By Suzette Norris, freelance writer and PR consultant
The clock’s ticking. It’s almost noon. For most of us that means grabbing lunch, but these days a group of Xerox researchers are studying the human body instead of just feeding it.
Each week some of the brightest physical, computer and social scientists and engineers in the world head towards a conference room at the Xerox Research Center Webster in New York to learn about the human body. Over time, they plan to watch 32 recorded university-level lectures that cover all 11 systems of the body.
Question: What drives seasoned Xerox researchers to learn about things like blood vessels? (BTW, did you know our bodies contain 50,000 miles of them?)
Hint: It’s not free formaldehyde or the fun of dissection (the lectures require only note taking).
Answer: Commitment to what Xerox is becoming, blended with an insatiable drive to solve problems.
Sound canned? I asked Principal Scientist LK Mestha to fill in the blanks.
“At first, it’s difficult to imagine how these subjects relate to my job at Xerox,” he said. “But at the Xerox Research Center Webster in New York where we work, there are plenty of opportunities to research and explore areas in healthcare, transportation, cloud computing, finance etc. Studying the human body helps us innovate and simplify the way work gets done in many of these areas. Plus it’s really interesting!”
Stay tuned for more… LK and his team are in the early stages of a research project aimed at using video cameras to monitor the vitals (e.g., heart rate, respiration rate, temperature, etc.) of premature infants, eliminating the need to place electrodes on an infant’s paper-thin skin or attach sensors to a miniature earlobe! The idea grew out of combining an expertise in video cameras, analytics and image processing techniques with a basic understanding of physiology.
Suzette serves as the corporate editor for Xerox’s Global PR team, and works as an internal communications resource for Xerox Research Center Webster, New York.
As an X Xerox employee, I am very proud of the way they are developing. A woman at the top, new ideas, spreading their knowledge to give a wider understanding to the whole, and looking at problems to find solutions. Good work!, its very interesting to follow and learn.
Congratulations! I am very proud of your problems solving team. Orlando is that you surrounded by people attempting to solve human problems?Keep up the good work! Relton