Naveen Verma received the B.A.Sc. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the UBC, Vancouver, Canada in 2003, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 2005 and 2009 respectively. Since July 2009 he has been at Princeton University, where he is current Director of the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
His research focuses on advanced sensing systems, exploring how systems for learning, inference, and action planning can be enhanced by algorithms that exploit new sensing and computing technologies. This includes research on large-area, flexible sensors, energy-efficient statistical-computing architectures and circuits, and machine-learning and statistical-signal-processing algorithms. This research involves vital collaborations between undergraduate and graduate students at Princeton and a range of academic and industrial collaborators outside Princeton. Prof. Verma has served as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society, and on a number of conference program committees and advisory groups. Prof. Verma is the recipient of numerous teaching and research awards, including several best-paper awards, with his students.
What are your responsibilities at the Keller Center?
My responsibility in the Keller Center is to work directly with all of the Center's students, faculty, and staff to understand their passions and concerns around innovation and entrepreneurship. From there, we work together to determine how to support those passions and concerns, within our teaching and scholarship objectives. From all of this, comes a community around innovation and entrepreneurship, which I am also responsible for keeping fueled and raging.
What attracted you to the Keller Center?
What attracts me to the Keller Center is the amazing ways in which it stimulates students, of such diverse backgrounds, to spread their wings and embark on so many different journeys into innovation and entrepreneurship. I am amazed, and often the students are amazed, at where these journeys lead them, and the tremendous personal and intellectual growth with which they come out the other end.
What do you appreciate most about the Keller Center?
The thing I appreciate most about the Keller Center is the holistic approach taken to empowering students. Solving real-world societal problems requires deep technical insights, but it also requires resourcefulness, courage, and perseverance. Beyond the very unique courses Keller offers, it also provides mentorship, immersive and intense experiences, and firm partnership rooted in belief in our student endeavors.
What advice would you have for students about getting involved at the Keller Center?
My advice to students getting involved in the Keller Center is to think deeply and fearlessly about the impact you would like to have. Such thinking can be daunting and detaching from reality; your experiences in the Keller Center will help you in imagining and then formulating a real roadmap for making real progress in whatever areas you are drawn to.
