Kanpur, 05 December 2023: The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK) a pioneer in technological innovation, has been honoured with the prestigious AssisTech Foundation (ATF) Awards 2023 for engaging in assistive technology activities. The award ceremony took place at Bangalore Palace, Bengaluru, Karnataka during the Bengaluru Tech Summit (BTS) 2023.

The ATF award was presented by Shri. Priyank Kharge, Minister for Information Technology, Government of Karnataka, and was received jointly by Prof. Siddhartha Panda from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Prof. Braj Bhushan from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. The institute was featured in the assistive technology innovations and became the first-time winner in the "Best AT Initiative by Educational Institutes" under the enablers category of ATF Awards.

Talking about the award, Prof S Ganesh, Director IIT Kanpur, said, "The three awarded technologies address a major lag in assistive ecosystem and IIT Kanpur has been proactively working with an objective to develop more such technologies that can create an impact on society in the assistive domain and can be transformed into a product."

Prof. Siddhartha Panda and team from the National Centre of Flexible Electronics (NCFlexE), IITK received the award for the technologies titled, "Haptic smartwatch for blind and visually impaired" and "Single Refreshable Braille Cell Based Braille Learning Device with a Touch Sensitive".

Prof. Braj Bhushan and his team received the award for the invention titled "Assistive Application for Children with Dyslexia and Dysgraphia (AACDD)".

ATF Awards is India’s first and foremost dedicated flagship awareness initiative for the Assistive Technology ecosystem. These awards aim to recognize the unsung heroes who are significantly impacting the lives of people with disabilities worldwide through the power of Assistive Technology (AT).

About IIT Kanpur:

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur was established in 1959 and declared to be to be an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India through an Act of Parliament. IIT Kanpur is best known for the highest standard of its education in science and engineering and seminal R&D contributions over the years. The institute has a sprawling lush green campus spread over 1055 acres with large pool of academic and research resources spanning across 19 departments, 25 centers and 3 interdisciplinary programs in engineering, science, design, humanities, and management disciplines with more than 570 full-time faculty members and approximately 9000 students.

For more information, visit www.iitk.ac.in.