Manohar

About Manohar

Swami Manohar is currently a Senior Principal researcher at MSR India, where his research interests are primarily focused on Accessibility in the Global South. He is also the Co-Convener of the Center for Accessibility in the Global South, at the Bangalore. His past interests include VR/AR, IoT for Agriculture, and spatial audio for gamers without sight. He is a co-founder of several startups, each a pioneer in its respective domain: String Laboratories, Strand LifeSciences, PicoPeta Simputers, LimberLink Technologies and Escape Velocity Accelerator. After obtaining his PhD in Computer Science from Brown University he was a faculty at the University of North Carolina for two years and then was at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, between 1990 to 2005. He was on the faculty of the department of Computer Science and the Super Computer Education and research Center at the Institute. While at IISc, he co-invented the Simputer, was awarded the first Dewang Mehta Award for Innovation in IT, and pioneered the faculty entrepreneurship activity at IISc, which has since catalysed similar activity in IITs and other educational institutes in India. As a faculty at IISC, Swami Manohar has contributed to research in Computer graphics, visualisation, virtual reality and CAD for rapid prototyping (3D Printing). He has been the thesis advisor for over forty graduate students including three PhDs. He has over fifty refereed publications in international journals and conferences. Specialties: Assistive Technologies, Virtual and augmented reality, engineering education, product startups, creating Internet, mobile, and wireless products for emerging markets, with special focus on the Indian market.

Experience

1. Co-founder

   Strand Life Sciences

   Oct 2000 — Present

Education

• Indian Institute of Science (IISc)

  M.E., Electrical Engineering

• Government College of Engineering, Salem

  BE, General

  1977 — 1979

• Little Flower High school

  High School

  1971 — 1976

• Brown University

  PhD, Computer Science

• Government College of Technology, Coimbatore

  B.E. (Honours), Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering

  1979 — 1982

• Vivekananda College, Madras

  P.U.C, Maths, Physics, Chemistry

  1976 — 1977