Bihar origin scientist yearning to serve state

By K K Singh

Patna: An innovative scientist from Bihar, Prof. Prabhat Ranjan, currently a teacher in the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat is yearning for serving his home state. A resident of remote village in Darbhanga district, he is moving from pillar to post with his new discoveries! Beginning his schooling from municipal schools at different places, finally Prabhat joined Netarhat School and at last achieved laurel in educational fields – studied in IIT, Kharagpur and opted Physics and thereafter postgraduated from Delhi University. Specialising in Astrophysics in general theory of relativity Prof. Prabhat moved to California University, Berkely and did Doctor of Philosophy by researching on nuclear fusion. He has launched Bihar Innovative Society to apprise the people of Bihar about his discoveries and for their benefits.

In an exclusive interview, Prof. Prabhat Ranjan says that he had made up his mind to pursue scientific research as his career right from school days in IIT Kharagpur. After schooling he opted to choose physics rather than engineering. Delhi University had more options in Physics so he opted DU to do Master in Physics. He opted to specialize in Astrophysics and General Theory of Relativity and worked with famous scientist Dr J V Narlikar in summer of 1981 on “black holes”. “In 1981, I moved to University of California, Berkeley to do my PhD in physics. I was lucky to have been offered financial assistance by one of the top Universities of the world to make this possible. I decided to carry out my research in Nuclear Fusion as I felt that it would benefit India immensely due to its possible impact on energy sector. I carried out my research work in Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory(LBL) in USA and returned to India in 1986 right after my PhD was completed to serve the country through my research work,” he added.

Replying to a question, Prof. Prabhat said that he joined Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) in Kolkata, which was one of the two places in India (other being in Gandhinagar), where research work related to Nuclear Fusion was started. He worked here till July 1995 and moved to Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhinagar after that to carry forward “my work on Nuclear Fusion”

Highlighting his achievements during his work with Nuclear Fusion in India, he said he was doing modeling and computer simulation of Nuclear Fusion reactors using world’s fastest supercomputers. In SINP, there was no inhouse computer facility. “So my first task was to setup computer facility, which I could do in 1987. While doing this, I also developed a computerized data acquisition system to collect data from the reactor discharge, which was of only few milliseconds. This Nuclear Fusion experimental reactor (scientifically called ‘Tokamak”) was fabricated by Toshiba of Japan as per specification of SINP and installed in 1987. There was not enough money to buy the data acquisition system so my work was of immense help, when the reactor was being installed and later on,” he added.

After SINP Tokamak started to operate, “we were not getting expected scientific parameters and my modeling helped to understand the reason behind it. Since none of the experimentalists were willing to take up the task, I started my first large scale experimental work of cleaning the inside of vacuum vessel through low temperature plasma, referred to as “discharge cleaning”. I developed a unique method of low cost “Audio Frequency Discharge Cleaning System” based on locally available components and it led to dramatic improvements in the parameters of the machine as expected from my modeling work. This system has been in use in SINP for last 20 years.

“Once this was achieved, I started work on extending the duration of plasma discharge for which necessary system was not procured from Toshiba as it was costing more than Rs 1.5 Crores at that time. This system, which we called “SINP Slow Bank System” was developed at a cost of less than Rs. 20 Lakhs only and is still in use. It extended the plasma duration and provided the basis of proper physics experiment to be carried out. This also allowed us to achieve designed plasma parameters as per the International Standards. A small part of this system is shown in the picture on right side,” Prof Prabhat said. In an another landmark achievement, Prof Ranjan said, “I carried out many other improvements and started work on designing a new Superconducting Tokamak in 1993. Soon I was invited to join Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), Gandhinagar to participate in a new Superconducting Tokamak that Govt of India had approved”.

