MIT's EmTech to hit Bangalore on March 8

BANGALORE, INDIA: EmTech, the annual emerging technologies conference from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Technology Review will begin in Bangalore on March 8. Providing a platform for innovative ideas and technologies, the two-day conference will see nearly 100 of the world's leading business and tech visionaries discussing incubated technologies that are market ready.

Being held in India for the second year in succession, in association with CyberMedia, the conference will cover a variety of cutting-edge topics ranging from green computing techniques, clean transport alternatives and smarter energy grid to the role that wireless can play in connecting India.

Special sessions on innovative diagnostics and neglected diseases will draw attention towards unheralded healthcare fields. A session on the future of nanotechnology will touch on the new capabilities, giving us new ways to make things and heal our bodies.

Dr. Subra Suresh, the Dean of MIT’s School of Engineering and several of his colleagues will be part of the eminent panel of speakers from around the world. Leading Indian biophysicist and the Director General of Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Prof. Samir. K. Brahmachari and well-known biotech entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw will engage in a fireside chat on igniting the innovation gene.

Speaking about EmTech, the best attended emerging technologies conference in the US and held at the MIT campus since 2000, Technology Review Editor Jason Pontin said, “The highlight of the conference will be the two-day brainstorming sessions by a dozen researchers from MIT’s Media Lab to propose innovative solutions to some India-specific technological challenges.”

Some of the well-known MIT researchers participating in these sessions include Pranav Mistry, Dr. Ramesh Raskar and Vinay Gidwaney, innovators who made their mark a very young age.

The event is expected to throw up more exciting young Indian faces during the TR35 India awards. “Technology Review will honor 20 individuals under the age of 35 for their innovative and promising technical work that is likely to shape the future of mankind,” Pontin, editor of the 111-year old technology journal from the US, added.

The TR35 India awards will span a range of technologies from biotech, arts and entertainment, and software development to semiconductors, transportation, energy, and new materials research.

“The session on Social Innovations at EmTech 2010 will break the myth that technologies only touch the sophisticated as it will focus on developments that will benefit those at the bottom of the pyramid,” says Pradeep Gupta, founder of specialty publishing giant CyberMedia, the publishers of Technology Review’s India edition.

A session on neglected diseases will explore the possibilities of finding affordable vaccines against AIDS, malaria and pulmonary tuberculosis by 2015.

Eminent scientists like Dr. B V Ravikumar and Dr. Suresh Vazirani will explore the possibilities of protecting infants against at least 20 pathogens through their lives in the next 15 years.

Nearly 500 participants are likely to take part in the two day session at Bangalore.