Mr. Prithviraj Pramanik is currently conducting research under the Visvesvaraya PhD Fellowship program at the National Institute of Technology Durgapur, India. He holds a bachelor’s degree (honors) in computer science from Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur, India, and a master’s in computer applications from the National Institute of Technology Durgapur. For his doctoral research, he is studying the cost-effective urban air quality measurement techniques that can increase the spatial coverage of air quality monitors (AQMs) using multimodal sensing. He has publications at top-tier conferences and journals to his credit, along with a pending patent.
Mr. Pramanik is highly committed to taking the technological outcomes of his research to the masses. Earlier, he had co-founded a technology start-up dealing with an alternative communication technology for post-disaster management. This was adjudicated by the Indian government as one of the top ten start-ups in the country that works in the field of disaster management. Work aside, he loves to travel to new places and is also passionate about street photography.
Under this Fulbright-Kalam fellowship, Mr. Pramanik is working on low-cost air quality sensors which have been extensively deployed across Chicago. One of the primary goals of this research is to rank geographical areas in terms of the degree of severity of the problem; this is expected to enable policymakers to take mitigative steps.