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 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 and 2010
Publications
DSpace: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ‘Augmented tools with transparent displays’, 2014. | Sawada D., Sharma A., Chowdhary S., Hsieh C., Miller A. Pattie Maes ‘Wave Alchemy: Perception and Reminiscence of Expressive Moments through Waves’ ACM CHI 2013 | ‘Method for turning carbon emissions into usable material’ USPTO 2020 | Sharma A., Liu L., Maes P. ‘Glassified: An Augmented Ruler based on a Transparent Display for Real-time Interactions with Paper’ in proceedings of UIST 2013. | Modeling Actions Based on Speech and Touch Inputs’ (HP Labs) USPTO Sharma A., S. Madhvanath, M. Billinghurst, ʻMozArt: 3D multimodal CAD system: Design and Evaluation’ – 13th ACM ICMI 2011, Alicante, Spain Journal | A. Sharma, S. Madhvanath, ‘Immersive Multimodal CAD System for 3D Modeling’ ICHI 2011 | Haptic directional navigation mechanism for visually impaired USPTO
Press
1. MIT Sloan Press: Clean Consumer Tech Companies to Watch [link] 2. MIT SOLVE Newletter: Class of 2020 Solve Winners. [link] – 3. Forbes USA: Game changing collaboration between Pangaia Feat. Naomi Campbell [link] 5. Textile News: Carbon Emissions to Dope dyeing. [link] – 11. Glassified – Mixed Reality to supplement physical world| Creativeapplications | Smart shoes guide runners and the blind with vibrations| WIRED • Shoes that show the way| Live Mint | New Generation Smart Textiles to debut at Wearables Technology Show| Smart Textiles News | Devices That Touch you back| USA Today Best Invention Award | TIME Magazine 2020 | PANGAIA’s Game Changing Collaboration Draws Carbon From Air Pollution To Print Textiles| Forbes | The ink on Naomi Campbell’s Pangaia sweatshirt was made from carbon emissions| MIT News | Magic black: Air-Ink, the material made from vehicle pollution| The Guardian | Made from Air| Smithsonian Museum Press | Kering GUCCI collaborates with Graviky Labs| Moneycontrol | Spinoff Graviky Labs wins Falling Walls Science Summit 2021 award| MIT News
Talks, Demos and Workshops
ACM UIST 2015 Poster and Demo. TED 2019, Canada | Smithsonian | Cooper Hewitt Triennial 2018 | CES 2014 and CES 2017, Podcast 2018: Kickstarter HQ, New York | Aspen Ideas Festival 2020 | SXSW 2020 | Aspen-core, Colorado 2019 | WIRED UK 2016 | Installation at Leonardo Da Vinci Museum, Milan, Italy, 2016 | Keynote and workshop at European House, Ambrosetti, Italy 2019
Book features
Art and Technology of Entertainment Computing and Communication, Springer London| Intelligence of Things: AI-IoT Based Critical-Applications and Innovations, Springer | Smithsonian Trienneial 2020 | Disrupt 22, MIT Press | Clueless At 30: A Millennial’s Search For Everything And Nothing. Rupa | Indian Innovators: Penguin Press | Arduino For Kids, Packt Publishing | Unstoppable: How To Be Successful In South Asia, Penguin | Disrupt: 100 Lessons in Business Innovation, Nicholas Brealey Publishing
