Ramesh Raskar is an associate professor at the MIT Media Lab and director of its Camera Culture research group. He works in computational photography and sensing and holds more than 100 patents, including work on femtophotography (cameras operating at the speed of light), LiDAR systems, and augmented reality displays. He is a co-author of the 2025 GenAI Divide report on enterprise AI adoption.
Background
Raskar holds a BSc from Mysore University, an MEng from SGSITS Indore, and a PhD from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2000). He joined the MIT Media Lab in 2000. His Camera-at-the-Speed-of-Light project (2012) enabled imaging around corners and through diffuse media using femtophotography. He received the Lemelson-MIT Prize in 2016 for invention and is frequently listed among the most influential people in photonics.
AI and policy work
Raskar leads Project NANDA (Networked Agents and Decentralized AI) at MIT, which builds decentralized AI infrastructure and studies AI adoption at scale. The project produced the GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025 report, an empirical study of enterprise AI adoption based on a survey of 1,000 Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 firms. The report finds that 95% of enterprise GenAI pilots yield no measurable P&L impact, a gap it terms the "GenAI Divide." It does not claim AI does not work; it finds the gap between pilot enthusiasm and measurable business impact to be wide, and attributes failure primarily to organizational and integration factors rather than model quality.
Relationships
- leads: MIT Media Lab — Camera Culture Group; Project NANDA
- co-authored: MIT NANDA — The GenAI Divide (State of AI in Business 2025) — GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025
- related: Enterprise AI Deployment Gap — the GenAI Divide report is an empirical anchor for this concept