Tata Center for Technology and Design at MIT

This paper describes the Tata Center for Technology and Design at MIT, a new program aimed at creating high-impact, sustainable, and scalable technical solutions in developing and emerging markets through the rigorous application of applied engineering science and systems thinking. The program is funded by the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and is based at MIT. The Center matches students and faculty to projects in India and offers training to enable them to create viable and appropriate solutions. Tata Center projects serve as the basis for graduate thesis work to address compelling social/technical/economic challenges. Each funded graduate student attends a weekly proseminar on development topics and spends significant time in India, pursuing a novel research project that addresses a development need and fulfills his or her degree requirements. A core tenet of the Center is collaboration with stakeholders who represent each link in the chain from inception of an idea to implementation in the real world. This collaboration includes partnerships with small entrepreneurs as well as larger organizations that understand target markets and have a track record of scalable, sustainable success. Tata Fellows are taught how to engage the entire stakeholder hierarchy behind a technical challenge, from executives to engineers to manufacturers to distributors to end users, in order to understand the unique constraints and requirements each imposes on a solution. This paper includes descriptions of three representative Center projects: redesigning the Jaipur Foot prosthetic foot for mass manufacture, quality control, and to conform with international standards; creating low-pressure, low-power, off-grid drip irrigation systems for small-scale farmers; and developing a technology and systems strategy for materials recycling and pollution mitigation in an industrial district with many small and medium sized manufacturing firms.