Camera Culture researchers first met Krishna Rastogi at a boot camp in January 2014. Boot camps are an integral part of the groups research allowing MIT researchers, Harvard doctors and MIT professors to join forces with schools around the world to influence the best and the brightest at international universities. Krishna’s brilliant mind and eager personality impressed the researchers and he was invited to continue his work at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge as a visiting student. During his time at MIT Krishna will develop electronic equipment for diagnosis and disease detection. Krishna’s home school is Visvesvaraya Technological University.
Hear from Krishna about meeting our team and coming to MIT:
“My engagement with MIT Media Lab started when the PES Institute of Technology in Bangalore hosted a prestigious and distinctive MIT Media Lab Design Innovation Workshop from the 21st – 25th of January, 2013. This was a unique opportunity for students and professionals to learn the MIT research approach from concept to prototype taught by MIT professors and researchers. I was astonished by the thinking culture of MIT. Ideas are generated on the fly and completely out of the box. After participating in this workshop for one week the essence of inter-disciplinary research was imbibed in me.
I then attended a DIY workshop led by the Lab called Engineering the Eye from July 7th to July 13th. The workshop was organized by BITS, Hyderabad, in association with the Tata Centre for Technology and Design. After my engagement and enthusiastic participation in the MIT workshop at PESIT, I realized my passion for research and innovation. The workshop was entirely focused on developing innovative solutions to Ophthalmologic problems.
I worked on a project called Non Invasive Detection of Fungal Infection Using Mesoporous Carbon. The idea and the prototype are novel and it has a large patentable value. I was asked to present this project to the former president of India, Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam.
Next, in October, I attended a workshop at LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVP-MITRA 2013) in Hyderabad. This workshop was conducted as a part of the inauguration of the LVP-MITRA (SRUJANA), a joint Collaboration Incubation Centre of L V PRASAD EYE INSTITUTE and the Camera Culture Group at the MIT Media Lab. The Centre will innovate and invent new devices for diagnosis of the human eye. I worked on Stereo Pupil Tracking with Camera Culture student, Everett Lawson. In this innovative project, I was able to explore technology possibilities to analyze pupil defects non-invasively.
The last workshop I attended was the ReDx: Health Tech Workshop in Mumbai where I worked on Oral Imaging. In this workshop we are trying to understand all of the techniques to image the surface geometry of teeth.
The research, which I was a part of at these various workshops, produced innovative and exciting results. Professor Ramesh Raskar, who leads the Camera Culture Group, and Everett Lawson, a researcher in the group offered me an internship at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge. I am currently working on dental imaging, trying to explore and analyze various types of dental problems. We are trying to build a device which will allow for daily diagnosis of oral health. The Lab is a fascinating place and I am dazzled by the researchers and their continuous efforts to build new prototypes. I have found a whole new way of thinking during my time here.”
We look forward to working with Krishna in the coming months and we are grateful to have such an enthusiastic and diligent researcher in our group.
