Includes Aaswath Raman of Stanford University.
By Raif Karerat
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MIT Technology Review recently released the 2015 edition of its “35 Innovators Under 35” list, which featured four relatively young luminaries of Indian origin this year.
According to the Massachusetts Institute of technology-published magazine, the selection process for the shortlist begins with hundreds of nominations from the public, MIT Technology Review editors, and international partners who publish their own Innovators Under 35 lists in their regions. MIT Technology Review editors whittle the list down to about 80 people, who are then asked to submit descriptions of their work and letters of reference. Finally, outside judges rate the finalists on the originality and impact of their work; the feedback subsequently helps the editors ultimately choose the 35 honorees.
Rahul Panicker, 34 (humanitarian):
Panicker is an engineer from India who returned home after graduate school with a revolutionary new way to help premature babies.
He realized how serious the issue of premature births was in Southern Asia in 2007 after he and three classmates from Stanford were encouraged to do fieldwork in Nepal. They realized low cost was not always the solution — donated incubators were being used as filing cabinets, because there wasn’t the electricity or the expertise to use them. Secondly, they concluded that parents desperate to keep their children alive were the users we should focus on, rather than doctors.
By reframing the problem, they came up with a prototype incubator that costs 1 percent as much as traditional solutions and can be operated by a non-expert. It uses phase-change materials to keep babies at the ideal temperature of 37 °C for up to six hours without electricity. When heated with hot water or another source, a phase-change material melts, and it can release heat the baby needs at a constant temperature.
In 2009, a year after working on the project in his free time, Panicker quit his job and moved to Bengaluru with the other three cofounders to start Embrace.
Since Embrace’s warmers have been used in 15 countries to help nearly 200,000 babies.
Rohan Paul, 30 (inventor):
In 2005 Paul was an undergraduate at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. As part of a course intended to design solutions for real-life challenges, he visited the National Association for the Blind, also in Delhi, and was affected by the stories of people blind individuals who were injured while they were out walking, usually due to abruptly walking into obstacles.
Paul envisioned creating a cane that could sense obstacles without needing physical contact, and soon had a working prototype that used ultrasonic ranging for detection and vibrations for feedback.
The SmartCane costs only about $50 and is already in the hands of about 10,000 people. Paul’s goal is to help one million or more worldwide.
Aaswath Raman, 30 (pioneer):
Rahman is a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University who has developed a new substance that can keep cool without any electricity by beaming excess heat out into space, which would make it an efficient, eco-friendly choice for air-conditioning and refrigeration.
In order to negate the effects of the sun, which would overwhelm the intended cooling effect, he applied his knowledge of nanoscale manufacturing techniques to create a material with optimum levels of thermal radiation and solar reflection.
According to MIT Technology Review, coating the roof of a small structure with some of his material would wick heat away and keep the inside cool without electricity, as long as the roof wasn’t insulated. Since most buildings in developed areas have insulated roofs, Raman is working on integrating the material into existing air-conditioning infrastructure.
Saurabh Srivastava, 30 (humanitarian):
A researcher at Xerox India, Srivastava has been a major player in the creation of technology that could eventually make it easier for people with limited literacy to obtain information and use online services by simply speaking into phones or making gestures picked up by inexpensive cameras.
In some of his most recent work, in the rural Assam province, Srivastava investigated a system pregnant women might use to disclose medical problems to a Web interface that could refer them to free tests and services. The system used a $150 Microsoft Kinect camera to detect arm gestures, which in turn controlled displays of information, reported MIT Review. The display included animated representations of female health aides to guide the patients.
The full list of appointees to MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35: