Sugata Mitra (born 12 February 1952) is an Indian computer scientist and educational theorist. He is best known for his "Hole in the Wall" experiment, and widely cited in works on literacy and education. He is Professor Emeritus at NIIT University, Rajasthan, India. A Ph.D. in theoretical physics, he retired in 2019 as Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University in England, after 13 years there including a year in 2012 as Visiting Professor at MIT MediaLab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He won the TED Prize 2013.
After earning a PhD in Solid State Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, during which time he published several papers on organic semiconductors, he went on to research battery technology at the Centre for Energy Studies in the IIT, and later at the Technische Universität, Vienna. He published a paper on a zinc-chlorine battery and a speculative paper on why the human sense organs are located where they are.
He then worked setting up networked computers and created the "Yellow Pages" industry in India and Bangladesh.
Mitra's work at NIIT created the first curricula and pedagogy for that organisation, followed by years of research on learning styles, learning devices, several of them now patented, multimedia and new methods of learning. Since the 1970s, Professor Mitra's publications and work has resulted in training and development of perhaps a million young Indians, amongst them some of the poorest children in the world. Some of this work culminated in an interest in early literacy, and the Hole in the Wall experiments.
Sugata Mitra (born 12 February 1952) is an Indian computer scientist and educational theorist. He is best known for his "Hole in the Wall" experiment, and widely cited in works on literacy and education. He is Professor Emeritus at NIIT University, Rajasthan, India. A Ph.D. in theoretical physics, he retired in 2019 as Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University in England, after 13 years there including a year in 2012 as Visiting Professor at MIT MediaLab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He won the TED Prize 2013.
After earning a PhD in Solid State Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, during which time he published several papers on organic semiconductors, he went on to research battery technology at the Centre for Energy Studies in the IIT, and later at the Technische Universität, Vienna. He published a paper on a zinc-chlorine battery and a speculative paper on why the human sense organs are located where they are.
He then worked setting up networked computers and created the "Yellow Pages" industry in India and Bangladesh.
Mitra's work at NIIT created the first curricula and pedagogy for that organisation, followed by years of research on learning styles, learning devices, several of them now patented, multimedia and new methods of learning. Since the 1970s, Professor Mitra's publications and work has resulted in training and development of perhaps a million young Indians, amongst them some of the poorest children in the world. Some of this work culminated in an interest in early literacy, and the Hole in the Wall experiments.