A Symposium by IIT Kanpur Alumni to Find Practical Solutions to Counter Growing Air Pollution

/ -- The Alumni Association of IIT Kanpur (AAIITK) is organising a one-day symposium on 10th January 2019 at the IITK campus titled SEE Central - Care for Air. Speakers in the symposium will explain everything one needs to know about air pollution. The goal is to come up with solutions that can be first tried out at a city level in Kanpur by IIT Kanpur and later be scaled to cover the country at large.

Air pollution has become the world's most pressing problem especially in India with 15 of the most polluted cities in the world being from India (according to a WHO report). Kanpur has even been listed as the most polluted city in the world. To find sustainable solutions for this growing menace, alumni of IITK organized this symposium to bring together entrepreneurs, doctors, policy-makers and researchers for a day of talks and discussions.

IIT Kanpur has always been at the forefront of research in the area of pollution - the widely used Air Quality Index was developed at IIT Kanpur, the first National Aerosol Facility is being set up in India and even the pollutants causing discoloration of the Taj Mahal were investigated by a team from IIT Kanpur.

For SEE Central event, the Keynote speech will be delivered by Prof. SN Tripathi, IIT Kanpur on SATVAM, a collaborative project to understand air quality in India. The schedule also includes a session by Prof. Sagnik Dey, Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, IIT Delhi on the use of satellite for monitoring air pollution; a talk by Mr. Ritesh Kumar Singh, Joint Secretary & Project Director, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India on effective policy-making for cleaner air; a talk by Dr. Rajesh Dikshit, Tata Memorial Centre on how air pollution contributes to cancer.

The post-lunch sessions will focus on how the youth has been engaged in curbing the problem of air pollution. There will be talks by several young entrepreneurs who are running successful start-ups in this area.

The day's events will also include two insightful panel discussions on the viable projects that can be implemented by IIT Kanpur in the cities of Kanpur and Lucknow and on how citizens can get involved in curbing air pollution.

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