After joining IPR in Aug 1995, I was also asked to look at ADITYA Tokamak, which was performing much below its designed parameters since it started its first operations in 1989. I somewhat reluctantly accepted this task as many International experts had also tried their hands on improving this. I was lucky that once I got the chance to try out my ideas about 3 months of my joining in IPR, discharges improved dramatically within one week. Subsequent to this I was made project leader of ADITYA Tokamak in 1996 and held that position till 2002, when I moved out of IPR. I was also given the responsibility of handling the new Superconducting Tokamak (SST-1) as Project Leader of Operation and Control group. I designed the real time plasma control system of SST-1. Some part of this design have been used by the international Tokamak ITER being built in France of which India is a partner.

Giving reasons for moving out of nuclear fusion research, Prof Prabhat said, “I did not move out of Nuclear Fusion research, which was my dream but I felt that I can also contribute to many other aspects of society through my innovations, which was possible within a University framework. Although in India, Universities are not known for research so this was a challenge. As reliance group was setting up a University (Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology – DA-IICT) with goal of providing research led education of global standard in Gandhinagar, I agreed to join it in early part of 2002.”

There Prabhat started working with Robotics but very quickly moved to an area of research called “Sensor Network”, which was growing up worldwide and “I could visualize a large number of applications of this to Indian society. It took me couple of years to setup educational curriculum and labs to start this type of work. My first application area of this was to Agriculture around 2004-05.”

“I visited Reliance Agro Initiative in Jamnagar and we discussed the possibility of using sensor network to assist in agriculture. We decided to take up some of the tasks and first of these was to develop low cost automated weather stations. While we almost did this, due to some unforeseen situation, we could not carry out deployment of these systems in Jamnagar.”

“In 2006, we started our work with wild life tracking and joined hands with Wildlife Institute of India, Deharadun for this purpose. We are now working on four different systems to track different kind of wildlife. Our work in this field is recognized nationally and internationally.”‘ he added and said” In 2007, we joined hands with Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad to use Sensor Network technology for planetary exploration. We are now involved in developing two systems for this purpose. One system is to discover water-ice in permanently shadowed craters in the polar region of moon. Other system is to setup a Lunar Seismic Sensor network on moon. One year back, I also led a team of international experts to propose a Lunar Surface and Subsurface Explorer for Chandrayaan-II mission of India at the request of Chandrayaan Mission Project leader. I am showing a picture of this, which would be presented in next space science symposium.” he said and added that some ongoing work to apply this technology to Nuclear Fusion reactors.” In addition, I have signed an MOU with Gujarat Govt to apply such technology to improve agricultural yield. I have also given talk at ICAR-ER, Patna to utilize similar technology for Bihar.,” he claimed.

Thereafter “We had a course called “design project”, which required students of BTech 2nd year to work on a project trying to solve a real life problem. Two girls, Pallavi and Ramya, met a girl in Chennai, who has cerebral palsy and still could study and pass class Xth exam at that time. They went to meet her and came to tell me about how she functions in spite of various handicaps. They told me that she is able to operate TV through a device in spite of the fact that her finger movements are very restricted and so is her mobility. However she could only operate either TV channels or volume and not both at the same time.’”

Prof Prabhat suggested them to work on a concept that would make it possible to operate both TV Channel and Volume at the same time by monitoring hand gestures.

As regards funding of the project, Prof Prabhat said that after two batch of students had worked on this device,” our team won an award HP Innovate 2009 in May 2009. Prashant and Mohit were responsible for making the prototype, which got our team this award and a trip to HP labs in Palo Alto, USA.” he added

“During this period I also had a chance meet, during a train journey, Mrs Poonam Natarajan, Chairperson of National Trust ( a Govt of India organization to look after persons with disability). Following this and a meeting with Mr Atul Prasad, CEO, National Trust, we received funding to take this project forward.

This device, which we have named “CePal” has been handed over to users in Ahmedabad, Chennai and Delhi.”, he added.

The “CePal”, device, he says, is like a button-less universal remote control, which allows a person, who cannot operate a normal button operated remote, to operate things like TV, Light, Fan, Computer etc. At one time up to four such devices can be customized to be used by a user.

