Welcome! I am a doctoral student in Engineering Systems Division at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I am interested in contributing to solving two existing challenges: understanding the implications of rapidly changing technology for public policy, and utilizing technology to effectively solve the problems of the world's poor.

Research and Action Statement

I decided to come to MIT in the fall of 2003 for a master’s degree in the Technology and Policy Program (TPP). I had come here after six years at Bell Labs and its subsequent incarnation, Avaya Labs, where I had worked at the forefront of Information Technology research. The disappointment that compelled me to leave behind purely engineering-focused corporate research to become a “penniless graduate student” of interdisciplinary studies was the observation that the plethora of technology we have produced has had a very marginal effect on people’s lives.

Having completed my M.S. in TPP, as I embark upon my Ph.D. in Engineering Systems, I am convinced that technology has an important role in bridging today’s stark social and economic gaps. My goal is to bring technology closer to people, especially those in emerging economies. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to obtain the knowledge and experience to become an objective evaluator of technology, policy, and the changing industry structure in the industrialized as well as the emerging economies.

Emerging economies are distant from technological revolution. They face a wider information gap and are often neglected in the incipient phase of technological development. I believe successful globalization can take place only with the active participation of developing nations in the global economy. To achieve this, it is important to close the information gap, to help developing countries and marginalized sectors of society to catch up with the new age.

My research interest, broadly, is to address two existing challenges: understanding the implications of rapidly changing technology for public policy, and utilizing technology to effectively solve the problems of the world's poor. My current PhD research concerns addressing the first challenge. As Internet-based technologies substitute traditional telecommunication technologies (voice and video), an important challenge for telecommunications regulators is to sustain the necessary regulatory compliance while preserving the innovation in the Internet. My thesis tackles this challenge by studying the information and telecommunications sector from the systems perspective. I have developed a systems model of the interactions among regulators, corporations, consumers, and technologists to understand the various tradeoffs. My hope is that such a model would capture the dynamic complexity of the rapidly changing environment. My work draws upon theories of systems, engineering, business, political economy, and law.

I believe that social entrepreneurship would be a better approach (at the moment) to address the second challenge of utilizing technology effectively for the poor. I am therefore involved in several technological innovations and entrepreneurship efforts in various capacities.

Office: 32-G806

77 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge MA 02139

Email: chintanv at mit.edu

My research is currently funded by a fellowship from the National Science Foundation's Program on Emerging Technology (PoET). The PoET's fundamental premise is that in many rapidly progressing technology areas such as the Internet, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, the understanding of the economic, security, environmental, and cultural implications of these technologies has not kept pace with underlying technological change. The Program on Emerging Technologies at MIT seeks to improve responses to emerging technologies by engaging early and explicitly with the pervasive uncertainty that is often under-recognized in technology assessment exercises.

I am also involved in the Value Chain Dynamics Working Group, Communications Futures Program (CFP), MIT. The group is creating a framework and a toolkit for understanding value migration in voice, music and video communications value chains. The research group consists of researchers from MIT and industry partners worldwide.

• PhD (Current Research Abstract)
• PhD (Proposal Abstract)

Creating Smsvani (see a You Tube Video - low bandwidth, high bandwidth)

Smsvani is an sms2web message board. Today, needy individuals in remote communities of the developing world lack affordable means to communicate directly with (potential) patrons and vice versa. They have to rely on a limited number of non-profits or other local entities, who may be difficult to access or when accessed may lack the resources to help. Smsvani intends to bridge this gap and allow local needs to be broadcast (via sms) to a global audience (via the Internet). In developing countries, Sms is viable since mobile phone penetration (30%) is more than the Internet penetration (3%). The needs may take the form of goods, services or monetary support. For example our sms-based messageboard platform will enable a contribution of ten dollars to a school 8,000 miles away so that the school can purchase twenty school uniforms or children’s lunches for a whole week.

• October 24, 2008, Communications Futures Program, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA, "Who Will Profit from Social TV Service?: Insights and Queries From A Technology Disruption Model"
• July 23, 2008, International Conference of System Dynamics Society, Athens, Greece, "Does Technology Disruption Always Mean Industry Disruption?" [PDF]
• March 20, 2008, Communications Futures Program, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA, “System Dynamics in Value Chain Dynamics Toolkit”
• January 16, 2008, The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Tokyo, Japan, “Regulating VoIP – A discussion”
• December 10, 2007, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Washington, DC, USA, "The End of Core: should disruptive innovation in telecom invoke discontinuous regulatory response?" [PDF]
• July 29, 2007, International Conference of the System Dynamics Society, Boston, MA, USA, "The End of Core: should disruptive innovation in telecom invoke discontinuous regulatory response?- A Doctoral Research Proposal"
• July 25, 2007, Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Program (OIISDP), Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, "The End of Core: should disruptive innovation in telecom invoke discontinuous regulatory response?- A Doctoral Research Proposal"
• June 26, 2007, Technology, Management and Policy Graduate Consortium (TMPGC). TMPGC 2007 Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, "The End of Core: should disruptive innovation in telecom invoke discontinuous regulatory response?"
• May 31, 2007, Communications Futures Program Bi-Annual Meeting, Comcast Head Quarters, Philadelphia, PA, USA, “Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Value Chain Dynamics”

