ESP Biography



RAKESH MISRA, Stanford Graduate Student in Engineering



Major: EE

College/Employer: Stanford

Year of Graduation: 2016

Picture of Rakesh Misra

Brief Biographical Sketch:

Rakesh Misra is currently a graduate student at Stanford, pursuing his PhD in Electrical Engineering. His research is primarily aimed at making wireless communication faster and more reliable (think of faster internet, faster video streaming on phones, 5G data access).

Rakesh loves teaching and has been conducting classes for his friends and juniors ever since his under-grad days at IIT Madras (Chennai, India). His article titled "Why Study?" (found here: http://bit.ly/HYJnfw) inspired several high school students to realize the real purpose of their schooling and motivated them to find reasons to love their subjects. His article on "How Not To Be A Bad Teacher", written with classroom teaching in colleges in mind, can be found here: http://bit.ly/If7gyA.

Rakesh loves playing cricket, tennis, TT and squash, and is a big fan of semi-classical and fusion music. During his spare time, he cooks a variety of Indian food and plays soft music on keyboard. He's making his debut at Splash in Spring 2012.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

M5007: Mathemagic with Cards in Splash Spring 2016 (Apr. 09 - 10, 2016)
Take a regular deck of cards. Ask your friend to call out any two values, like 9 and 4, or 10 and Jack. Chant your favorite magic mantra and shuffle the deck in front of him. Then ask him to scan through the deck, and lo and behold! He will find the two values on two consecutive cards in the deck! How did you make that happen? Welcome to Mathemagic - the art of performing magic tricks which rely on mathematics. In this class, we will demonstrate several card tricks, and explain why they work (including the above trick). Card tricks are a cool way to understand and appreciate mathematical principles from fields as diverse as probability, combinatorics and set theory. Come, fall in love with maths and become a mathemagician!


P2199: Magical Fluids - Unveiling the secret of funny fluids in Splash! Spring 2012 (Apr. 21 - 22, 2012)
In this class, budding wizards will be trained on making mixtures with magical effects. Think chemistry, but with a more sinister twist. With the correct magical ingredients we will brew fluids that creep up on wands, slither and bounce off walls. If this is not exciting enough, we will train ourselves on running on a pool filled with magic fluid. –––- *This course has been approved by the Ministry of Magic.