BENGALURU: The pet project of Jai Menon— the company’s chief research officer and a former chief technology officer at IBM — Dell’s emotion-sensing technology, was the most powerful attractor of the audience of a recently held TED talk in Amsterdam.This is one of the biggest projects for Dell’s one-year-old research organisation, which is trying to look at ways to ‘disrupt’ the way people work today. During a visit to India, where Menon is trying to speak to colleges such as IIT-Madras and IISc-Bangalore for research partnerships, he talked to ET about the possible applications of emotion-sensing technology.“We are working to learn more about the intent of a particular user as he uses his laptop or mobile phone,” Menon said. “For example, if the software can tell a user who is playing a game is getting bored, it could ratchet up the challenge level of the game or give this feedback to the gaming company.” The more you know about a user’s intent, the better it is for personalisation, Menon said. “Today, when I do a search for a restaurant on my phone, the results are all around the location where I am, because of the GPS. Similarly, we want to go to the next level with emotion-sensing.”Menon, who holds 53 patents and is an alumnus of IIT-Madras and Ohio State University, said Dell is looking at camera-based inputs to detect if you’re happy or sad or grimacing and using a speech analytics software to detect the level of stress. “We have a prototype that tells you what your mood is as you speak,” he said.He said the technology could also have applications in the healthcare space. “There are certain signs that people emit before they have a stroke. This research can possibly be used to detect such signs and detect a stroke before things get out of hand.”Dell Research is working on another technology that, according to Menon, could transform security.The technology called continuous authentication monitors your usage pattern on a mobile and detects the possibility of the device being used by an unauthorised person.This works even if the unauthorised person has access to your actual password.“Our algorithm continuously monitors the usage and can say that the probability of it being with its original owner has dropped below 90% and then can be disabled,” Menon said.Menon said many such research projects would be led out of India along with university tie-ups as well as through investments in local companies.Menon will be talking to startups in storage and healthcare space for possible investment or buyout opportunities. “There are a lot of smart people and a lot of smart technologies in India. Part of my role is to tap into that.”Without quoting numbers, Menon said the company is increasing its R&D spending significantly after becoming private in 2013.He said he sees India becoming the next big R&D hub for the company outside of the US in the coming years.