Discover top universities from around the world in the free virtual events organised by the Office of International Relations and Higher Studies, SRM University-AP! This time, we are organising an online awareness programme with one of our partner universities James Cook University (JCU), Singapore. Official representatives from JCU will do presentations on the Semester Abroad Programme offered to the students of SRM University-AP on November 29, 2021, at 11.30 am (IST).

Studying at the Singapore campus of James Cook University allows exploring the rest of Asia along with their high-quality Australian education. The Semester Abroad Programme enables students to learn for 1 or 2 Trimesters (4 or 8 months), earning credits towards their home institution degree. As a Semester Abroad student at James Cook University, our students will be able to choose subjects from a wide range of study areas that will add value to their degree and broaden their experience.

From networking sessions to university fairs to seminars and panels, the Office of International Relations and Higher Studies is the ultimate way to find your way to study abroad! Stay tuned to this awareness programme on November 29, 2021, at 11.30 am (IST).

Register here!

SRM University-AP could not be more proud to announce that Dr S Mannathan, Head of Department of Chemistry has made it to the top 5% in the list of the Most Cited Authors by the Royal Society of Chemistry. It is inspiring to have a faculty member in our midst whose work has helped and facilitated the research of so many others.

Dr Mannathan obtained his doctorate from National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. His research interests primarily lie in Metal-catalyzed organic transformation reactions, Multicomponent reactions, and Asymmetric synthesis. His research followed by scientists all over the world leading him to become one of the top 5% authors in terms of citations

In the field of Transition Metal Complexes as Catalysts in Organic Reactions, he particularly leans towards ‘Nickel-and cobalt-catalyzed three-component coupling and reductive coupling reactions’, and ‘Palladium-catalyzed reductive arylation’. Similarly, in Asymmetric Synthesis, he favours research into ‘Asymmetric reductive Heck reaction for the synthesis of chiral indanones’, and ‘Synthesis of bicyclic tertiary alcohols and its related asymmetric version via reductive [3+2] cycloaddition reaction by using chiral cobalt complexes.’

About the top 5% most cited paper:

In this work, he reported the synthesis and application of a Zn-Bp-BTC MOF (Bp – 4,4′-bipyridine; BTC – 1,3,5-benzene tricarboxylic acid; MOF – metal organic framework) as a heterogeneous catalyst for mediating organic reactions. Initial reaction conditions were optimized for the Knoevenagel condensation reaction using Zn-Bp-BTC as a heterogeneous catalyst. Various factors such as the effect of solvent, temperature and catalyst loading were evaluated. Although the reaction proceeded at room temperature using methanol as the solvent, 60 °C offered the best yield in a shorter duration. Under optimized reaction conditions, a wide range of α,β-unsaturated dicyano compounds were prepared from the corresponding carbonyl precursor and malononitrile, the active methylene counterpart. A systematic investigation was also carried out to assess the role of the ligand and metal salt in the Knoevenagel condensation reaction. It was found that the Zn-Bp-BTC MOF catalyzed the reaction efficiently in comparison to its analogue Zn-BTC MOF and precursor Zn(NO 3 ) 2 ·6H 2 O. Finally, catalytic recycling and stability studies showed that the catalyst is able to mediate the reaction for up to five consecutive cycles without undergoing any significant chemical or morphological changes. Further, the catalyst was tested for its efficacy in a multicomponent reaction (MCR). An MCR with the Zn-Bp-BTC MOF as the catalyst afforded good yields and there was no reaction in the absence of the catalyst. Similarly, the catalyst was tested for its efficiency in benzimidazole synthesis.

Dr Mannathan did this research in collaboration with Dr. Kathiresan Murugavel, Scientist, Electro Organic Division, CSIR-Central Electrochemical Research Institute (Govt of India), Karaikudi.

The Department of English at SRM University-AP invites you to an engaging webinar on November 26, 2021, at 11.00 am. Mr Jairam Ramesh, Member of Parliament representing the state of Andhra Pradesh, will be the guest speaker of the day.

Writing is a process of pain and pleasure. Every writer approaches, experiences, and survives it in a unique way. In this talk and interaction, Mr Jairam Ramesh would share his idea and process of writing. His talk would be followed by an interaction about his latest book The Light of Asia: The Poem That Defined The Buddha (Penguin, 2021). The talk is intended to be a part of the Department’s larger initiative to organise interactions around “Language and Society” to address all kinds of conversations about language, communication, writing, speaking, thinking, and at a deeper level, about connecting with others.

About the Speaker:

Jairam Ramesh is presently a Member of Parliament and Chairman of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change. He was Union Minister between 2006 and 2014 and held several portfolios including Commerce, Power, Environment and Forests, Drinking Water and Sanitation and Rural Development. He played a key role in global climate change negotiations in 2009 and 2010. He is also the author of several well-known books some of which are Green Signals: Ecology, Growth and Democracy in India, Old History, New Geography: Bifurcating Andhra Pradesh, To the Brink and Back: India’s 1991 Story, Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature, Intertwined Lives: PN Haksar and Indira Gandhi, A Chequered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V.K. Krishna Menon and The Light of Asia: The Poem that defined the Buddha.

We encourage you to make use of this exclusive opportunity to interact with Mr Jairam Ramesh and understand the nuances of the writing process on November 26, 2021, at 11.00 am.

Register here!

A research paper titled “Detection of Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) severity from fundus photographs: An Ensemble Approach using weighted average”, has been published by Dr Mahesh Kumar Morampudi, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, in the Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering.

Diabetic Retinopathy is a common diabetic disease that affects the retina and can result in blindness if not treated initially. Deep learning (DL) based models are proposed to detect the blood abnormalities in the retinal tissue due to diabetes mellitus obtained from fundus camera. The drawback of these models is the lack of performance. To address this, we propose to automate the process of detection of the severity of Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) using ensembles of pre-trained models, thus exploring the power of transfer learning in the field of automated diagnosis. Deep learning models perform well when the model is trained on a large amount of data. In this regard, we also put forth data augmentation and preprocessing techniques to generate synthetic images and to improve image quality. Extensive experimental results on publicly available databases illustrate that the proposed ensemble model achieves fair accuracy when compared to existing models. Thus, the proposed model shows good scope for deployment in real-time diagnosis.

Every year multiple people are diagnosed with diabetes. Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects several organs of the human body namely the eyes, kidneys, heart etc. Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is a situation induced by diabetes in which severe loss happens to the retinal blood vessels that can ultimately lead to blindness. Regular diabetic retinopathy screening is hence needed for detecting it in advance. In the present situation, a trained clinician or an ophthalmologist is required to identify diabetic retinopathy (DR) by the existence of lesions related to the vascular abnormalities induced by the disease. The ophthalmologist needs to evaluate and examine digital colour fundus images of the retina. So, it is a very tedious and sluggish process. He/She needs more time to diagnose DR. The diagnosis of the disease by any manual means seems to be tiresome and usually results in errors. To overcome this limitation, we propose a model to automate the process of detection of the severity of DR using ensembles of pre-trained models, thus exploring the power of transfer learning in the field of automated diagnosis.

The research group believes that the study helps ophthalmologists to identify diabetic retinopathy at its early stage accurately, as a result, the chance of losing the vision due to diabetic retinopathy can be reduced. The work is done in collaboration with Dr Mulagala Sandhya, Assistant professor, NIT-Warangal. In the future, Dr Mahesh Kumar plans to work on a project related to Privacy-preserving Biometric Authentication.