Nanotechnology - Building Better Futures | Ekta Jagtiani | TEDxYouth@OIS

foreign [Music] of my college I was having a conversation with my professor and director of the University about my career and line of study in the future he asked me what my goal was fresh with all the concepts that I'd mastered I told him I want to use nanotechnology in smart sensors in cancer therapy and for environment protection he asked me again what is your goal in life I elaborated with something a bit broader I told him I want to use electrospan Nano fibers in cancer therapy micro encapsulation of nanoparticles and smart sensors to protect

the environment I could see that he was still not convinced he then said you told me what you want and how you want it but tell me why you want it and by why I mean what is your purpose what is your belief why do you want to get out of bed every morning and why should anyone care I then went from the fuzziest thought to the clearest thought and began to communicate from inside out I told him I want to enrich the health and well-being of the planet and everyone who lives here and from

that moment on I had a purpose that was my guiding force I participated in the global Trio hackathon each at MIT Stanford and Harvard but while I was researching in the field of nanotechnology I often encountered questions like oh so is that what they use in Marvel to build the Spider-Man suit that's so cool unfortunately we're not there yet but I would be so excited if I could build that so what exactly is nano Nano is one billionth of a meter which is one lakh times smaller than the width of a human hair let me

explain this to you with an example many of you can relate to how many of you all have heard the song him for the weekend by Coldplay it is 315 words in the song now if we add up all the songs in all the albums of Coldplay till now that is 175 songs we get a total of 60 000 words but if we add up all the words in the 100 million songs available on Spotify just three words out of all of those words gives a diameter of one Nano fiber that is 0.1 nanometer that

means Nano is insanely small in today's age of Health and Wellness everyone is attracted to immunity boosting Foods that's how we find a probiotic milk probiotic Greek yogurts and ready to eat cereals on the top of our kitchen shelves but how do we know that this probiotic bacteria that we are actually praying a premium for to survive in our intestinal tract to deliver the Target and have a beneficial effect in our body it's made possible with nanotechnology with the micro encapsulation of this probiotic bacteria which means a protective covering of the probiotic bacteria with the

help of nanoparticle it helps them survive in our intestinal tract I elaborated this in my paper published in the special issue of food Frontiers Wiley called advancements of nanotechnology in food science and industry nanotechnology also has tremendous scope in the field of Medicine one such example is a use of nanofibers in cancer therapy cancer is the fifth leading cause of deaths in India resulting in over six lakh deaths every year now Imagine This you have a hundred candles laid out in front of you which you have to blow into but you have to make sure

that only one candle in red blows out while all the 99 other stale it now imagine this in a complex human body that essentially is the concept of Nano fibers chemotherapy it is a very effective treatment for cancer cells where there are powerful chemicals released in the body that attack the cancer cells but in the process they also end up harming the normal cells in your body thus resulting in many side effects but what Nano fibers does is that it only targets the cancer cells in your body not harming the normal cells and thus preventing

the reoccurrence of cancer I elaborated this in my paper called electrospun nanofibers in cancer therapy foreign thing that we find everywhere around us this my favorite snack is an energy bar it's going to take me less than a minute to finish an energy bar now you all must be wondering what the relevance of this information is besides making you hungry I'm getting there stay with me while I finish an energy bar in less than a minute the contents are gone but the wrapping still persists most of us choose to either recycle it or throw it

in the garbage but we do the latter now this wrapping will find itself in a landfill where it will take 250 years to fully decompose which brings me back to my initial Point plastic more and more plastic it is everywhere around us it is in our homes in our offices Even in our favorite cafes offering tonic water in plastic bottles it's not hard to understand why plastic is cheap and that's why we make a lot of it India generates 3.5 million tons of plastic waste every year that is seven times the twin towers that we

demolished in Noida so I worked on Nano materials which is an effective alternative to this plastic cellulose it is the most abundantly occurring natural polymer on Earth and nanocellulose is a fiber extracted from it nanocellulose is eco-friendly and sustainable too and thus I explored this in my internationally available book chapter called applications of nanocellulose in supercapacitors now what is the next most important resource for military and army besides their ammunition it is safe drinking water due to the strenuous activity in harsh environments it is important for them to stay sufficiently hydrated thus in my fully

funded research fellowship at the University of Waterloo in Canada I built a novel device that can help detect pesticides in water the device currently in use requires massive labor resources which is not available to the general population the shortcomings of the device I modified was that different strips was required for different concentrations of the pesticide thus requiring the test to be conducted for a larger number of times also the results vary due to change in pressure time and environment so I thought through this and are involved three detection spots on one device thus reducing the

number of times the test had to be carried out with the help of a color gradient on my device one could accurately determine the concentration of the pesticide that to just under two minutes now nanotechnology may seem like something into the future but we all might be using nanotechnology right now how many of you all play tennis the tennis balls that you'll use actually have nanotechnology to help them stay in good condition and last longer or the sunscreens that we use actually have a layer of nanotechnology to protect us from the UV rays or we

might actually be wearing nanotechnology trousers that have Nano fibers which prevent the dirt from penetrating deeper into the layers of clothing but it's a result of years of research the marbles of nanotechnology will still be explored in the decades to come we're still in the first or second generation of Nano materials and we're expecting a third and fourth fourth generation that involves nano-robotics but for that we have to invest in it today so are we thinking Nano enough today to enrich people's lives for a better tomorrow I'm Gonna Leave You with that thought thank you