Tag Archives: collaboration

Faster-than-light camera invented by MIT’s Ramesh Raskar (ex-Punekar)

News, , ,

Actually, the headline of this article contains a number of inaccuracies. First, the research is just by Ramesh Raskar, but is the work of a group of people, and Ramesh Raskar, Associated Professor at MIT’s Media Lab, and Director of the Camera Culture Group is one of the people in the group. Second, the camera (like everything else in the universe) is not faster than light; but what it does to is simulate the capture of a scene at trillions of frames per second, thus allowing it to capture things like light passing across a scene. Also, because of confusions in the past, I need to point out that we’re talking about the MIT in USA.

More details on the invention (which is actually done by cleverly bending light and then analyzing the results with a computer) can be found here

In any case, the question is, why is this article on PuneTech? Yes, Raskar is a Punekar – he did is engineering in COEP. However, so what? I am against the idea of Indians getting very excited about major achievements by people who grew up here, but really blossomed in environments outside of India.

However, Raskar continues to be relevant to Pune for the following reasons:

The last one I see as the most important, and far-reaching. Specifically, Dr. Raskar is interested in collaborating with individuals, entrepreneurs, companies, or institutions on at least two of his projects, if not more. Here are details:

  • He is hoping to see that his EyeNetra invention reaches the maximum number of people in India – specially rural India. EyeNetra is the handheld, android-based, cheap device to detect vision problems including lens prescription, astigmatism, and cataract. Raskar is looking to collaborate with someone in India who can make this happen – either as a for-profit enterprise, or as a social enterprise. For more details see this PuneTech post
  • He is hoping that some day, an event similar to MIT’s $100k Entrepreneurship Competition can be created in Pune in particular, or India in general. If there is someone here who can pull this off, Raskar would be able to support the initiative in various ways – including being involved himself, and trying to get people or groups from MIT to also be involved in some way.

Get in touch with Dr. Ramesh Raskar at: raskar@mit.edu (or get in touch with us, and we can introduce you).

“Collaboration Retreat” for CIOs/CFOs/others in Pune – Sept 24

Events,

(Re-published from Mithi.com’s website)

2nd Collaboration Retreat 2011

Mithi is organising the 2nd Collaboration Retreat at Pune, an invitation-only event for select CIOs, CFOs and delegates on Saturday, 24th September 2011. The Collaboration Retreat 2011 would offer a first-of-its-kind interactive platform for sharing CIO and CFO perspectives on Collaboration Infrastructure Strategies for Cutting Costs and Managing Risks.

The 1st Collaboration Retreat 2010 organised by Mithi last year was a success. 12 CIOs and over 50 delegates from diverse organisations took time out to be with us and participated whole-heartedly in the Golf Clinic, CIO Speak session, panel discussion and Dr. D.B. Phatak’s concluding address. A majority of the CIOs and delegates found the event very interactive and informative, and the right forum to address issues & concerns related to collaboration strategies. Click here for highlights of CR 2010.

Bigger And Better

This year the event will be much bigger and wider in scope with over 30 CIOs & CFOs and 200 delegates expected to attend the full-day conference. We are happy to extend a special invite to you as a delegate for the Collaboration Retreat on Saturday 24th September 2010. You’ll have a wonderful opportunity to hear and interact with over 30 CIOs from leading companies in India.

Themes

  • Open Source options
  • Co-existence and other cost cutting strategies
  • Managing Risk
  • Cloud and New Devices
  • Social Networking

Who Should Attend

You can benefit from attending the Collaboration Retreat 2011, if you are a:

  • Chief Information Officer (CIO)
  • Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
  • Senior IT and Finance decision maker
  • IT Manager
  • Finance Manager
  • System Integration Partner
  • Enterprise/ System Administrator
  • Collaboration Technology Professional

Why you should attend

The Collaboration Retreat 2011 would offer a first-of-its-kind interactive platform for sharing CIO and CFO perspectives on Collaboration Infrastructure Strategies for Cutting Costs and Managing Risks.

The participants will have a wonderful opportunity to interact and network with over 30 CIOs & CFOs and over 200 delegates from leading organizations in India.

Registration details

The event is in MCCIA Trade Towers, ICC, SB Road, Pune, on 24th September 2011.

This is a free, invitation-only event with limited seats. If you are keen to participate, please hurry up and submit your details in this form. The organizers will confirm your participation through email.

Write Tech Articles for PING – PICT’s Student Newsletter

Miscellaneous, ,

PICT’s IEEE Student Branch publishes a tech newsletter, called PING, that is distributed to various students and faculty of engineering colleges all over Pune. In the interest of increasing industry-student connections, we would like to encourage industry professionals to write some articles to be published in PING.

Pune Institute of Computer Technology (PICT), which is one of the top engineering colleges in the city, has an IEEE Student Branch which is one of the more active student groups around. Every semester, they hold a big event. In the odd semester, they have Credenz, a 3-day tech event with competitions, and talks and other events, and in the even semester they have Credenz Tech Days, a series of technical seminars. Both these events are attended by students from all over Maharashtra, and also students from other parts of India.

PING is published to coincide with Credenz and Credenz Tech days, and goes to over a 1000 students and faculty from various engineering colleges.

This time, we think it would be a good idea for PING to have articles from experienced industry professionals in addition to student written articles. The students have suggested the following topics in which they would like to see articles from Industry:

-Mobile Application Development
-Cloud Computing
-Ruby on RAILS
-Digital Scent Technology
-Face Recognition Technology
-Quantum Cryptography
-Social Networking Security Algorithms
-Brain Computer Interface
-Cluster Computing
-Nanorobotics
-Linux Kernel 2.6

This only represents the list that the students came up with. But you should spend some time thinking about other topics that students should know about, and write an article on that topic.

Here is why we think you should take the effort of writing an article:

  • To help students: For many students who read PING, this will probably be their first exposure to what people in industry think. It gives them exposure, it gives them ideas, and you might inspire someone to take up an interesting subject.
  • To let students know about the cool things your company is working on. What better way to ‘market’ your company, than a technical article on an interesting topic, to be read by a 1000 students who were motivated enough to attend a tech fest? (But please make the article about the topic, not about your company. The ‘About the Author’ section can contain information about the company.)
  • To establish yourself as an expert in an area. Not only will these articles go in the newsletter, but will also go up on websites that students as well as professionals read. This is a good way to get some visibility for yourself.

Please write an article, and (send it to us)[mailto:punetech@punetech.com] at punetech@punetech.com. If you’re the kind of person who is good technically but not so good at writing article, don’t worry, contact us and we’ll help with the writing part. If you would prefer to simply talk to someone on the phone about the topic you’re interested in, and would like that someone to write the article based on the phone conversation, contact us and we can work something out.

Many industry professionals accuse today’s students of not being interested. Well, here is a bunch of students who are interested – now it is your turn to reciprocate.