Sunday, April 20, 2014

Krishnamoorthy - the young scientist from Ernakulam

Krishnamoorthy S., alias Sriram who is a plus one student at Amritha Vidyalamyam, Edappilly attended and presented a paper in a conference organised by SPIE, a not-for-profit international professional society for optics and photonics technology held at San Diego, California, USA from 9th to 13th March 2014. He presented a paper on "Powering Nanorobotic Devices: Challenges and Future Strategies" at on 11th March 2014. Krishnamoorthy is son of Sankar who is a life member of Perumbavoor Upasabha and Ramalakshmi who is residing at Palarivattom. Krishna Moorthi retains the patent rights of the paper and the ideas therein. The conference was attended by leading scientists and research scholars across the world. Krishna Moorthi was the only school student who presented a paper, and was the youngest among all the participants. Efforts are being made to publish his full length paper with picture illustrations in the "Journal of Nanophotonics", which is a prestigious professional journal. SPIE will be publishing his full length paper and poster image in their conference proceedings, and also in their digital library, which has world-wide readership among the professional circle. The young scientist is presently working on a project to make a working model of a nanorobot and to power it, based on actual lab experiments. 

His interest extends to self stablilised social service activities also. Last year, he made soap powder from raw materials (bought from market), sold it regularly to nearby houses, and with the profits earned, donated dresses to all the children inmates of an orphanage in Fort Kochi. On all holidays, he regularly goes to ARDSI (Al-zheimer's Related Disorder Society of India) and does service to the old-aged inmates affected by Al-zheimer's disease. He desires to apply for US admission this year, for continuing his studies and pursuing research.

SPIE (Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers in California) is a not-for-profit international professional society for optics and photonics technology, founded in 1955. It organizes technical conferences, trade exhibitions, and continuing education programs for researchers and developers in the light-based fields of physics, including, but not limited to: optics, photonics and imaging engineering. The society publishes peer-reviewed scientific journals, conference proceedings, monographs, tutorial texts, field guides, and reference volumes in print and online. In 2012, the society provided $3.3 million in support of optics education and outreach programs around the world.

SPIE Smart Structures/NDE 2014 - a multidisciplinary conference devoted to energy harvesting, non-destructive evaluation (NDE), damage detection, structural health monitoring (SHM), dielectric elastomers, actuators, shape memory alloys and polymers, magnetorheological fluids, electroactive polymers (EAP), bioinspired and robotic systems, and smart materials, sensors, systems, and networks.

Details of Paper presented by Krishnamoorthy: Nanotechnology, even after 55 years since its foundation, is still in its infancy.  However, of late, there has been a large increase in the research being done in this field in many prominent Research institutions across the globe. Nanorobotics is the combination of Nanotechnology and Robotics, to create robots that are only a few nanometres (ie-9 metres) in size.  Nanobots are yet to be made.  But with the current pace of ongoing researches, scientists predict that nanobots will be made a reality by next ten years.  The main proposed function of nanobots is to use them in the medical field to interact with cells or intra-cellular substances and prevent or reverse genetical and structural diseases such as various cancers, haemophilia, anaemia, hypertension, diabetes etc. One of the major challenges faced while creating a nanobot to travel through human body is to power it.  Nanobots would require a very small yet highly potential source of energy.  There are many hypothesised energy sources for nanobots.  But, all of these energy sources pose a few challenges which need to be addressed if they are to be used to power nanobots.  These challenges can be overcome using a number of strategies that can be used to make an economically, ecologically and medically viable energy source. Nanobots require much different energy sources than usual robots as they are too small for the typical energy sources for a robot, like batteries, solar cells or air-pressure cylinders.  Their energy sources should not be the ones that need regular replacements and adjustments as nanobots will usually be situated in places like the interior of a human body where they cannot be periodically charged or physically handled.   One of the most important uses of nanobots is as medical devices that can help treat structural diseases.  They have to be placed inside a human body and have to be powered when they are there.  Powering nanobots is a critical challenge as the energy sources for a nanobot are still in a developing stage and are very costly,  and, in the case of most energy sources, polluting. There are several hypothesised energy sources to provide power for nanobot in a human body. Some of these sources rely on the nanorobot using the host’s own body as a way of generating power (e.g. the body heat of the host, host’s blood flows etc.). Some other sources include a small power source on board the robot itself (e.g. Optoelectric Nuclear battery, Quantum Dot Solar cell etc.).  Some of these energy sources use forces outside the host’s body to power the nanobot (e.g. acoustic energy etc.).

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