Four Indians this year have made India proud. You ask why? Rahul Panicker (34), Rohan Paul (30), Aaswath Raman (30), and Saurabh Srivastava (30) have made it to the prestigious ‘MIT 35 Innovators Under 35 List’.
Each year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) publishes a list of 35 innovators under the age of 35 where “inspiring and creative people” who “illustrate the most important emerging technologies of the moment, are listed.
Here is why they made India proud:
Rahul Panicker
An engineer educated at Stanford University, started his own company called Embrace. Embrace’s primary goal is to help save the lives of low birth weight and premature infants by distributing an inexpensive and effective infant warmer in conjunction with education programs that address the root causes of neonatal hypothermia.
Rahul reached 144000 infants, 4400 health care workers have been trained, 9200 mothers educated and 105 programs launched in 11 countries.
Rohan Paul
Creator of SmartCane, an affordable attachment for the blind to use with their regular canes, Rohan Paul, 30, is from IIT Delhi.
SmartCane utilises ultrasonic vibes to detect obstacles and vibrations for feedback. Rohan claims SmartCane helped prevent collisions up to 95% in 2012 and is currently being used by over 10,000 people.
Saurabh Srivastava
Known for adapting a mobile technology in rural Assam which helped pregnant women diagnose their medical issues, Saurabh is developing an interactive voice and gesture-based system in order to make digital tools accessible to those with only basic reading and writing skills.
A 30-year-old researcher at Xerox India, Saurabh’s work is focused on solving real world problems in areas such as literacy, employment, healthcare and bridging the digital divide by designing interactive systems that can be used by people who are low-literate.
Aaswath Raman
A postdoctoral researcher at Stanford, Raman has developed a mirror that has a coating which sends heat into the vastness of outer space, which could make it the perfect technology to be applied to air-conditioning and refrigeration systems that would require very little or no electricity.
According to the MIT Technology Review, it’s currently in the prototype stage as of now. When completed, Raman’s mirror would be able to keep cool even at the higher temperatures during full daylight.