Students from The Design Village (TDV) have excelled at the Biodesign Challenge Summit 2024, securing a place as finalists and winning the Outstanding Digital Submission Prize for their innovative project, “Mirage: Eco Solutions from Marble Remnants.” The summit, renowned for bringing together visionary young minds, featured over 50 schools from 15 countries.
The project by Divyansh Jain, Raghav Modi, Vedangi Rane, and Prakriti addresses the extensive marble slurry dumps in Kishangarh, Rajasthan. They developed a method to convert this slurry into eco-friendly tiles, which can potentially create local jobs. These tiles can reduce temperatures by 6-8°C and the use of marble slurry in production could reclaim approximately 85 acres of land.
Mudita Pasari, Academic Dean at The Design Village, expressed her pride: “We are elated and quite overwhelmed by this recognition and proud of our students for their dedication and innovative thinking. Their success at the Biodesign Challenge Summit underscores our commitment to fostering creativity and sustainable design practices.” The aim of the summit is to develop ideas that bridge art, design, and biology to reimagine a more sustainable and equitable future, and to explore the ethical implications of current and future biotechnology.
Under the guidance of Anusha Dhawan, Vatsal Agrawal, Souvik M., Gaurav Wali, and Dr. Nandita Pasari, the TDV team’s project, stood out for its creative approach to sustainability, addressing the pressing issue of marble waste by transforming it into eco-friendly solutions. Biodesign is an emerging discipline at the intersection of biology, art, and design. Bio designers work with living systems to create new materials and products, respond to problems, and critique how biotechnology is used today and might be used in the future.