PIC Adda in July hosted Dr. Ajay Malshe, Technology Executive and Educator who spoke on the topic “Resilient Innovations for Social Equity (RISE): Frugal Engineering and Leadership” on 24th July. The session was moderated by Dr. Sangeeta Kale, Director (Policy and Planning), Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT) and Member, PIC. Dr. Kale welcomed the audience and introduced the speaker.
Dr. Malshe began by introducing his experience with setting up RISE Laboratories and the many innovations that came from his company. He provided the example of the African-American community having high death rates in USA during the first two waves of the pandemic. He briefly explained the data that RISE Laboratories used and the conclusions drawn from the same in order to innovate solutions for the community. He touched upon the technological and digital divide and how they had been drivers of exasperation and resentment in society, even in the USA. Dr. Malshe elaborated on how these circumstances drove him to adapt his study of social innovations to identify and analyse resilience in social innovation, or resilience as a component or outcome of social issues – and as an input factor for innovative solutions for these issues. He noted that this led to the development of the frugal engineering model for social innovations. He went on to describe how this informed his course design and student engagement with case studies on frugal engineering for social innovation.
An interesting round of questions and answers followed Dr Malshe’s talk.
