Humans communicate a lot non-verbally, thanks to the ability of our brain to understand tone. Would computers be able to do this? Currently capable of understanding plain text, they are struggling to learn the emotions behind the words, conveyed through tone. But these machines are catching up fast. Digital audio processing tools equip computers to understand various information in sound, including emotions.Prof Preeti Rao of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay is an expert in sound processing—an approach that helps us do various useful things, one of which is removing unwanted sounds (or noise) from an audio clip. With her team at the Digital Audio Processing Lab, Prof Rao attempts to understand the nature of sound, reveal the information it may hold, and use it for, say, identifying tracks, melodies or the raga of a song.

Carbaryl is one of the commonly used pesticides for agricultural as well as non-agricultural use. But like any other insecticide, higher concentrations of Carbaryl in the soil can have adverse effects on humans and other organisms. The need to completely remove it from the environment or break it down into less harmful substances is of primary importance. Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), and Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB), Delhi, have achieved a significant breakthrough in identifying bacteria which can clean up this pesticide from the environment and understanding exactly how the breakdown occurs.

 During the fag end of 2015, Chennai experienced severe floods resulting in the death of about 500 people and economic losses of about INR 50,000 crores. The flooding stranded the city and was termed a 'man-made disaster' resulting from irresponsible water management and rapid urbanisation. The northeast monsoon of the year left most parts of South India marooned, exposing how vulnerable our cities are to such catastrophes. That's when the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor took a major initiative to develop a real-time, integrated, urban flood forecasting system that was non-existent in our country. Soon after, a team of scientists from various institutes across the country, swung into action to develop the first-ever expert system in India to forecast floods. In a recent study, published in the journal Current Science, the researchers shed light on the development of the automated flood forecasting expert system. 

Study analyses what drives the choice of transport to shopping malls in Mumbai.

Study by Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, uses digital processing of archived satellite images to study the growth patterns in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. 

Bureaucracy and political interests hinder the implementation of the Forest Rights Act, finds study 

Researchers find a unique new technique to make stable, low-power graphene transistors

Researchers at IIT Bombay develop the country’s first indigenously designed and fabricated microprocessor. 

Prof Subimal Ghosh, Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), has been awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 2019 by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). This award recognises his significant contributions to our understanding of how land surface processes influence the Indian monsoon, as well as for improving regional monsoon simulations and predictions. 

Researchers from IIT Bombay and Archaeological Survey of India, Aurangabad studied soil from the Lonar lake and found that the materials from the meteor had a significant impact on the native soil.