Amruth Ravindranath (2010 - 2011)
India
Amruth is a young innovator and entrepreneur from Bangalore, India. He cofounded and leads Vita Beans, a company that integrates Cognitive Sciences with Artificial Intelligence to build interactive applications - primarily in the field of Education and Behavioural Simulation.
Since its inception, Vita Beans has been recognized by many national and international institutions for its technology, social and business impact. Before Vita Beans, Amruth was involved in the development of several entrepreneurial programs as the President of the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership BITS Pilani, one of India’s top five entrepreneurship centers. The projects at the Center range from an international business challenge to rural entrepreneurship activities.
He also shares a strong passion for research and experimentation. His prototypes have won several accolades, including a Grand Award and a NASA Award at the International Science and Engineering Fair . He was honoured as a Young Achiever by Craig Barrett of Intel during the India World Ahead program in 2007. He has also been an undergraduate research fellow at the Indian Institute of Science ; Tata Institute of Fundamental Research ; and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics , among others, and is a recipient of a KVPY national fellowship from India’s Department of Science & Technology.
Amruth completed his Masters in Physics with a distinction from Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani, where he also served on the Election Commission that ensures that the annual student body elections for over 4,000 students are free and fair.
During his undergraduate years, he participated in a program to reduce disparity between people from different socioeconomic backgrounds by introducing financial opportunities to rural women in an isolated village. The realization that these women did not know what to do with the financial assistance and required further support before they could generate their own incomes led Amruth to the core of his project as a Sauvé Scholar.
Believing that education and awareness should be the foundation of any effort to bring about a large scale participative change in a community, Amruth will create interactive technologies that connect people from different backgrounds (especially from low accessibility regions) with knowledge - educational as well as informational - so that people can learn more effectively, irrespective of their geographical and cultural backgrounds.
He hopes that through the Program, he will improve his understanding of the way people of different ages/backgrounds learn and share knowledge so that he may design innovative methods to build learning tools that understand and adapt to such diversities.
When not pushing the boundaries of how and what we learn, Amruth enjoys writing plays and short stories, playing the guitar and the veena, and - when he has time - taking long treks in remote parts of India. He also loves creating digital media applications such as animations and games.
In addition, it would be really exciting if I could manage to run a few pilot installations at remotely connected places (or schools) in different parts of India - as well as globally - with the help of my fellow Scholars and Alumni of the Program from other countries.
Links
December 2010 TedX Talk at McGill University on using interactive technology to reintegrate wonder into the education system.
Newspaper article about Vita Beans' recent work in applied neuropscyhology : Inside a child's mind
Young Achievers: He can battle tidal waves
Two scientific journal abstracts:
Detection of directional energy damping in vibrating systems
Inflation Model (with doublet scalar field) consistent with Lambda CDM and WMAP cosmological observations
Mother Tongue
English
Country of origin
India
Country of Residence
India
Profession
innovator and entrepreneur, artificial intelligence
