A candid interview with Dr. Magesh Chandramouli

What are some of the important applications of Dr. Chandramouli’s research?

Dr. Chandramouli’s main goal is to provide innovations that will allow for the use of Virtual Reality (VR) for STEM education, engagement and online dissemination. The application of this technology in a laboratory setting has been applied to areas including digital manufacturing, computational thinking, 3D printing with wonderful results and broad impact. He has been involved in multiple projects with other researchers or professionals to develop VR components for educational purposes.   Among those components are: VR based hardware lab modules for hardware instruction, VR for manufacturing education, VR for computational thinking & programming.

How was this innovation implemented? 

Chandramouli has been primarily involved in the design and implementation of these VR frameworks that represent the ‘technological synthesis’ denoting the amalgamation of different types of knowledge from multiple disciplines. He has successfully designed and implemented Graphics-based VR frameworks that have been used in various areas of STEM educations.  These have been effectively tested, calibrated, evaluated and authenticated in the form of peer-reviewed publications involving students. Especially, the results of his projects were through in-person workshops and online MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) Videos.

What are the values and benefits of this innovation to the end user?

The innovative VR frameworks have helped remedy the limitations placed on students’ ability to participate in lab based learning.  In addition to have the potential to allow for remote lab work to be performed, this has resulted in a cost savings for students. The primarily ‘instructed-oriented’ nature of his research and his remarkable ability to collaborate with faculty members in other disciplines have resulted in creating many low-cost VR instructional frameworks across multiple disciplines.  This way of integrating research and teaching is highly relevant and imminent considering the STEM enrollment and retention issues being face by many institutions.

His multimodal VR framework is a good example of cutting-edge research being applied to industry utility, such as digital manufacturing, which is standardizing operations for the manufacturing industry nationwide. His novel approach demonstrated that by using innovative programming and VR methods, affordable instructional frameworks can be designed and implemented successfully across various STEM disciplines.

What are some major awards and recognitions received? 

Dr. Chandramouli has received national and international recognition for his contribution to the disciplines of graphics, virtual reality and education. He received the ‘Innovator Award’ from the Society of Innovators, Northwest Indiana in 2020. He was awarded the ‘Warner Professional Practice Award’ and the Mini-Lectureship Award by the International Honor Society of Technology. Dr. Chandramouli continues to integrate his research to design innovative strategies in his courses and follows them up with evaluations of student learning and authenticating these with publications in education journals.  His work has put him among the researchers working in the VR area that has conducted significant work that effectively supports STEM and ATE instruction. His work on use of VR in hardware instruction received the ‘Editor’s Award – Outstanding Technical Paper’ award from the Engineering Design Graphics Division of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

Dr. Chandramouli has delivered invited lectures in prestigious institutions including the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) Bangalore, National University of Singapore, Singapore University of Technology & Design and several other prominent research institutions.  He has authored two books and published papers in prestigious journals and peer-reviewed conferences. His upcoming book: “3D-Modeling–Animation-A-Primer” printed by Taylor and Francis Press is currently under publication. https://www.routledge.com/3D-Modeling–Animation-A-Primer/Chandramouli/p/book/9781498764919

Summarily, what has been the major impact? 

Dr. Chandramouli has been invited to deliver lectures by universities from different parts of the world including Singapore, India, Hong Kong, Brazil, Europe, Vietnam, Cambodia, Taiwan, and Nepal to share his innovative research and teaching. Dr. Chandramouli’s VR framework for STEM application greatly reduces the restrictions experienced in educational institutions in terms of limited hardware, space and time limitations (of laboratories), as well as costs associated with installation, operation, and maintenance. Hence, overall, this framework offers an easy-to-access/use modality for novices to be trained on computer hardware and architecture and serves as a valuable tool for educational institutions in supplementing hardware courses.