Back close

Amrita Scholar Wins AWSAR Award for Best Popular Science Stories

March 13, 2020 - 5:22
Amrita Scholar Wins AWSAR Award for Best Popular Science Stories

Ms. Krishna Kumari, a Ph.D. Scholar of the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore campus, has been selected for the Augmenting Writing Skills for Articulating Research (AWSAR) Award from the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, for ‘Best Popular Science Stories’ under Ph.D. Category. Her popular science story entitled “Adoption of Artificial Intelligence for Electric Vehicle Integration in Smart Cities” has been selected for the AWSAR Award.

This research work aims to develop an AI-enabled framework that targets to design a user preference based integrated module for Electric Vehicle Charging management. The advancement of Electric Vehicle (EV) technology, Internet of Vehicle (IoV), is the next cutting edge research in the transportation sector. The exponential growth of Electric Vehicles (EV) in the near future, will lead to uncoordinated charging, which will jeopardize the power grid, as an Electric Vehicle depends mainly on battery for power supply. Additionally, the biggest problem faced by EV owners to date is range anxiety.

Krishna Kumari is pursuing her research on “Reinforcement Learning Based Algorithm Development for Electric Vehicle Charging” guided by Dr. N. Radhika (Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore) and co-guided by Dr. S. Balamurugan (Chairperson and Professor, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore). The research is being funded by the “Visvesvaraya Ph.D. Scheme” under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

“I’m highly obliged to  (Dean, Faculty of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham) for his continuous support and motivation,” said Krishna Kumari.

AWSAR is a new initiative conceptualized and supported by the National Council for Science & Technology Communication (NCSTC) Division, Department of Science & Technology (DST),  which is actively engaged in developing various outreach programs for scientific fraternity. AWSAR envisages bridging the existing gap in communicating research to the common man by utilizing the latent potential of Ph.D. Scholars and Post-Doctoral Fellows (PDFs). This program is being coordinated by Vigyan Prasar, an autonomous institute of DST.

The selection of best 100 entries of the popular science stories under the Ph.D. category and selection of best 20 entries of the popular science stories under the Postdoctoral Fellow (PDF) category will be awarded a cash prize of ₹10,000/- along with Certificate of Appreciation. The DST selected the top three leading “Best Popular Science Stories” for the award of ₹1,00,000/-, ₹50,000/- and ₹25,000/- (First, Second and Third respectively) under “Ph.D.” category and “Outstanding” story under “Postdoctoral Fellow (PDF)” category for ₹1,00,000/.

The objectives of this initiative include encouraging youth pursuing higher studies to submit at least one story/article based on their research work, Fosters, strengthen and create scientific temper through popular science writing and creating a culture of science communication/popularization among the scholars, Recognizing the initiative and output of researchers on the specific aspects of natural, physical, mathematical and information sciences, applied science, technology, engineering, and multi-disciplinary science and Conduct training Workshops for Early Career Researchers (Ph. D. Scholars and PDFs) in popular science writing.

Admissions Apply Now