My Life with my Mentor Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam
Offering my Heartfelt Gratitude and Respects to my Mentor, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Former President of India and Eminent Scientist behind the Space Research and Nuclear Program in India
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam has been a great inspiration to millions of people, particularly the youngsters. I am one of them, and thought that the best way to offer my heartfelt Gratitude and Respects to my Mentor would be to actually share the story of how he touched and transformed my life. They are truly Golden Moments in my Life...
By Arvind Thiagarajan
27th July 2015
The Beginning: My story started in Chennai, India. When I was 13 years old, during a physical training session in school, I became short of breath and was rushed to the hospital. The doctors found out that I had a valve problem in my heart, which caused a heart murmur. They further advised that I need to undergo ultrasound echocardiography once every 6 months to determine whether I needed a surgery or not. That obviously stressed my parents a lot, and I wanted to do something about this when I grew up, and was determined to become a doctor in life. Due to various reasons, I couldn’t go to medical school, but ended up in an engineering school. Even though I got into a very prestigious Engineering college called Guindy Engineering College (Anna University) which is one of the oldest colleges in Asia (more than 175 years old), I was still a little disappointed that I couldn’t go to medical school. That’s when I fortunately met Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam the first time during a student interaction session. He told me these Golden Words that changed my life, and they were: “If you are a doctor, you can only help thousands of patients...but if you are a doctor’s doctor, solving their problems with technology, you can not only help thousands of doctors, but through them, reach millions of patients”
The Transformation: Inspired by those Golden Words from Dr. Kalam, I was determined to research on the ways to detect heart defects at an early stage. I found out that there is a technology called Phonocardiography (PCG) that can be used to evaluate the mechanical activity of the heart. I started developing algorithms to look for patterns of abnormal cardiac activity. The results from that research project were presented in several conferences and I was fortunate to receive the “Junior Scientist of India” Award from Dr. Kalam.
Dr. Kalam further guided that I should file a patent for that technology. Honestly, as a student in India in 2000/ 2001, even the word ‘Patent’ was totally new. But Dr. Kalam persisted, and arranged for a Patent Awareness Seminar at Anna University. After the session, I was approached by one of the Controllers of Patents, and he offered to help me with my patent application. Within a few weeks, I filed my first patent in my life! I thought it was a great fun to have a Patent under my name. But little did I realize that, the patent would be a turning point in my life!
Like any other student, I started applying for the top universities in United States and also got admits in a few prestigious colleges in California. I also got a fancy job from my campus recruitment in college, which was working on Communications and related to my field of studies. While I was thinking very hard to decide between the two opportunities, a third opportunity presented itself.
The Singaporean Government Fund had started an Incubation fund in India, and they were looking for IP (Intellectual Property/ Patent) based investments in India; but most companies at that time were IT (Information Technology) based and they didn’t have any patents. Again, coincidentally, the Singaporean Fund found me through Ernst & Young in Chennai. They invited me to present my idea to their team in Singapore. I had to borrow money from my elder brother to go to Singapore. He was also sharing with me all the latest trends with the .COM era in the year 2000. So I also came up with a .COM twist to my idea. I called my idea as “myheartbeat.net” and the device as “heartcard”.
It was a big hit in Singapore, and I was offered $ 1 Million funding to incubate my technology. I came back to India and took Dr. Kalam’s advice. He strongly recommended me to pursue my dreams and start the company to develop this technology further, which I followed without a moment of hesitation. It was a very bold step as a 21 year old, but thanks to Dr. Kalam’s words of inspiration “to have courage to think differently, courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, courage to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed”, that dream became a reality.
After 2002, when Dr. Kalam became the President of India, it was harder to get regular access to him and neither did I want to disturb him until the technology was fully developed and the product was ready. I learnt a lot from that experience of starting my own company and developing this technology further...it was truly an experience what they don’t teach at Harvard or Stanford!
I had a team of 20 engineers in Chennai and it was a multi-disciplinary effort involving medical knowledge, electronics, sensors, algorithms, DSP, embedded technology, software, etc. We truly lived Dr. Kalam’s dream of designing, developing and manufacturing a product completely in India!
After almost six years of perseverance, we finally developed the first version of the product and called it Viscope or Visual Stethoscope (www.hdmedicalgroup.com ), which could visualize the PCG waveforms on a LCD display and also use Signal Processing techniques to improve the Heart sounds and remove noise in a stethoscope.
In 2007, Dr. Kalam’s Term as a President ended. While we all hoped and prayed that he would continue as a President for the second term, I was waiting for an opportunity to meet with him again to present the Viscope product to him.
In 2008, Dr. Kalam invited a group of youngsters together with his Advisor, Mr. Srinivasan from PrimePoint Foundation to talk about his Vision 2020 Initiative and forming an Action2020 Group. At that time, I was also invited because I had started a non-profit organization, called SAI Global Mission (www.saiglobalmission.org ), inspired by Sri Sathya Sai Baba at Puttaparthi, India to provide free healthcare and food for villages in South India.
Dr. Kalam was so happy to see the product. He gave several suggestions for improvements and to take it to the next level. I also updated him about the service activities through the non-profit. He advised that having passion alone is not enough; we should have action. He encouraged to actively pursuing service activities in rural areas of India.
After Dr. Kalam’s meeting in 2008, we had renewed energy and passion to do better with more action. We not only implemented the improvements suggested by Dr. Kalam for the heart device product, but also expanded the service activities for providing free healthcare and food, to more than 200 villages in South India, every week. More than 100,000 people were benefited through the service activities. It took me closer to the target of reaching 1 Million people, not only through science, but also through social service, very much in line with the Philosophy of “Love All, Serve All” by my Spiritual Master, Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Only later I realized the close association and respect that Dr. Kalam had for Sri Sathya Sai Baba.