Over years, my work has spanned the areas of technology, management and policy. Listed below are some publications representing each area:

Technology and Policy

• Chintan Vaishnav (2007). 'The End of Core: Should Disruptive Innovation in Telecom Invoke Discontinuous Regulatory Response?' PhD Proposal, Engineering Systems Division (ESD), MIT. [Email]
• Chintan Vaishnav . and C. H. Fine (2006). ‘A dynamic assessment of VoIP innovation, adoption and their interaction with CALEA regulation,’ Technology Policy Research Conference (TPRC), Arlington, VA. [PDF]
• Chintan Vaishnav . (2005). ‘Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP): The Dynamics of Technology and Regulation’ Technology and Policy Program. Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 166. [PDF]

Technology Strategy

• (Selected for Plenary Presentation) Chintan Vaishnav (2008). ‘Does Technology Disruption Always Mean Industry Disruption?’. International Conference of System Dynamics, Athens, Greece. [PDF]
• Chintan Vaishnav, A. Khakifirooz, et al. (2006). ‘Punishing by Reward: When your Performance Bell-curve Stops Working for You’. International Conference of System Dynamics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. [PDF]

Technology and Socioeconomic Development

• Chintan Vaishnav. (2005). ‘Information Flows in the Traditional Knowledge and the Grassroots Innovations Value Chains for Agriculture - A Report from Gujarat,’ Part of a report on understanding the impact of information technology on the agricultural sector to the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and Microsoft Research . The work was carried out with the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), India.

Technology (Computer Networks)

• Chintan Vaishnav, Matt Nieberger, A. P. Jayasumana, and Jon Sauer, ‘Design and Performance of a Robust WDM Network,’ presented at SPIE's International Symposium on Optical Science, Engineering, and Instrumentation 1996, Aug. 4-9, 1996.
• S. A. Abd-Elmalak, C. Vaishnav and A. P. Jayasumana, `Performance of Robust WDM Fast Circuit-Switched Networks with Token Passing in Control Channel,' International Journal of Communication Systems, Vol. 15, pp.239-255, 2002. [PDF]  
• S. A. Abd-Elmalak, C. Vaishnav and A. P. Jayasumana, ‘Performance of a Symmetric Robust WDM Network when the Channel Access Pattern at Nodes is Known,’ Proc. 22nd IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks, Oct. 1997. [PDF]
• T. S. El-Bawab, C. Vaishnav, A. P. Jayasumana, H. Temkin, J. Sauer and H. Willebrand, ‘Medium Access Control Protocols for Robust Wavelength Division Multiplexed Local-Area Networks,’ Fiber and Integrated Optics, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp.237-260, 1997.
• Tarek El-bawab, Chintan Vaishnav, Anura P. Jayasumana, Henryk Temkin, Jon R. Sauer, and Heinz A. Willebrand, ‘Medium Access Control Protocols for Robust Wavelength Division Multiplexed (WDM) Local Area Networks,’ Proc. International Communications Conference (ICC)'96, v. 2, pp 1099-1106, June 23-27, 1996.
• Samir A. Abd-Elmalak, Chintan Vaishnav, and Anura P. Jayasumana, ‘Performance of a Symmetric Robust WDM Circuit-Switched Network with Token-Passing in Control Channel,’ to be presented at 5th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (IC3N'96), Oct 16-19, 1996. [PDF]
• Samir A. Abd-Elmalak, Chintan Vaishnav, and Anura P. Jayasumana, ‘Performance of a Robust WDM Network with Token-Passing and a Limited Number of Lasers per Station,’ to be presented at IEEE 21st Conference On Local Computer Networks, Oct 13-16, 1996.
• Samir A. Abd-Elmalak, Chintan Vaishnav, and Anura P. Jayasumana, ‘Performance of Packet Switched WDM Network with Dynamic Wavelength Selection,' Proc. IEEE 20th Conference On Local Computer Networks, pp 73-81, 1995. [PDF]
• Samir A. Abd-Elmalak, Chintan Vaishnav, and Anura P. Jayasumana, ‘Performance of a WDM Network with Dynamic Wavelength Selection for Packet Switching,’ Submitted to IEEE/ACM transactions on networking.