Heartiest Congratulations to Dr Ellora Padhi, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, SNIoE for securing Start-up Research Grant from SERB-DST, Government of India. Dr. Padhi has received the two-year research grant (Duration: 2022-2024; Award amount: Rs 21 Lakh) for her project proposal entitled “A novel hybrid approach for the design of stilling basin to counter the downstream local scour”. During this project, Dr. Padhi aims to study the local scouring in the downstream hydraulic structures e.g. weirs, spillways of dams, etc., due to the erosion of underlying sediments as the flood waters flow past these structures. As a result, the stability of the hydraulic structure becomes endangered. This project targets to develop methodologies to increase the stability of these hydraulic structures by reducing the downstream sediment erosion. In this regard, Dr. Padhi has proposed a modified stilling basin design which will be effective in reducing the downstream velocity of water and the sediment erosion, resulting in increasing the service life span for these critical hydraulic structures.