PESUIMSR Teams Excel at IIT Madras Shaastra 2026

Three teams from PES University Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (PESUIMSR) represented the university at the prestigious Shaastra annual fest hosted by IIT Madras, competing in the Biotech domain against more than 100 national-level participants in each event.

In the Biobattle event held on January 4, 2026, Team The Sting Operation—comprising Shreya Manjunath Kagathi, Srujana Jayasimha (2nd‑year MBBS), Srimayee Ganesan, and Anarghya Lakshmi G (2nd‑year Biotechnology)—won Third Place and Best Presentation for their innovative Triple‑defence biomimetic coating. Their solution focused on reducing hospital-acquired infections by preventing bacterial adhesion, triggering enzymatic killing, and surviving hospital surface conditions.

On January 5, 2026, PESUIMSR teams delivered outstanding performances in the Immunocasefiles research proposal competition:

• First Place was awarded to Shreya Manjunath Kagathi, AVS Pragnya, and Gagandeep Kulkarni for The Goldilocks Complex, which explored conditional TOX expression in ROR1‑specific CAR‑T cells targeting Triple Negative Breast Cancer.
• Second Place went to Zehrah Faisal, Aradhitha Mehrotra, and Navya Tandon for Trident, a proposal investigating gut microbiome–mediated metabolic pathways influencing tumor immunity.
   

These achievements highlight the students’ strong research capabilities, interdisciplinary thinking, and commitment to advancing biomedical innovation at a national level.