Infant-Warmer To Efficient Lighting, Indian-American Scientist's Top Innovations

Indian-American scientist Dr Ashok Gadgil, who was awarded the prestigious White House National Medal for Technology and Innovation, told NDTV that energy-efficient lighting has been saving billions of dollars in emerging economies. Dr Gadgil is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, who has developed low­-cost solutions to some of the developing world's most intractable problems, including safe drinking water technologies, energy-efficient stoves, and ways to make efficient electric lighting affordable. He focuses on robust inventions that can be deployed as widely as possible, and together, his projects have helped more than 100 million people. On the infant-warmer innovation, Dr Gadgil said, "The function is to avoid infant deaths from hypothermia. Places where they often die don't have electricity. Our infant-warmer has reduced all neonatal deaths by a factor of three."