Bangladeshi in MIT list of young inventors
Bangladeshi youth Ehsan Hoque has made it to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) list of top young innovators of 2016 .
The Technology Review journal published by Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT ) placed Ehsan Hoque among 35 others.
The journal listed under-35 top inventors.
People named on this list are famous for changing the world.
Larry Pege and Sergey Brin of Google, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jonathan Ive designer of iPad and iMac, Linus Torvalds of Linux, Jerry Yang of Yahoo, Jack Dorsey of Twitter were previous recipients of this honorary list.
Ehsan’s creates mathematical models based on human voice and body language. This will help to build a device that will allow patients with Down Syndrome and autism improve their speech and even communicate properly with prospective employers in an interview.
“People suffering from autism or Asperger's Syndrome are often unable to communicate or speak properly while others find it difficult to understand them. Since they lack the ability to comprehend body language, sometimes the patients cannot understand whether those listening to them are becoming agitated or are enjoying the conversation. The device can help them overcome these communication problems and allow them to even understand whether a person is being fake or genuine,” Ehsan told Prothom Alo in an interview over the phone.
MACH (My Automated Conversation coacH) and LISSA (Live Interactive Social Skills Assistant) are the two devices created by Ehsan that can immediately read the number of times a person says ‘Yeah, aahhh’ and other expressions. The device can also determine whether the body language of the speaker is normal or imposed and accurately judge the projection of his words.
While working in the MIT media laboratory, Ehsan first invented MACH which helps augment communicational skills between MIT professors and students. The device was later altered and improved to create LISSA which is better able to help people with autism.
‘People can easily differentiate between a football and a person’s head when they are placed side by side, because we have been taught to recognize the differences since childhood. Similarly, through modern mathematical technology the machine can also determine the differences when fed with photographs of different people as examples. However, the task itself is not as easy as it sounds.’
Successfully inventing this complicated device is the reason why Ehsan has been placed in the MIT selected list of top inventors under 35. Ehsan is a former student of Udayan School and Dhaka College. He received his undergraduate degree in computer engineering from Pennsylvania State University and completed his post graduation in electrical engineering from University of Memphis.
In 2008, he began working on the device that can help analyse human expression, voice and emotions, at the prestigious MIT media laboratory. In 2009, Ehsan also helped to build a robot at Walt Disney laboratories that can see, hear and think for itself. In 2010, he created an intelligent advertising machine at IBM Watson laboratories, which creates advertising campaigns based on gender, age, clothes and colour preferences. In 2013, he created a ‘mood metre’ that can define the mood of a person from their facial expression.
After completing his PhD from MIT, he joined the University of Rochester as an assistant professor in the computer science department.
Ehsan believes specially-abled people should be provided with new technologies and new curriculum so that they can live a normal life.