TECH ALUMNI LED INTERNATIONAL EFFORT TO SUPPORT HOSPITALS, ARTISANS IN INDIA
By: Jennifer Herseim | Categories: Alumni Achievements
WORKING ACROSS TIME ZONES AND CONTINENTS, ARKADEEP KUMAR, A 2021 40 UNDER 40 HONOREE, LED A GROUP OF TECH STUDENTS AND ALUMNI TO ADDRESS PPE SHORTAGES IN HOSPITALS IN INDIA WITH THE HELP OF LOCAL ARTISANS.
It was March of 2020, and India had ordered a nationwide lockdown to prevent Covid-19 from spreading to the country’s 1.3 billion people. India’s case counts were relatively low, but the pandemic was just getting started. Hospitals and healthcare systems would be overwhelmed during a second wave in 2021 that would make India one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic.
From his own lockdown in California, Arkadeep Kumar, MS ME 14, PhD ME 18, was paying close attention to India’s situation through regular updates from friends and family in his hometown of Calcutta. As supply chains began to buckle, Indian healthcare workers lacked access to personal protective equipment to protect themselves and prevent the further spread of Covid-19. Kumar, a technologist R&D engineer for Applied Materials, Inc., began reaching out to former classmates, many of whom he met through ASHA for Education, a campus organization that Kumar helped bring to Tech campus while he was a student.
The group was inspired by Georgia Tech’s early pandemic initiative to fabricate face shields using campus makerspaces and 3D printers. “We saw what Tech was doing building face shields for local hospitals in Atlanta,” Kumar says. “That energized us.”
They initially set up a group chat over WhatsApp and then began meeting virtually to discuss ways to address the shortage of PPE in local Indian hospitals.
Kumar remembers thinking, “I’m in California, trying to do something for my family and friends back in India. What can I do?” He started developing his contacts in California, reaching out to his family in India, and connecting with students and professors in Atlanta.
Working across time zones and continents, the group devised a plan to fabricate lightweight face shields for healthcare workers in India. “We saw it as a stop-gap measure to fill the immediate need for PPE,” Kumar says.
Support for the initiative grew and soon the group included more volunteers, medical students, and doctors. But India’s lockdown posed significant barriers to getting the face shields produced. Travel was restricted during lockdown. Who would be able to help produce the face shields and deliver the product where it was needed most?
“I reached out to a friend, who knew artisans in Calcutta. They were skilled at making lightweight sculptures,” Kumar says. “Because of the pandemic, they were out of work, but they had the tools we needed to cut the plastic for the face shields, and they were well-versed on how to use the tools to do this,” he says.
The group sent designs for a simple plastic face shield to the artisans, and then turned their attention to funding and sourcing materials.
“We used crowdfunding initially to purchase the materials and pay the artisans for their work,” Kumar says.
On the first day, the artisan group made 500 face shields, Kumar says. They arranged for local doctors, who could travel during the lockdown, to pick up the PPE for the hospitals and provide feedback to improve the design.
The initiative soon sustained itself through local sales and non-profit support. In November of 2020, the Rotary Club, an international non-profit, bought 5,000 face shields from the artisans.
Kumar never expected to be involved in an international effort of this kind. “Honestly, I never went into this thinking we’d end up here. We—myself and my friends—just wanted to help. We knew we needed to pull up our sleeves and do something.”
In total, nine Georgia Tech alumni and students were involved in the initiative. In addition to Kumar, the group included: Prasoon Suchandra, PhD ME 19, Dhwanil Shukla MS AE 15, PhD AE 19, Bahnisikha Dutta, MS BioE 17, PhD ECE 21, Agniva Roy PhD Math 21, Mayank Agrawal MS ChE 19, PhD ChE 19, Anish Mukherjee, MS ECE 17, PhD BioE 21, Gareeyasee Saha, PhD ECE 20, and Rachit Agarwal, postdoctoral researcher in bioengineering.
In recognition of Kumar’s efforts leading this international initiative and his research in nanotechnology, he was recognized as a 2021 40 Under 40 honoree by the Georgia Tech Alumni Association as well as the Geoffrey Boothroyd Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer by the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.
