Anku Rani, a PhD student in the Viral Communications group, and Shrihari Viswanath, a PhD student in the Conformable Decoders group, have been selected as recipients of the 2025–26 Tata Center for Technology and Design Fellowship.

The fellowship, administered by the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), supports students pursuing impactful technological solutions for communities in resource-constrained settings, with a focus on India.

Working under the guidance of Dr. Andy Lippman, Professor Pattie Maes, and Professor Paul Pu Liang, Anku's research focuses on breaking health-related socio-cultural myths using video generation and dialogue systems. Her research aims to replace unsafe folk treatments with accurate medical advice by developing technologies that modify language, speech, and gestures to make medical information culturally resonant for remote Indian villages. As a part of the fellowship, Anku will engage with low-resource communities, healthcare providers, and NGOs in India to evaluate how effectively these AI tools help people overcome health misconceptions and improve health literacy.

With advisement from Professor Canan Dagdeviren, Shrihari’s research focuses on the development of a low-cost ultrasound systems for breast cancer screening, aimed at addressing the critical lack of early diagnostic access for women in underserved regions. As part of the fellowship, Shrihari will engage directly with healthcare providers, NGOs, and local communities to better understand how this technology can be effectively and sustainably delivered as a screening service in developing countries. These on-the-ground insights will inform his research, which focuses on designing miniaturized electronics and adaptive image reconstruction algorithms to support an accessible and reliable solution.