Prof. Ramesh Raskar, Associate Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Head of the MIT Media Lab’s Camera Culture Research Group had an insightful discussion with students at Prin. L. N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development (WeSchool) on the topic, “Design at Scale: A New Paradigm for Tech Innovation” recently.

In an engrossing session with students from various b-schools, design schools and medical institutes on the application of design thinking on scalable technology innovation,the young innovator framed  the discussion around his latest invention ‘eyeMitra’, a Mobile Retinal Imaging and Predictive Analytics solution. Through the session he elucidated on the need for a linkage between various streams of work. He enunciated on how constant communication and cooperation between various streams like management, engineering and design will lead to differential innovation.

In 2004, Prof Raskar received the TR100 Award from Technology Review, which recognizes top young innovators under the age of 35, and in 2003, the Global Indus Technovator Award, instituted at MIT to recognize the top 20 Indian technology innovators worldwide. In 2009, he was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship. In 2010, he received the Darpa Young Faculty award. The list of prestigious  awards received by him include Marr Prize honourable mention 2009, LAUNCH Health Innovation Award presented by NASA, USAID, US State Dept and NIKE, 2010, Vodafone Wireless Innovation Project Award (first place), 2011. He holds over 50 US patents and has received four Mitsubishi Electric Invention Awards.

His research interests span the fields of computational photography, inverse problems in imaging and human-computer interaction. Recent projects and inventions include transient imaging to look around a corner, a next generation CAT-Scan machine, imperceptible markers for motion capture (Prakash), long distance barcodes (Bokode), touch+hover 3D interaction displays (BiDi screen), low-cost eye care devices (Netra,Catra), new theoretical models to augment light fields (ALF) to represent wave phenomena and algebraic rank constraints for 3D displays(HR3D). He is currently co-authoring a book on Computational Photography.

The session was in tandem with WeSchool’s focus on design thinking and concurred with their constant effort to guide its students to break out of the conventional framework and to come up with pragmatic innovations for socio-economic needs. Understanding the intricacies of the complexly drawn up economy has helped WeSchool to transform itself into a b-school with design thinking at the core of its academic endeavours.

Appreciative of WeSchool’s leaning, Prof Raskar  advised the students to focus their energies on devising solutions for socially relevant problems that will help the common man in various aspects of life. He also spoke about how the MIT Media Lab’s Camera Culture research group has pioneered in innovation and idea generation through an amalgamation of professional culture and various field of work for broader perspective and clarity while innovating.

While concluding, he requested the audience to never stop ideating and to take action on the problems they face on a day to day basis, interact and brainstorm with people from different backgrounds to discern social issues and to craft solutions that address it efficiently, economically and quickly.