Dr. Prashant R. Nair, Vice-Chairman – Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC), Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore campus, has secured the following recognitions for innovation outreach and extension activities in 2024:

• Selected as one of the 30 IEEE STEM Champions for 2024-2025 worldwide by the international professional body, IEEE for his pro-bono mentoring of Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) under the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog for the last 5 years. The STEM champion badge was presented to Dr. Prashant by Mr. Stamatis Dragoumanos,  Chair, IEEE Pre-University Education Coordinating Committee (PECC) during the IEEE Potentials editorial meeting in Athens, Greece on 18 and 19 May 2024.
• Recognized as one of the 39 Gems of Mentor India from a pool of 6200 mentors of change of Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) for the fourth consecutive year by AIM. Dr. Prashant attended the Mentor Round Table (MRT) at NITI Aayog on 17 May 2024 and interacted with NITI Aayog CEO, Shri BVR Subrahmanyam & Member (Health), Dr. VK Paul, and AIM mission director, Dr. Chintan Vaishnav.  Dr. Prashant has been serving as an ATL mentor for 3 schools namely Yuvabharathi Public School, Coimbatore; and Amrita Vidyalayams at Trichy and Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu. 15 of his mentee teams from these schools have been ranked amongst the top teams in various editions of the ATL marathon, which is a national innovation competition for schools. Amrita faculty and researchers, Ms. Gayathri Manikutty from AMMACHI Labs and Mr. Ganesh Narayanan from Amrita WNA were also recognized as Gems of Mentor India by AIM.