Design Dilemma

The ongoing debate on digital vs. physical prototyping   It was supposed to be a simple task. As part of our coursework project on Applied Ergonomics at IISc’s Department of Design and Manufacturing (DM; formerly known as the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, CPDM), my team wanted to design earphones with the perfect ergonomic […]

Home is where earth is

Learning from traditional architecture   Walking through the lanes of Majuli, the largest river island in the world, one cannot miss the characteristic houses, the Chang Ghar. Situated in Assam, at the heart of the river Brahmaputra and secluded from the rest of the world, Majuli has preserved much of its traditional heritage, including its […]

Driving Change

Elected bodies are giving voice to student issues   On a rainy October evening in 2024, Chiranjeevi Sadana, PhD student at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and newly elected Chairperson of the Students’ Council, is making arrangements for the first open mic of his term. The Students’ Council had finally been reinstated after six months. […]

‘With Gen AI, there are now a lot of opportunities, but also challenges’

Nihar B Shah is Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, USA, where he leads a research group exploring how human-AI collaboration can lead to more trustworthy research publications and fairer evaluation systems. He completed his ME from the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering (ECE) at IISc in 2010, and also received the Young Alumnus Medal […]

The Cosmological Principle

Can it help us understand the unknown universe?   One day in the spring of 1543, a canon named Nicolaus Copernicus, lying on his sickbed, suddenly awoke from a coma that he had been put under because of a brain stroke. Resting beside him was the first copy of his magnum opus: De revolutionibus orbium […]