In a significant step towards industry-academia collaboration, IIST today signed a 3 years duration memorandum of understanding with M/s Bigtec labs Pvt. Ltd, Bengaluru for the development of mass spectrometers for medical applications. Bigtec Labs is a wholly owned subsidiary and R&D arm of Molbio Diagnostics, a global MedTech company that is a pioneer in IVD (in-vitro diagnostics). It designs and develops pathbreaking diagnostic platforms that address clinical need gaps and can be deployed in Point-of-Care, resource-limited settings.

Dr.Govind Kumar Sharma, former Research scholar, Department of Chemistry, IIST has been awarded SPSI Best PhD Thesis award-2024 for his thesis entitled “Flexible, Electrospun Polyacrylonitrile Based Carbon Nanofiber Composites For Electromagnetic Interference Shielding” at the SPSI Thiruvananthapuram Chapter Annual Meeting 2026 held at Thiruvanathapuram on 26th February 2026. Dr. Govind’s Doctoral research was supervised by Prof. Nirmala R James.

Congratulations to Dr. Veena V. S., alumnus of IIST, for joining the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, as a faculty member in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. She completed her PhD in 2018 under the supervision of Prof. Sarita Vig from IIST.