharma (INSPIRE PhD Fellow) Past Members: Dr. Sudipta Hazarika Dr. Rajdeep Choudhury Implementation of Instrumentation for Process Condition Monitoring in Tea Factory and Study it’s Impact on Tea Quality Tea quality is influenced by several factors of tea processing stages. The biochemical reactions start just after the plucking of leaves from the bush. So the quality control in the processing stages becomes an important issue to get good quality end product. The main quality attribute of tea is developed in these stages, so the conditions in these stages should be maintained at optimum level. This group aims to develop the instrumentation needed to monitor different process conditions like moisture content of tea leaves at withering stage, temperature and relative humidity of fermentation and Dryer temperature etc. In the second phase of this study, the process parameters are correlated with the final tea quality to get the optimum process conditions. Research Group: Prof. P. K.Boruah (Retd.), Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University Prof. Utpal Sarma, Instrumentation and USIC, Gauhati University Dr. Debashis Saikia, Assistant Professor, Instrumentation and USIC, Gauhati University Ms. Sharmistha Mazumdar, (UGC-JRF PhD Fellow), Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University Ms. Priyanka Sarmah, Research Scholar, Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University Past Members: Dr. Nipan Das Microwave Lab This group works on RF front end designs specially the antennas and other System Design for small scale industries. Various types of antenna fabrication and testing are being carried out in the lab, with special emphasis on designing optically transparent antenna and SIW based antenna for vehicular communications. Research Group: Dr. Pranjal Borah, Assistant Professor, Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University Mr. Ashiesh Sharma, Research Scholar, Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University Ms. Riki Baruah, Research Scholar, Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University Ms. Karishma Azad, Research Scholar, Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University Studies on Implementation of instrumentation for precision horticulture Agriculture mainly depends on the atmospheric conditions and changes over time. To understand the past, present and potential future climate conditions, there should be a meteorological database. To do this, a high quality and low cost system, which can give the required dependable database in a standard format is designed. After analyzing the data gathered, stored, viewed from the system, a profitability decision with less risk in farm management can be taken. This group works on developing a low cost, reliable and user friendly wireless sensor network for collection of relevant physical parameters for precision horticulture and based on the collected data, decision is taken for best management practice of the farm. Research Group: Prof. Utpal Sarma, Instrumentation and USIC, Gauhati University Dr. Manash Protim Goswami, Assistant Professor, Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University Ms. Anandita Dey (UGC-JRF PhD Fellow), Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University Piezoelectric based MEMS energy harvester Microelectromechanical system (MEMs) piezoelectric devices are used to scavenge energy from wasted vibration sources. Such devices are performed to convert energy from mechanical domain to electrical energy. The advancement in the invention of the devices that does not require replaceable power supplies has attracted for researches. Our team are working on piezoelectric MEMS energy harvester. The main focus of our research is to optimize power from piezoelectric array configuration and optimization of cantilever shape configuration for absence of proof mass of cantilever which results in the reduction of the size of harvester. The most important strategy of future designing MEMS vibration energy harvester is to obtain maximum power with maximum bandwidth at low-frequency vibrations. Research Group: Prof. Utpal Sarma, Instrumentation and USIC, Gauhati University Ms. Hiramoni Khatun (INSPIRE PhD Fellow), Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University Past Members: Dr. Babak Montazer Material Science This group is working on density functional theory computations on 2D materials, multiferrroics, nanomaterials for possible applications in energy studies, sensor fabrication etc. Research Group: Dr. Madhurjya Modhur Borgohain, Associate Professor, Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University Ms. Riddhi Bordoloi, Research Scholar, Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University Mr. Tapan Talukdar, Research Scholar, Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University Hardware Design & Modelling Techniques for Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) The aim of this research is to create a robust, user-friendly and advanced Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) processing system using the latest hardware and signal processing techniques. The work will primarily focus on Design and fabrication of highly efficient, high gain, low profile wideband antennae for use with our GPR system. Compare the efficiency of existing techniques and study of continuous wave and pulsed RADAR systems. Use and development of advanced simulation tools and data interpretation tools. The work will enable other researchers and scientists to benefit directly from the results, innovations and advanced processing algorithms. This will allow the GPR community, to easily create and run such models for further improvement of the project’s results. We hope to develop better GPR modelling frameworks which will increase our ability to model GPR data in greater detail and accuracy. Primary application of our research will be in the use of Non-Destructive Testing used for quality assessment and inspection of key infrastructure elements such are buildings, roads, railways and Geophysical probing of archaeological sites and monuments. Research Group: Prof. Utpal Sarma, Instrumentation and USIC, Gauhati University Dr. Nairit Barkataki, Assistant Professor, Instrumentation and USIC, Gauhati University Mr. Ankur Jyoti Kalita (INSPIRE PhD Fellow), Instrumentation & USIC, Gauhati University