The Journey Continues: It took couple of years to complete the improvements suggested by Dr. Kalam. Even though Dr. Kalam was no longer the President of India, his popularity increased, especially amongst the youngsters. It was becoming very hard to get his appointment. Again, Mr. Srinivasan from Primepoint Foundation arranged a meeting through Dr. Kalam’s Secretary in 2010. We were told that Dr. Kalam would meet us at 12. We thought it was 12 noon, but it turned out to be 12 midnight! We went to Raj Bhavan at Chennai and were waiting from 10.30 PM onwards. Finally our moment came at 2 AM and the meeting was supposed to be for 5 minutes. But Dr. Kalam, with his child like curiosity and interest in our new heart device, wanted me to check the heart of his secretary, Mr. Sheridien and others in the room, and Dr. Kalam started listening to their heart sounds and almost started acting like a doctor!
Dr. Kalam was so happy that we had implemented all the suggestions given by him in 2008. And he gave more suggestions for the next generation. What was amazing was that, Dr. Kalam gave the same exact suggestion that we received from a leading Cardiologist in India called Dr. Balachander from JIPMER Institute, which was to add a Electrocardiogram (ECG) to our Viscope device. This proved Dr. Kalam’s expertise and knowledge not only in engineering field, but also in medical field.
Dr. Kalam also advised us to add Telemedicine capabilities and connect it to the mobile phone in future. It was an unbelievable experience to learn from the Missile Man of India. The 5 minute meeting lasted more than 45 minutes. We felt guilty because after us, there were still 100 people waiting to see him at 2.45 AM! We also learnt that Dr. Kalam would not send anybody back without seeing them, and would stay up until 4 AM typically. And then he would order for tea sharp at 5 AM. He was a True Yogi who conquered sleep and lived his message of “Dream is not that which you see while sleeping it is something that does not let you sleep”.
He had a dream to make India a developed nation by the year 2020 through his Vision 2020 program. He had a dream to make the world a better and richer place through his global Vision “World of Nations 2030”. How could he afford to sleep!
His Vision: Despite being a great Scientist, Dr. Kalam was very practical and had the societal advancement and economic upliftment as the core aspects of his Vision. While he had greater plans and visions for India and the world at large, what I can share is Dr. Kalam’s vision for me and my companies.
In one of the later meetings, I updated Dr. Kalam about my second company called Matrixview (www.matrixview.com ) that develops Compression Technologies for Images, Data and Video. I also updated him about the fact that I had filed more than 40 patents so far, thanking him for the initial inspiration and awareness given by him. He was very proud.
He shared his vision for societal advancement and economic upliftment through Innovation. He wanted to create a platform that would bring Innovation, Incubation and Investments under one umbrella and said that he would launch that initiative. Following his advice, I founded Advanced Technology Group or AT Group (www.atgroupllc.com ) in California, USA. The vision of AT Group is to bring Innovation, Incubation and Investments together under one umbrella, so as to foster economic growth through innovation and entrepreneurship in line with Dr. Kalam’s vision.
He also said to me that, after the learning experience through my 2 companies and all the inventions, it is time for me to work with younger inventors and entrepreneurs, and mentor them with their innovations and companies. So, under AT Group, we setup the AT Labs (www.atgroupllc.com/atlabs ) and have so far mentored three “Smart-Kids” with their projects; the first one was a 17 year old school kid from Cupertino, CA who co-invented a Smart Hearing Aid on a Smart Phone, the second one was a 18 year old school kid from Saratoga, CA who co-invented a Non-Invasive Diabetes Detection technology without blood prick. And the third one is an early detection of cancer with an intern from Berkeley, who lost her father through Cancer at a very young age, and is determined for that situation to not repeat for others!
The Last Meeting: On 6th January 2015, I visited Dr. Kalam’s residence at New Delhi. The purpose of the visit was to demonstrate the new Viscope ECG device with Telemedicine capabilities to him. He was really very happy to see the new device and was very happy that we are collaborating with Dr. Nelson Schiller at UCSF in San Francisco.
Dr. Kalam was also very happy that I got married and blessed me and my wife Shelly. We both fell at his feet to get his Blessings. Little did we know at that time, that was going to be our last meeting with him. Dr. Kalam was happy with the AT Group/ AT Labs initiatives. He was particularly impressed with the Smart-Kids developing these smart ideas.
Dr. Kalam wanted the innovations to help in Societal Advancement. He inspired a new initiative called SAIENCE, which stands for Societal Advancement by Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Nurturing, Collaboration and Execution. Unlike the conventional Science, with a ‘SC’ or ‘Selfish Creativity’, the SAIENCE would focus on how science can bring about societal advancement and improvement. We updated him about the plans to host a conference titled ‘Science for Society’ in USA in June 2015. He was very interested in attending, but due to his teaching commitments, he couldn’t visit USA in June 2015. He said that he would definitely be there for the ’Science for Society’ conference and launching the SAIENCE initiative later.
I am sure you would agree with me that Dr. Kalam will always be there in spirit to bless us all. His words of wisdom and inspiration will always stay with us. Dr. Kalam has given us all so much in our lives. And the best way we can offer our gratitude and respects to Dr. Abdul Kalam is to follow his messages and inspiration to “Dream, dream, dream. Dream transforms in to thoughts. And thoughts result in action” and make his vision a reality!
May his Soul Rest in Peace!
Jai Hind!
