Prof. Swati Jha, HOD, Electronics & Computer Engineering Department attended 1st Cardiovascular Bioengineering Symposium, 2013 on “Cardiovascular Research: Opportunities and Challenges in India” sponsored by Quality Improvement & Continuing Education Programme, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi on 12th December 2013. Symposium started with the welcome speech by Dr. Suneet Tuli, Dean, Research & Development, IIT Delhi. It was followed by the talk of Dr. Sanjeev Sanghi, Professor & Acting Head, Dept. of Appl. Mechanics, IIT Delhi.

Session 1: Dr. Rajiv Narang, Professor, Department of Cardiology, AIIMS Delhi shared information regarding technological advancements in treatment of cardiovascular disorders. Dr. Sujay Shad, Senior Consultant Cardiac Surgery, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital talked on opportunities and challenges in Cardiovascular Research. Dr. Naresh Bhatnagar, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Delhi briefed regarding “Biodegradable Polymer Stent: from concept to realization”.

Session 2: Dr. Rajiv Parakh, Chairman, Division of Peripheral and Endovascular Surgery, Medanta Medicity discussed on, “Vascular Health Assessment”. Dr. Gohil Nivedita Karmakar, Associate Professor, CBME, IIT Delhi shared the information regarding hemodynamics and vascular cell interactions. Dr. Alok Ray, Professor, CBME, IIT Delhi (Retd.), & Director, Stanford-India Biodesign showed his concern on the extent (around 80%) of import of medical devices in India.

Session 3: Mr. Amit Bhatnagar, Founder of Accuster Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Gurgaon enlightened on an unique initiative of his company in the name of “Mobile Lab”. This compact and portable machine can be termed as laboratory in a suitcase. Dr. Rajnish Juneja, Professor, Department of Cardiology, AIIMS Delhi focused on the cardiac anatomy and physiology for the biomedical engineers. Dr. Meenakshi Sharma, Scientist at ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) shared information on opportunities for research. The day closed with the presentation by Mr. William H Marks, Fulbright-Nehru Scholar and Visiting Faculty, IIT Delhi who shared his research results on “Hydrogel composites for cardiovascular tissue engineering”.

The goal of this symposium aimed to bring experts together from health care, medical device industry, bioengineering research, and government agencies to share their experience and plan ahead. They intended to use this platform to educate the audience about opportunities and challenges in cardiovascular research and device development, and ultimately inspire them for a career and research in this field. Above all, the symposium’s objective was to train next generation of bioengineering and biomechanics experts.