The first International Conference on Recent trends in Bioengineering (ICRTB 2018) was organized at MIT School of Bioengineering Sciences and Research (MITBIO) at MIT-ADT university campus in Loni Kalbhor, Pune on Saturday 17th February 2018. The conference was attended by 180 to 200 delegates from various places. The dignitaries present during the inauguration of the conference were Honorable Vishwanath Karad, Founder MAEERS MIT group of institutes, Dr. Mangesh Karad, Executive President, MIT-ADT University, Dr. Sunil Rai, Vice Chancellor, MIT-ADT University, Dr Medha Ghaisas and Dr. Virendra Ghaisas, Trustee MAEER & Executive President, MIMER Medical College. The conference was convened by Prof. Vinayak Ghaisas, Director, MITBIO and Dr. Renu Vyas, Head of School, MITBIO. The objective of the conference was to bring together academia, industry and research to solve problems in society via bioengineering tools and methods and groom the students to be job-creators and not job-seekers. The abstracts book of conference proceedings was also released at the hands of dignitaries on dais.

The conference was graced by international speaker, Dr. Justin Dauwels (Professor NTU, Singapore) expert in Machine Learning and Data Science in Biomedicine. Other industry luminaries who spoke at the conference include Dr. Sachin Kukade (Chairman of the board & Director of Solenis Chemicals India Pvt Ltd), Mr. Netaji Khot (Orchid Diagnostics), Dr. Bhalchandra Vaidya(Manager R&D, Gennova Vaccine Formulation Centre and Research Laboratory), Prof. B. Ravi (BETiC head, IIT Bombay), Dr. Narendra Kadoo (Principal Scientist, CSIR-NCL) and Dr. Sanjay Sengupta (CSIR-NISCAIR). The major focus areas were research based solutions and developments for medical healthcare in areas such as synthetic biology, pharmaceutical engineering, big data analysis, biosensors, IoT, biomedical imaging, robotics and artificial intelligence. The major highlight of the conference was inauguration of BETiC (Biomedical Engineering and Technology incubation Centre) laboratory in collaboration with IIT Bombay at the hands Professor B. Ravi. The aim of lab would be to develop low cost medical devices and train bioengineering students to carry their idea from concept to market. The event also witnessed presentation of sixty research papers by students, research fellows and experts from all over India and had three tracks: Bioinformatics, Biomedical and Biotechnology. The selected papers in each category would be published in relevant journals of CSIR-NISCAIR. The conference concluded with the proposal to establish an Association for Bioengineering Science and Research (ABSR) that will serve as a platform for students from any part of the world to interact with industry, research and expert academicians in Bioengineering.