Swami Manohar

Who is Swami Manohar?

Swami Manohar is a co-founder and the CEO of PicoPeta Simputers Pvt. Ltd. After obtaining his PhD in Computer Science from Brown University he was a faculty at the University of North Carolina for two years and then was at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, between 1990 to 2005. He was on the faculty of the department of Computer Science and the Super Computer Education and research Center at the Institute. He has been a visiting faculty at Columbia University, University of Missouri and the University of Texas. While at IISc, he co-invented the Simputer, was awarded the Dewang Mehta Award for Innovation in IT, and pioneered the faculty entrepreneurship activity at IISc, which has since catalyzed similar activity in IITs and other educational institutes in India. He co-founded Strand Life Sciences, and String Labs, the first academic incubating company in India.

Swami Manohar has contributed to research in Computer graphics, visualisation, virtual reality and CAD for rapid prototyping. He has been the thesis advisor for over forty graduate students including three PhDs. As CEO of PicoPeta he was instrumental in converting the prototype of the Simputer into a real commercial product, the Amida Simputer, India's first commercial handheld product. His broad interest is in the area of societal impact of information and communication technologies.