We caught up with Anshuman after his great win at the Oxford Leaders’ Summit to see what he’s been up to and where he thinks technology is going.
What was your PhD in at Kent?
I developed 3D printed electronic devices to enhance the signal strength in an indoor environment during my PhD. I developed surfaces that can help enhance the strength of 5G and 6G signals. I made use of state of the art fabrication and manufacturing facilities to develop and test my designs. I also developed solutions for antennas that can change their frequency of operation. Such antennas are useful in a wide range of applications such as defence systems, IoT systems, IoE systems and satellite communications.
What have you done since completing your PhD?
Since completing my PhD, I’ve joined a university back home in India. The university, which is the largest residential university for women in the world, offer a wide range of courses, way wider than Kent even and I started working at the School of Automation which houses the Robotics and Automation unit of the university.
Life took an unprecedented turn when my entire family got hit by Covid. I lost my father and younger brother to the disease. Since then, I had been working for the establishment of the centre for artificial intelligence at our university. I am currently the director of the centre for artificial intelligence which is Centre for excellence in artificial intelligence on a global scale.
You recently received with the Name in Science award at the Oxford Leaders Summit – congratulations! What contributed to this win?
Thank you! The award was a recognition of the research accomplishments I have had. Since I have tried to expand my horizons to accommodate Several domains of interest namely: smart manufacturing, predictive modelling, power system optimizations, IoT and printer robotics.
The award recognized my work and deemed my research work worthy. This recognition provided me the added motivation to continue working towards excelling in research and to continue my pursuit towards delivering research for the betterment of society.
What does the future of technology look like?
With the pandemic, the education system has initiated the need for a reboot more than ever before. It has been felt world over that education, in it’s pre-pandemic mode is not viable anymore.
To achieve that, hybrid teaching and learning will be brought in. The usage of smart classrooms and smart boards would become a common place. Mode of teaching will become significantly more hands-off with the availability of information and the arrival of supportive tools like ChatGPT and Bard. The commonly used unsupervised learning model of AI would come into practice in real life also.
As far as technology is concerned, we have been seeing a convergence between various technologies for several years. We are already seeing interaction between devices and technology. That network would become even more prominent with Internet of everything and Cyber physical systems. Body-worn devices will see massive growth and with AI enabled tools, the world would witness the migration towards semi auto pilot functioning.