Achuta Kadambi

Achuta Kadambi witnessed arguably the most significant change in photography while growing up in Silicon Valley: the transition from film to digital cameras. He is now a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and hopes to contribute to another revolution: redefining the camera to exceed the capabilities of the human eye. Achuta’s aim is to build “superhuman visual systems,” which have been realized in more than a dozen of his U.S. patent filings, with the promise of practical applications in medicine, robotics and consumer devices.

According to Achuta, while technology is an important representation of the future, it is important to realize that youth are our literal future. Achuta channels his own scientific experiences while serving as a STEM mentor to younger students, ranging from grade-schoolers in Oakland, Calif., to undergraduate students across the Indian Institutes of Technology. He has learned how to be an effective mentor through these experiences and credits the senior scientists he has worked with, including his PhD supervisor Dr. Ramesh Raskar and collaborators Dr. Rajiv Gupta, Dr. Boxin Shi, Ayush Bhandari, James Schiel, Vage Taamazyan, and Dr. Refael Whyte.