Hindustan Times (June 18, Mumbai Ed) has carried news about Prabhat Ranjan’s work in trying to enable Charu Khandal, Ra.One movie animator, who won Filmfare award for Best Special Effects movie. However the party to celebrate the award took a tragic turn, when her auto was hit by a drunk driver at end of party. She is now paralyzed neck down with no hands/leg movements. On June 8, she was given a Brain-Computer Interface to let her type using her head movement and brain waves.
See the news at : http://tinyurl.com/da-charu
She is among the four users in India, who have been able to benefit from this system. First user was Mr K Suresh from Coimbatore, about 3 months back. He is using it effectively about 4 hours a day since he cannot sit on wheel chair for more than 2 hours at a stretch.
Author: Prabhat Ranjan
Prof. Prabhat Ranjan is Vice Chancellor, D Y Patil International University, Akurdi, Pune. He was heading India's Technology Think Tank, TIFAC(tifac.org.in) as its Executive Director since April 2013 to April 2018. Earlier he was Professor at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute for Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar (DA-IICT) since 2002. He was educated in Netarhat School(near Ranchi), IIT Kharagpur and Delhi University. He received his Ph D from University of California, Berkeley where he carried our research on “Nuclear Fusion” at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory during 1983-86. He immediately returned to India after this and carried out research in Nuclear Fusion area at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Calcutta and Institute for Plasma Research(IPR), Gandhinagar. He played a major role in India’s Nuclear Fusion program and was Project Leader of the largest operational Indian Fusion Reactor, ADITYA, at Institute for Plasma Research from 1996-2002.
His current interests include applications of Wireless Sensor Network to Wildlife, Planetary Exploration (Chandrayaan mission), Nuclear Fusion, Healthcare, Agriculture etc. He has received National Science Talent Search Award, IBM Faculty Innovation Grant and HP Innovate 2009 award, NPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Award 2012, Bihar Gaurav Samman 2012 etc.
In March 2022, he was also honored with EduStar India’s Most Impactful Vice Chancellor Award for 2021-22.
He has been recognized by outlook among few visionaries, who can lead India towards 5 Trillion Dollar Economy. He has been also honoured with Maharashtra Ratna Gaurav Puraskar by Shalini Foundation in 2024. He is also recognized among the top “100 Great IITians : Dedicated to the Service of the Nation”.
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