Aswin Giri J, Shiva Nagendra S M
Environmental Research Letters, vol. 19(5), 2024, p. 053002
Research scholar and entrepreneur at IIT Madras.
Academics
I am a fourth year PhD student at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India, working in the field of Air Quality Management, supervised by Prof. Shiva Nagendra.
My research lies in the nexus of air quality perception, computer vision and low-cost sensors, with an overarching theme of localised and efficient urban air quality management.
In the past couple of years, I have been working on managing urban air pollution hotspots through
1) Perception based Air Quality Index, which takes into account people's perception of air pollution,
2) Low-cost sensing technology,
3) Image-based Particulate Matter prediction through Computer Vision.
During my PhD, I have worked as a teaching assistant to Prof. Shiva Nagendra for the following courses:
1. CE5015 - Environmental Monitoring and Data Analysis (2022, 2021)
2. CE5260 - Models for Water and Air Quality (2023, 2022)
3. CE5017 - Urban Transport and Environment (2021)
4. CE4810 - Air Pollution Control and Solid Waste Management (2020)
My research lies in the nexus of air quality perception, computer vision and low-cost sensors, with an overarching theme of localised and efficient urban air quality management.
In the past couple of years, I have been working on managing urban air pollution hotspots through
1) Perception based Air Quality Index, which takes into account people's perception of air pollution,
2) Low-cost sensing technology,
3) Image-based Particulate Matter prediction through Computer Vision.
During my PhD, I have worked as a teaching assistant to Prof. Shiva Nagendra for the following courses:
1. CE5015 - Environmental Monitoring and Data Analysis (2022, 2021)
2. CE5260 - Models for Water and Air Quality (2023, 2022)
3. CE5017 - Urban Transport and Environment (2021)
4. CE4810 - Air Pollution Control and Solid Waste Management (2020)
In my 4th year of PhD, I attended a three-month research exchange at the Hokkaido University, Japan through the STSI program under the umbrella of One Program for Global Goals. I was supervised by Prof. Atsuko Ikeda, Environmental Health Sciences lab, Faculty of Health Sciences. I was introduced to the exciting area of Environmental Epidemiology research and learnt cutting edge research in the field. I worked on developing a sink model to assess the Phosphate Flame Retardants concentrations in indoor environment from accumulated house dust and evaluate its association to allergies. I transferred and applied my knowledge on air quality models to the field of environmental epidemiology.
The report of the exchange program can be accessed here: STSI Report
The report of the exchange program can be accessed here: STSI Report
During my masters in Environmental Engineering at the College of Engineering Guindy, India, I was supervised by Prof. S. Karthikeyan. I worked on an interesting project, where I studied the effect of ventilation setting on the in-vehicle (inside car cabin) Carbon Monoxide at signalised traffic intersections.
Entrepreneurship
In 2021, I co-founded SENSurAir Private Limited with Prof. Shiva Nagendra, Prof. Devendra Jalihal, PhD scholars & engineers from civil & electrical departments of IIT Madras. We aim to help people manage air pollution by providing economical solutions for monitoring air quality in urban, rural and industrial areas, and disseminating data to the community. We are incubated by IITM Pravartak Technologies Foundation and IITM Incubation Cell. In my capacity as CEO, we have successfully taken two products from lab to pilot scale, and we are working towards developing a novel, indigenous technology.
