INVENTION SPECIAL ......Why this inventor thinks IITs are black holes

 Why this inventor thinks IITs are black holes 

Dhairya Dand, 25, says his journey from Nashik to MIT Media Lab is a dedication to hard work and curiosity, more than smartness

hree white rats, goats, monkeys and a colony of ants. As a child, Dhairya Dand had all these for company in his tiny house on the outskirts of Nashik. School never enticed him as much. His surroundings were far more exciting. Dand’s father was a plumber, and he would often assist him with plumbing jobs. Today, the 25-year-old researcher at Fluid Interfaces Group, MIT Media Lab, credits his free-spirited childhood with giving him the wherewithal to shape his dreams. “I value the time I spent learning to fix things with my hands,” he says.
His portfolio of over a score of inventions can take your breath away: Cheer Cubes that know how much you’re drinking; Coucou, a safe social networking toy for children to make online friends in the physical world; Jellow, an emotional communication device for children with cerebral palsy; or Lovotics, an artificial life-form to enhance human-robot love.
His latest invention, SuperShoes insoles, is hotfooting its way up the tech pop charts. The special insoles eliminate the need for any kind of map, as they nudge you toward a destination by gently tickling your toes.
But for a man who has conceived of all this, structures and grades make no sense. “The world doesn’t care about which college or nation you come from as long as you have something to show,” says Dand, in an exclusive conversation withETPanache. He himsel f skipped the conventional Indian Institute of Technology route to MIT Media Lab. Dand, who has funded his education from the age of 14, wound his way through half the globe through internships and fellowships in Singapore, Tokyo, New York, Saudi Arabia, China and now, Cambridge.
“As a teenager, I never wanted to go to IIT. I used to think of IIT as a black hole that robs the fun out of your life,” says Dand. IITians may be smart but, “smartness is a very small part of success — curiosity and hard work play a much bigger role,” he adds. Even at VJTI, where he enrolled for a Computer Science course after Class 12, he never felt at home. “I lost interest within a year,” he says.
If he had his way, he would close down schools for everyone over the age of 12. Schools and colleges are great for meeting friends and like-minded people but not the best places to learn, he says. “There are enough resources on the internet that make learning at school redundant,” says Dand. He believes instead, that teachers should play the role of mentors or coaches and students should be able to interact across institutions.
And this is exactly what he himself did. While at VJTI, he worked on a month-long project at the Industrial Design Centre at IIT Bombay. “Engineering trains you to create and implement, while designing gives you the bigger picture and a deeper insight into the impact of what you want to create,” he says. Most of Dand’s work addresses problems and opportunities that he sees around him. More often than not, it’s the result of “excessive day-dreaming and taking reality with a pinch of salt.” So what’s the secret behind the mindboggling body of work? Observation, curiosity, questioning beliefs and never getting bogged down. “Every day, I wake up eager to know what new thought I will think… even if I don’t, it’s fine. The eureka moment never happens; you have to work towards it,” says Dand.
Dhand describes himself as a regular 25-year-old who is mad about travelling and backpacking, sampling different cuisines, biking, making furniture for his home and pottery.
But now, he has some pragmatic issues to fix. With his Korean American girlfriend moving to Boston, he’s figuring out whether he can make something that will increase the intimacy in the relationship. In 2011-12, while on a fellowship in Tokyo, he had devised a pair of silicon ‘Kissing Lips’ to measure movement and moisture levels when you kissed them. When connected to the computer, the sensations would be transferred via the internet to his girlfriend’s pair of silicon lips.
He’s now wondering if he can take this to the next level.

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