President Droupadi Murmu visited the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati on October 13, 2022, as part of her two-day visit to Assam. The “Param Kamrupa” supercomputer facility and the “Sameer” high-power active and passive component laboratory at IIT Guwahati were both formally inaugurated by the president.
The National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), a cooperative project of the Department of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, established the 838 Teraflops Param Kamrupa supercomputer facility at IIT Guwahati. The facility’s opening will enable the Institute to conduct several research projects in fields including computational chemistry, molecular dynamics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, and data science, to name a few.
IIT Guwahati’s Sameer laboratory was created for the design and development of high-power microwave passive and active components. The facility will give researchers a place to carry out research and development in several areas of high-power microwave engineering. The Institute is currently concentrating on domestically creating active and passive components for accelerators used in industry for non-destructive testing and in the medical sciences for the treatment of cancer. CW and pulse magnetrons, which are also employed for the creation of high-quality diamonds, are currently being designed. These recently built facilities intend to give the region’s research and development efforts a significant boost.
The President of India, Droupadi Murmu, commented on the newly opened facilities, saying: “I am convinced that the supercomputer Param-Kamrupa facility would be used in the best way to increase our awareness and knowledge on a variety of technological themes. Critical applications aided by R and D will be made possible by the Sameer laboratory in the defence industry and other sectors. The State government is making a considerable effort to create numerous medical institutions throughout Assam, which will drastically close the doctor-to-population ratio gap and pave the way for future non-destructive testing and medical research.
The Indian president was accompanied by a number of dignitaries, including Rajiv Bahl, the director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research, Bharati Pravin Pawar, the chief minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, and several cabinet ministers for health and family welfare. At Dibrugarh, Assam, and Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, President Murmu officially lay the cornerstone for the National Institute of Virology’s Zonal Institutes. He also essentially declared a medical college and hospital open at Dhubri, Assam.
