UGC confers potential for excellence status on Anna varsity

Grants Rs. 23.12 crore for research; focus area is biomedical engineering

In a boost to furthering research in biomedical engineering and instrumentation, Anna University here has been granted the UGC’s prestigious status of ‘University with Potential for Excellence’ in the field.

The university is only the third higher educational institution to get the status. The University of Madras (for Herbal Science) and the Madurai Kamaraj University (for Nanoscience in Biology) are the other institutions covered under the flagship programme launched in the early years of this millennium. As the first instalment, the UGC has granted Anna University Rs. 23.12 crore for research in the chosen field for the current financial year. The university had sought Rs. 75 crore, said its Registrar S. Ganesan.

“An interdisciplinary team from medical electronics, biotechnology, instrumentation, medical physics and mechatronics will contribute significantly in the proposed developmental activities. The theme area will be development of various automated biomedical devices,” Mr. Ganesan told

The Hindu on Sunday.

The focus area of biomedical engineering and instrumentation was chosen based on its long-term consistent performance. In the last 25 years, the focus area had not shifted, with the result that the department had received national attention, he said.

The institution had made its mark first by developing vaccines during the time of former Vice-Chancellor P. Kaliraj. The university had been involved in research projects such as developing multiple antigen vaccines for lymphatic filariasis and later in diagnosis and preventive vaccines and therapy for infectious diseases.

The status of UPE is expected to help the Centre for Medical Electronics, which has come up with mass screening software for ophthalmic lesions to bring the product to the market.

S. Shenbaga Devi, Director of the Centre and the principal investigator in developing the software, said researchers analysed the retinal images provided by fundus camera by ophthalmologists for the presence of glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy.

“We have completed two levels of validation and transferred the technology to a company in Bangalore. They are developing a commercial model. Once it is ready, we have to validate the model. The software will then go for multi-centric trial and after that it will come into the market,” Ms. Shenbaga Devi said.

The university’s National Hub for Healthcare Instrumentation Development, the umbrella body for research on medical devices, is involved in developing as many as 20 medical gadgets that can be used for mass testing purposes.