Rajesh Kannan Megalingham

Biography

Committed to research and development with a special focus on humanitarian needs, Rajesh Kannan Megalingam motivates his undergraduate students at Amrita University to take on research activities and projects that help improve the world. Student research at the undergraduate level in India is rare, but Megalingam established an engineering program that provides opportunities to publish papers and attend conferences around the world. As leader of the Humanitarian Technologies (HuT) Lab at Amrita, he also provides his students with invaluable experience in developing technologies that are making a difference. Humanitarian-geared projects created under his guidance include a hand-gesture-based wheelchair to aid the physically challenged, a search-and-rescue robot for natural disaster areas, and an unmanned robotic coconut tree climber and harvester. All of these projects were completed with the help of only undergraduate students.

An IEEE Senior Member, Megalingam is director of the Humanitarian Technology Labs at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University, Kollam, India.