NEW DELHI : March 1, 2009 
The first ever emerging technologies conference from MIT’s Technology Review--EmTech India 2009—kicks off in the capital on Monday March 2 with a inaugural address by Prof MGK Menon, renowned scientist and policy maker. 

Prof Menon, who has spearheaded a number of government initiatives in the technology sector, including providing leadership to the IIT Delhi as the chairperson of the Board of Governors, is a member of all three Science academies in India. He will speak on need for innovation in technology that touch a billion lives.

Following Prof Menon will be Ms. Neelam Dhawan, Managing Director for HP India, who will speak her mind on Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Neelam, ranked at 11 amongst India’s most powerful women by Forbes, should know a thing or two about software and start ups as she has worked for more than two decades in companies such as the HCL Group, Microsoft and IBM.

”Clearly EmTech India 2009 brings for the first time a host of leaders and ready-to-market technologies across businesses,” said Jason Pontin, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of MIT’s Technology Review.

The two-day event will focus on a host of burning issues from rising energy and healthcare costs to technologies that aim to predict traffic movements and stock prices. Processes and products developed in top research labs across the world will be showcased in the national capital.

Crude Oil: Is The Price Shock Over?
Those who think the era of higher fossil fuel prices is over are likely to be in for a rude shock -- crude oil rates may regain their earlier highs sooner than expected as the economic turmoil works its way out of the global economy. Therefore, the hunt for greener and inexpensive transportation remains a priority for all, irrespective whether they have oil assets or not because the commodity itself is a depleting resource.

For India, which imports 70 percent of its energy needs, this is even more critical. Participants will also get to understand the barriers, which are efficient energy storage and nascent standards to name just a few. They will also get a peak into how advancements in bio-fuels and nano technologies may provide clean and cost-effective energy solutions through new materials that will cut energy consumption.

Gurukool: Can Illiterate People Be An Asset?
The event will attempt at solving the conundrum that India, which annually produces the world’s second highest number of graduates, also remains an unfortunate home to 300 million people who have some of the lowest literacy levels across the globe. There will be answers to low-cost technologies required for delivering education to such citizens, resulting in higher economic growth.

Even as we struggle with educating millions of adults and children, Indians, especially those below the poverty line, grapple with the huge lack of quality healthcare. Although great progress has been made in providing world class medical care in cities over the last 15 years, it is the villages and towns where curable diseases also claim thousands of lives. World renowned surgeon Dr. Prathap Reddy, who heads the Apollo Hospital Group, will speak on relevant technological solutions where are the key to bringing quality healthcare at affordable costs to a billion people.

“As both an MIT TR100 and an MIT alumnus, I am thrilled to participate in the launching of EmTech in India.  Dimagi is a company I co-founded out of MIT because we thought we could create mobile software that would improve the public health of millions,’’ says Dr. Vikram Sheel Kumar. 

Vikram will bring his experience of touching hundreds of thousands of patients across through small technology innovations to a fireside chat on touching a billion lives at the bottom of the pyramid along with IIM Professor Anil Gupta.

Can The Not Wealthy Be Healthy?
If (ill) health is around, can pharmaceuticals be far behind?  India’s $2.5 billion biotech industry is at the forefront of the global push to cut research and development costs, time to market and clinical trial costs. These paradigm changes come at a time when drug regulators are coming down hard on new products and drug recalls coupled with rising side effects from synthetic chemical based drugs are sapping industry profits.

Even though India is at the forefront of developing cutting edge software, it lags behind most Asian tigers in spreading economic benefits of large scale bandwidth deployment to its population. We, the lovers of Bollywood and Cricket, have just 4 million bandwidth connections in a population touching 1.2 billion people. So, it is a problem not only of connectivity and content, but also of the absence of technology required to manage hardware, applications and driving customized content to viewers’ homes and mobile phones. Some of these questions might get answered by Kuldeep Goyal, managing director at Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., India’s largest telecom player and Dr. Sanjoy Paul, the head of convergence technology lab at Infosys Technologies Ltd.

Some of technologies from MIT Media Laboratories, IITs and Infosys SET Labs that will be showcased during the event include Synthetic Neurobiology, the Next Billion Cameras, Industrial Biomaterials, Mobile Applications for the Emerging Markets, to innovations like GPS-based temper proof Auto Fare Meters with Secure Fare Guides. 

In his Lab 2 Market session on Synthetic Neurobiology, Vinay Gidwaney of MIT Media Labs will share how by combining engineering, software development, neuroscience and psychology, the Media Lab has a multidisciplinary approach to advancing the next great frontier of medical science – treating the brain. 

In another Lab2 Market session, Ramesh Raskar of MIT Media Lab will dwell on how the emergence of a billion networked and portable cameras on mobile phones in just seven years changed our social culture. The addition of another billion camera phones could also impact of the visual computing tools will spawn new visual art forms, optically smart sensors will empower disabled persons, portable devices will create tomographic models of patient internals and pixel-coordinated interactions will harvest productivity of crowdsourcing for complex tasks.

For media queries, please contact:
Sanjiv Kataria
Strategic Communications and PR Counsel
for CyberMedia, EmTech India, Everest Brand Solutions, IDC India, Pearson Vue
+91 98100 48095