Info

Bio

I aspire to leverage the power of the physical world and computation to build multimodal human interfaces that augment the mind, body, and living environment. My work often results in products used by people across the world, in top academic conferences, and in mass media.

I lead Spatial AI Interfaces Project/Lab at Amazon Lab126, where we invent new interfaces using multimodal sensors that can interpret the physical world for adaptive and ambient understanding.

Previously I led HCI Research and Product for Usefulsensors, a spinoff with the founding Team of Tensorflow (Google Brain) – building private/locally running AI agents on low-compute hardware using speech, LLMs, and TTS models. Discovering cognitive, bio/wellness markers from ambient human speech. I earlier co-founded and led Ducere, a wearable wellness tech startup developing a haptic I/O platform for the visually impaired and elderly for fall and gait analysis (exited 2018 – link 1, link 2). And later Graviky Labs, an electrochemical carbon emissions CO2 to product venture (Forbes article, Case Study).

As a graduate research assistant at the MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology I built AR gestural interfaces using transparent displays under Prof. Pattie Maes. At Hewlett-Packard Labs and Google I developed an open-source multi-projector stereoscopic (3D) multimodal gestural interface for CAD modeling (SketchUp).

I taught Engineering Design Courses at MIT D-Lab, and MIT's Global Startup Labs and co-led the Not-Profit MIT Media Lab India Initiative: a 10-day hands-on program where MIT/Harvard researchers worked with Indian students to explore new sensing technologies overlapping with real problems.

(He also loves magic, tabla, camping, bonfires, and designing new contraptions for astrophotography. In an alternate universe, he is probably undergoing an apprenticeship with some sorcerer.)

Awards

• MIT TR35, 35 Innovators under 35
• Falling Walls Berlin ‘Science Startup of the year 2021’
• General Motors $50,000 award for Circular Economy Innovation
• Forbes 30 under 30 2018
• TIME Magazine Invention of the year 2020
• INK-TED Fellowship 2015
• Golden Lion, Cannes Innovation Festival, France 2017
• Winner, D&AD Graphite Pencil Award for Innovation for AIR-INK
• Shell ‘Make the Future’ Award 2017
• Foreign Policy 100 Global Thinkers Award, Washington DC 2016
• Panel, Sankalp Forum, Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi 2015
• ‘Top Achievement Award’ IDC, IIT Delhi
• Google Summer of Code 2009, 2010