Two women researchers on MIT's India TR35 list

BANGALORE, INDIA: On the eve of the International Women's Day, Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT's Technology Review India edition said that two women researchers — Aishwarya Lakshmi Ratan and Alefia Merchant — have found place the prestigious ‘India Technology Review 35’ list for 2011.

The researchers got this recognition for their innovative work done in Bangalore, said a press release.

Bangalore-based Microsoft Researcher Aishwarya Lakshmi Ratan came up with a low-cost digital system which lets the users have the convenience of using a normal pen and a plain paper to record data and instantly store it in the digital form.

On the other hand, Alefia Merchant, the second woman on this year’s list, developed a novel method of screening for eye disease in children under the age of five.

The wide ranging benefits of Alefia’s work in prevention of blindness among young children in the developing countries made the MIT’s Technology Review, brought out in India in association with CyberMedia, to name her the 'Humanitarian of the year'.

Merchant’s method exploits existing, low-cost, and readily-available digital camera technology to photograph a child’s eye for signs of vision-threatening disease as an alternative to standard medical technology in current use.

Merchant, 32, developed the method during 2009-2010 as part of her community pediatric ophthalmology project at the Narayana Nethralaya Postgraduate Institute of Ophthalmology, Bangalore. Merchant was the co-investigator of the project along with Ashwin Mallipatna, a consultant pediatric eye surgeon at Narayana Nethralaya.

Aishwarya and Merchant are among the 18 young innovators, all under age 35, who have been chosen by a Technology Review India as part of the TR35.

“These award-winning young innovators exemplify innovation in business and technology. Each year, the editors of Technology Review honour the TR35, a set of young innovators whose inventions and research they find most exciting. Their work — spanning medicine, computing, communications, electronics, nanotechnology, and more — is changing our world,” says Narayanan Suresh, Editor of Technology Review India who led the TR35 initiative in India for the second year in a row.

The India TR 35 honorees will describe their revolutionary and inspiring work at the 3rd emerging technologies conference — EmTech India — to be held at Bangalore on March 22 and 23. The EmTech conference will feature eminent professors and researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School and several scientists from India.