Student makes strides in innovation
During the 27 years of excellence, the Informatics Institute of Te c h n o l o g y (IIT Campus) has produced many innovators, entrepreneurs and business leaders who have played a pivotal role of shaping and empowering society. Isuru Sampath Kariyawasam who is currently following the BEng ( Hons) Software Engineering degree programme joins the long list of innovators from IIT.
Isuru who is a past pupil of D.S Senanayake College, Colombo 7, recently received several local and international accolades for his latest Innovation – Orasi 2.0 World, which helps visually impaired people use a mobile phone with ease.
Isuru’s innovation received accolades at the Global Student Entrepreneurship Award 2017 in which he emerged as runner up and was amongst the top five finalists at SS12 Asia 2016. He has also bagged awards at IIT Hack 2017 ( winner), IIT Cutting edge 2016 (runner up), IIT Cutting edge 2015 (runner up), Disrupt 2.0 Future X 2016 ( finalist) and Janashakthi Appathon Challenge 2016 (top 20).
While following his undergraduate degree at IIT and pursuing his passion for innovation, Isuru has also taken a keen initiative to establish his entrepreneurial journey by setting up Enif and Enif PCB which are involved in software engineering and Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing.
“One of the biggest issues which technology is yet to address is the question of how to overcome challenges the visually impaired people face on a daily basis? The use of internet and mobile phones has become an integral part of society. Many visually impaired individuals around the globe are denied access to the functionalities of modern society due to their inability to send a text message, make calls or browse through the net by using a mobile. Due to these factors, I decided to find a solution to help the visually impaired community. After much brainstorming and hard work, I came up with Orasi,” Isuru said.
“I was working until 3 am and waking up again at five or six in the morning on most days, while I was developing the Orasi N which is the predecessor for Orasi 2.0 systems. This system differs from Cortana, Siri, Google Assistant and other personal assistants as it focuses on preserving the privacy of the user. If you are visually impaired and are forced to dictate a text message, your privacy is lost. A unique feature about Orasi is that it is ‘Singlish’ friendly. Other virtual assistants can only process one language at a time. Orasi has 18 functionalities, such as the describing functionality that can identify and describe photographs; Optical Character recognition that enables the device to read text and translation functionality that facilitates translation. All settings are available in both Sinhala and English,” Isuru said
“IIT has the most suitable environment for those like me who are aspiring to become innovators and entrepreneurs one day. IIT lecturers have always guided me and helped me fine tune my innovative ideas to be converted into reality, in addition to that IIT’s l ibrary which has a large collection of books and research material helped me gain more knowledge that was needed for my innovation,” he said
IIT is an award winning campus, which has bagged many accolades for innovation in local and international competitions such as Microsoft Imagine Cup, National Best Quality Software Awards (NBQSA), Google Summer of Code, British Council- HSBC Youth Enterprise Award, e-Swabhimani and Samsung Digital Native Award.
IIT is currently offering internal undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in IT and Business from globally renowned universities. The University o f Westminster undergraduate degrees offered at IIT
are Software Engineering, Business Information System and Computer Science with specialization pathways in Gaming and Computer Graphics Development, Mobile and Web Computing and Multimedia Computing. IIT also offers the Foundation Certificate in Higher Education which is designed for students after O/L or students who don’t have adequate A/L results to join the degrees. The Foundation Certificate is accepted as a stepping stone for students planning to foll ow undergraduate degrees. The Foundation Certificate in Higher Education is an ideal pathway to pursue a degree soon after O/ Levels which allow a student to gain an early start in completing their degree.
For further information, e-mail “admissions@iit.ac.lk” or call the hotline 0722 72 72 72 or visit IIT Main Campus at No. 57, Ramakrishna Rd, Colombo 6.