IITians who made it big – Pranav Mistry

In India each parent likes to see their child grow up and become an engineer. They believe that becoming a fruitful engineer leads to a fruitful life. Nowadays, engineering education in India has taken a different mould. There are thousands of colleges that provide you a degree, though as you would know, a degree is not enough! This leads to a dream, a dream which every aspirant has- getting into an IIT. IITs are clearly the best institutions to study in. They are known to produce the best citizens in the country making it big in their respective lives. According to a study by The Times of India, IITians’ contribution to economy is Rs 20 lakh crore. We are starting a new feature on our blog in which we will showcase the IITians who have made invaluable contributions to the world.

Pranav MistryTalent to see into the future, extreme determination and openness to learn something new every day transported Pranav Mistry from small town Palanpur, Gujarat, to USA. Coming from a multidisciplinary family that was not exam-oriented, but encouraging multi-faceted development, he believes, is what set the ball rolling. Having recently launched the Go Gear watch, this 32-year-old director of research at Samsung and head of Think Tank Team in USA is engaged in creating technology that goes beyond fancy gadgets and creating devices that will benefit the masses.

  He describes his journey to me by speaking to his hand — his Go Gear watch can make voice calls and comes with 1.6 inches (4cm) LED display, a 1.9 megapixel camera, speaker and microphone, four gigabytes of internal storage and a non-removable battery. His first taste of achievement was when at a train station he witnessed someone SMSing in Marathi. That was his work — he had designed multilingual software for mobile phones that would enable everyone to communicate in their mother tongue.

  More about Pranav Mistry, he is a Indian computer scientist. He is well known for his work on sixth sense. He is a computer scientist and had done many good projects such as Mouseless and sparsh.  Pranav Mistry was born on 14 May 1981 in Palanpur, Gujarat, India. He collected his bachelor degree in computer science and engineering form Nirma Institute of Technology. He got his Master of design degree from IIT-Bombay. He also has a Master’s degree in Media Arts and Sciences which he has collected from the MIT.

   Pranav has also worked for Microsoft as a UX researcher. He now works for the Samsung electronics as the Director of Research. He has invented sixth sense device. This device basically is a combination of a mini projector, camera, sensors and computing device. People can wear the device as a pendent. With this device people can use their fingers to interact with different objects they have around themselves.

PRANAV MISTRY TED TALK

Besides sixth sense he has also invented Mouseless (An invisible mouse with infrared laser and infrared camera), SPARSE (a way to easily transfer data from one device to another by simply touch gestures) , Blinkbot (a system which use users blink to control a robot). You can see his innovations on his website www.pranavmistry.com

His Favourite gadgets

  1. The earlier version of Wii. He believes it changed people’s perception
  2. Moving things like gears, mechanical gadgets like the watch he is currently trying to create in his mini lab at home
  3. Qibla Compass: The gadget has been around for centuries. The compass always points towards Mecca. “They made GPS mechanical 800 years ago. I find beauty in that,” he says

Popular Awards

  • Young Global Leader 2013 Award, World Economic Forum
  • Young Alumnus Award 2012, IIT Bombay
  • Listed as one of the ‘50 Most Creative People of the Year 2010’, CREATIVITY 50.
  • Winner of ‘TR35 2009’ award, Technology Review.
  • Winner of ‘INVENTION OF THE YEAR 2009’ award, Popular Science.
  • Winner of ‘Young Indian Innovator 2009’ award, Digit Magazine.
  • Winner of ‘Netexplorateurs of the Year 2010’ award, Netexplorateurs Grand Prix 2010, France
  • Nominee for Forbes India’s Person of the Year 2009.
  • Speaker for TED India 2010 talk on ‘sixthsense’, TED India 2010, Mysore, India.
  • Speaker for TED 2009 talk on ‘sixthsense’, TED 2009, Long Beach, CA

His inspiration comes from nature. He says, “Nature is my guru. I read, I observe and I apply. The journey makes me very happy.” He also believes that the current educational system should become less exam-oriented and more multi-faceted. His advice to youngsters is, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken. Take risks.

 

Our coming article will feature a person who is a technology executive and now the Chief Executive Officer of Google Inc. He has earned his degree from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in Metallurgical Engineering Still wondering who we are talking about, Stay tuned……..

 

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