I am writing a series of articles on business leaders, celebrities, and entrepreneurs who have been giving back to the community. In the lead-up to Christmas, readers like to hear positive stories.
Like most OEMs, Garmin embodies its product development in a "skunk works" of sorts, but few avionics manufacturers are as vertically integrated from concept to fulfillment under one roof.
As a child growing up in a small town in India with little access to electronics or technology, Anurag Purwar never had a chance to experience anything related to robotics. "Looking back, I'm sure it would have had a major impact on me," said Purwar, now an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University. And while a second chance at childhood is the stuff Hollywood screenplays are made of, Purwar is not only getting an opportunity to experience the dreams he missed, he's working with a greater goal of making a transformational robotics experience possible for today's children. Boosting his noble cause, Purwar's research group, in collaboration with Stony Brook University startup Mechanismic Inc., recently received a $1 million award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for their proposal, "A Design-Driven Educational Robotics Framework." The award comes from NSF&