BITS2MSPhD and Embryo are proud to announce the launch of our newest initiative – Know Your University, a cross-campus lecture series aimed at giving BITSians a glimpse of graduate school life at top research universities across the world. The series kicks off with a panel discussion by three graduate students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on 16 February at 8 PM IST.

The panel will be moderated by Yash Gandhi, Team Leader, BITS2MSPhD. Here is a brief introduction to our panelists for this talk.

Andrea Colaço (2003A3PS007P) is a Ph.D. student at the MIT Media Lab and an affiliate with the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Her research interests include statistical signal processing and optimization with applications to 3D sensing. Among her achievements at MIT are the award of LG Electronics Fellow (2009), winning the MIT $100k Entrepreneurship Competition’s Pitch Contest (2012), and twice winning Qualcomm Innovation Research Fellowship (2011, 2012).

Ashok Ajoy graduated from BITS Pilani, K K Birla Goa Campus with a dual degree in Physics and EEE. He joined MIT’s Research Lab of Electronics as a Ph.D. student in September 2010, and currently works on exploiting spin defects for quantum computation. His past research experience includes stints at Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and University of Dortmund at Germany.

Subramanian Sundaram (2005A3A4550P) joined MIT as an ABB-MIT Energy Fellow in 2011. He currently works in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at MIT, where he builds MEMS oscillators. Earlier, Subra worked on tunable MEMS gratings at EPFL, Switzerland, and on carbon nanotube based bio-sensors at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Germany. During his free time, Subra enjoys photography, coding, biking, running, sailing and ice skating.