Universiti Kuala Lumpur Royal College of Medicine Perak (UniKL RCMP)-based lecturer and researcher, Associate Professor Dr. Mahendran Sekar has been awarded a funding proposal worth approximately RM 300,000 (INR 5.6 million) from the Indian government.
Under the ASEAN-India Collaborative R&D scheme – part of the ASEAN-India S&T Development Fund (AISTDF), the funding will go toward his international collaborative research project entitled “Anisotropic nanostructures material-enabled/embedded mask and sanitizing solution to combat pandemic respiratory disease”.
The funding is from the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India.
Commenting on the grant, Dr. Sekar said it took about six months – the average length of time for proposals to be evaluated at each level, before the approval was received on 5th July 2022.
“The proposed proposal involves several crucial steps which will be furnished by different Principle Investigators (PIs) to achieve the objectives of the proposal.
“This research duration is two years. The research project began on 1st July 2022, and is expected to be completed by 30th June 2024,” he told.
For this research project, he will collaborate with one of the top-10 universities in the world which is the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Two other researchers are involved, namely Associate Professor Dr. Manav Saxena from Jain University, India and Professor Dr. Jayaraman Sivaraman from NUS, Singapore.
With the funding, they will develop nanomaterials embedded masks and health-grade sanitizing solutions to enhance their activity against bacteria and viruses.
After that, with the help of industry, the developed technology will be incorporated into the N95 masks/sanitizing solutions that are now on the market.
