Washington (ISJ) ? Indian-born imaging scientist and social impact inventor Ramesh Raskar is the 2016 recipient of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize. A pioneer in the field of vision technologies, Raskar has invented a camera that operates at the speed of light to see around corners and do-it-yourself tools for medical imaging of the eye.
Raskar is the founder of the Camera Culture research group at the MIT Media Lab and associate professor of media arts and sciences at MIT. He is a pioneer in the fields of imaging, computer vision and machine learning and his novel imaging platforms offer an understanding of the world that far exceeds human ability.
?Raskar is a multi-faceted leader as an inventor, educator, change maker and exemplar connector,? said Stephanie Couch, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program. ?In addition to creating his own remarkable inventions, he is working to connect communities and inventors all over the world to create positive change.?
The Lemelson-MIT Prize honors outstanding mid-career inventors improving the world through technological invention and demonstrating a commitment to mentorship in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
In 2012, Raskar co-created femtophotography, an advanced form of photography allowing cameras to see around corners. The technology, currently in development for commercialization, uses ultrafast imaging to capture light at 1 trillion frames per second, allowing the camera to create slow motion videos of light in motion.
Its potential future applications include, avoiding car collisions at blind spots; detecting survivors in fire and rescue situations; and performing endoscopy and medical imaging to eliminate the need of an X-ray. Raskar is continuing this research to make the seemingly impossible possible ? from reading a book without opening the cover to capturing images of out-of-sight objects using sound waves.
Raskar is the co-founder of EyeNetra, an inexpensive, disruptive eye-care platform that spun out of Media Lab research. EyeNetra enables on-demand eye testing in remote locations via a hand-held technology that snaps onto a mobile device. When looking into the binocular the user is provided with interactive cues to rapidly calculate a prescription for eyeglasses. The technology was created to eliminate the need for expensive diagnostic tools in the developing world. The young company has performed eye-tests for hundreds of thousands of subjects and is currently active in the U.S., Brazil, and India.
