Anirudh Sharma

I love when computation moves beyond the screen into our lived environment, into surfaces, tools, and everyday objects, making our interaction with the physical world richer. (We eat, sleep, drive, live, pollute in the physical world – so why not?)

I lead the Spatial AI initiative at Amazon Lab126, exploring how intelligence can bridge digital and physical systems – making invisible bits of sensing smart using on-device CNNs and VLMs. I led human-centred AI at Useful Sensors, a spinout with the founding team of TensorFlow/Google Brain, and earlier developed multi-projector stroke and hover-gesture recognition systems, integrating speech input to replace traditional WYSIWYG interfaces for complex design tools, at Google and HP Labs. I am a graduate and research affiliate of the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab, where I worked with Prof. Pattie Maes on embedding gestural interfaces and intelligence into objects of everyday use. My research has appeared in ACM CHI, UIST, ICMI, and SIGGRAPH.

As co-founder and CTO of Ducere Technologies, I created Lechal, India’s first wearable tech startup, developing insole gait analysis and haptic navigation footwear for the visually impaired, with more than 100,000 units shipped before exit in 2018. As co-founder and CTO of Graviky Labs, I built the technology that captures carbon emissions from air pollution and converts them into AIR-INK, a carbon-based pigment used by over 10,000 artists and adopted by Stella McCartney, PANGAIA, Diageo’s Johnnie Walker, and Mastercard, and included in the Harvard Art Museums’ Forbes Pigment Collection.