All such users who have restricted finger movement or injured fingers, who cannot operate remote control or turn pages of books etc can take advantage of this. This can be very useful to our soldiers or police personnel , who may have had fingers damaged in injury. It can allow them not only control of things around them but also operate simple machinery to earn livelihood. With some additional work, this can also allow them to operate wheelchair or open doors etc.

Elaborating using brain computer, Prof Prabhat says,” When we started handing over “CePal” device to user, we were approached by other persons, who had other abilities but could not move hand. I promised such users other ways to help them based on their abilities”

He opines that One such user is a senior officer in Delhi, who has no movements of hands or legs but can speak well. I promised him to develop a prototype during summer 2011, which we have done and now working to make it reliable to hand it over to him. However we also came across persons, who could not move any body part or speak. In response to the needs of such users, I thought of using brain waves monitoring to help such users. I was aware of the developments in this area but could not buy a “neuro-headset” needed for this purpose as it was restricted for sell to USA/Canada only. I could obtain one such device during may 2011. On July 1, 2011 I could make necessary modification in my earlier developed “CePal” device to take input from brain and we are calling this “Brain-CePal” now.

Prof Prabhat, says that This would be most useful for persons with no mobility of body parts and not being able to speak as well. The person has to use a neuro-headset available commercially which operates for about 6 hours on a single charge. This device communicates wirelessly to a computer/laptop to which we connect our device programmed to operate the equipments (e.g TV/Light/Fan etc). We expect a small board made available shortly that would make it possible to operate it without computer and it can be fitted in a wheelchair and make the person move around (at least in limited area

Regarding cost of the devices, Professor says that By this time we have developed devices to cater to persons with different ability and we can customize it to the needs of a specific user. Based on the need, device may cost Rs 1000 to Rs 25000. Brain-Computer based system is on the more expensive side and is only suggested for those users, who do not have any mobility of body parts(and even cannot speak) except may be facial expressions. We can also train the device to recognize certain thoughts and use that to operate various equipments.”

“We can use hand/leg/head/eye movements to operate various things. We also plan to use muscle vibrations (e.g. vocal chord). If none of these are available to be used as input, we can use Brain-Computer interface”, he adds and says “Right now we have been developing these as part of research projects and do not have an organization to support individual users in larger scale. I am hoping that something can be worked out, which would allow us to support users on mass scale. For the time being users or agencies interested can contact me at my email,” he adds.

The brain-computer based system is in operation anywhere .”We are in touch with a user in Coimbatore, who suffered a brain stem stroke in 1999 and since then he is completely paralyzed and cannot speak as well. Recently a trust formed to help him has agreed to bear the cost of this device and I expect to hand it over to him during January.

Prof Prabhat says “I am not aware of any group in India that has done similar work World-wise this is an area of active development. However most of the systems are very expensive and not affordable to Indian users. This is very important from Indian economic conditions.”

About adopting it in a state like Bihar he says,”I am very keen to start handing it over to users in Bihar and for this I had been talking to group of Doctors and other agencies in Patna. On Dec 25, 2011 a workshop was organized at Patna Bones and Spines Hospital by Dr Vishvendra Kumar. I am in discussion with him to make it possible to not only handover this type of device to users in Bihar but also setup a center in Bihar to carry forward such tasks. Personally on my part I am even willing to relocate to Bihar now after being out of state for more than 35 years. This would allow me to carry out various innovations not only in health-care but also in other areas such as agriculture, education etc in addition to large science projects such as Nuclear Fusion and Planetary Exploration that I am involved with right now. I am already in touch with other experts in these areas within state and have setup a group “Bihar Innovation Society” on Facebook to promote innovation in Bihar relevant to Nation, Society and industry in Bihar.”

As regards other plans for development of Bihar, Prof Prabhat says,”I have a dream to grow Bihar through Innovation like it was responsible for many innovation in the past. For this I would like 4-5 “Innovation Belts” to be promoted within state at different geographical locations. These would consist of multiple organizations consisting of educational institutes, research centers and industry forming an ecosystem to promote innovation. I am working on this concept and can share details later, if needed..”