Outstanding Achievements of Indian Americans in 2012….

Natarajan

When we achieve something in life, it is a sign of glory for us and our well wishers. As this year comes to an  end, we can take a peek at some of  the notable achievements made by Indian Americans.

Groupon Hires Indian American as VP of Engineering

Groupon, the daily deals company based in Chicago appointed Vinayak Hedge as its new VP of engineering. He looks after the marketing technology expansion of the company, from Groupon’s office in Seattle and is also be responsible for a new office which will be set up in Seattle soon.

Hedge was in charge of payment management and various business units while he was working at Amazon, along with running Amazon’s “Traffic Systems” group.

It is not the first time Groupon is hiring Amazonians and the list of former Amazon executives on its team is increasing, which includes CFO Jason Child, SVP of Product Jeff Holden and Kal Raman, who joined as SVP of Americas.

Hedge who completed his higher studies from National Institute of Technology in Karnataka has earlier worked for Oracle, Verifone and Citicorp Overseas Software Ltd as a software engineer.

US Indian Scientist Rao Gets Patent for Cancer Treatment

Rao Papineni, chief scientist and senior principal investigator in medical applications of nanotechnology at Carestream Health, Inc USA received patent on a path-breaking innovation in the field of cancer.

Rao, along with his colleague Alan Pollack, chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Miami came up with a system in which a nano-particle carries the payload of anti-cancer drug and releases it only in the cancerous cell and this way the cells lying around are protected.

“This patent will potentially change the way radiation is administered. It will improve localisation and monitoring of tumour and will help in highly targeted delivery of drugs to kill cancer cells,” Rao said.

“In rough terms, nano-particles are like payload delivery vehicles that can enhance damage to cancer tissues and simultaneously reduce the toxicity of normal and healthy tissues during radiation treatment’’, he added.

Satyendra Huja Elected as Mayor of Charlottesville

Satyendra S Huja, a Sikh American was appointed as mayor of historic city of Charlottesville, Virginia. He was chosen by the five-member city council unanimously and would be serving the council for three years.

Huja said only few Sikh Americans reside in the city of Charlottesville,  which is located about115 miles from Washington and he also added that the Asian Americans in the city contribute to a population of just four percent in the city.

Huja served as the director of strategic planning for Charlottesville for six years. Prior to that he was also the director of planning and community development for the city for 25 years.

Huja’s focus areas at the council were Energy conservation, downtown revitalization and historic preservation.

Huja was born in Kohat and in the year 1960, when he was 19 years old, he shifted to US, for further studies. He completed his undergraduate degree in urban planning from Cornell University and Masters Degree in the same subject from Michigan State University.

Arati Prabhakar  Appointed as Head of a Top U.S. Defense Agency

Arati Prabhakar, a New Delhi born Indian American was appointed as the head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) by the Obama administration .It is an agency of the United States Department of Defense which works towards the development of new technology for use by the military.

It’s not the first time Arati is going to work with DARPA ; she has served the agency for seven years (from 1986 to 1993) and was also behind the founding of DARPA’s Microelectronics Technology Office. In the year 1993, President Clinton appointed her as the director of the 3000 person US National Institute of Standards and Technology.

She is the first Indian-American chief of DARPA, one of the most important agencies of Pentagon (Department of Defense).

Arati received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Texas Tech University and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology.

Vivek Kundra Joins Salesforce.com as EVP

Vivek Kundra an Indian American joined Salesforce.com as Executive Vice President of emerging markets in January. Salesforce.com is a global enterprise software company which is best known for its customer relationship management.
Kundra was appointed as the first CIO of the United States, by the Obama administration in March 2009.His responsibilities as the CIO included adopting game-changing cloud computing technologies, empowering the cyber security posture of the nation and introducing an open government movement.

Kundra was successful in managing more than $80 billion technology investments. In June, last year he quit his job so as to take a fellowship at Harvard University.

Earlier, Kundra served as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the District of Columbia and assistant secretary of commerce and technology, Virginia.

Kundra completed his graduation in psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park and post graduation in Information Technology from the University of Maryland University College.

IITian Named Chancellor of California University
Khosla has been serving CMU as the dean for the last eight years and during his tenure he started curriculum reform, diversity efforts and organized multidisciplinary and multi-college research centres as well as international programmes. He has also extended an helping hand in the fund raising campaigns of the university such as for the establishment of a university wide energy institute (worth $100 million) and campaign for a 100,000 square foot College of Engineering building for biotech, energy and nanotechnology (worth $90 million).

“I feel fortunate, humbled and energised to have the opportunity to contribute to that excellence while embracing the challenges of integrating world-class research with an undergraduate educational experience that will remain accessible to all, regardless of family income’’, said Khosla in a statement.

Khosla holds a degree in electrical engineering from IIT Kharagpur and he completed his MS and Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering respectively from Carnegie Mellon.
Preet Bharara on Time Magazine Cover

Preet Bharara made it to the front cover of the magazine ‘Times of India’. It was the first time the magazine carried the photo of an Indian American on its front page with a story about his movement against corruption and irregularities in Wall Street Magazine.

The article came with the title ‘This Man Is Busting Wall Street’ and under the title it is proclaimed “Prosecutor Preet Bharara collars the masters of the meltdown,”. The article discussed about the “man who is bringing mob squad justice to Wall Street” and also questioned some of the methods used by Bharara, like wire tapping and doubts whether it will be permitted in court.

Bharara holds a high position in U.S. law enforcement, as the Attorney of New York. He manages hundreds of cases, both civil and criminal which involves international terrorism, fiscal fraud, corruption, insider trading, gang violence etc.

Bharara who was born in Punjab grew up in Monmouth Country of New Jersey. He completed his graduation in the year 1990, from Harvard University.

Indians’ Hand in NASA’s Most Ambitious Mission- ‘Mars Curiosity Rover

Many Indians were involved in the ‘Mars Curiosity Rover, who helped in the successful landing of ‘curiosity’ on Mars.

Ravi Prakash, a NASA rock scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory helped in the process of entry, descent, and landing of NASA’s rover ‘Curiosity’

Praksh has been part of this ambitious project over the last five years and he recalls, “Sometimes I wake up calm and sometimes I wake up and I’m really nervous.”

Anita Sengipta is an aerospace engineer and a member of the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) sequence team of the project.

Sengupta is the person who tested a parachute, an important mission element which will decide the destiny of the U.S. spacecraft. The parachute will open up and slow down the spacecraft from supersonic to subsonic speeds.

Amitabh Ghosh, an IITian from Kharagpur was a key member of the team who identified the landing site for ‘curiosity’, the Gale crater location.
Sunita Williams’ Second Space Mission
Sunita Williams spent 6 months at the International Space Station and was successful in coming up with new records. She was the commander of Expedition 33 on the International Space Station.
Williams took off on her space mission on 14 July from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. While returning after her expedition, Williams had yet another record to add to her professional career-the most spacewalking time by a female at 50 hours and 40 minutes over seven career excursions.
She caught the attention of the media and the entire world on whatever she did, whether it is carrying of Upanishads to space or voting for the US presidential election from space.
Sunita Williams is the Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office at NASA, who holds the record of the longest spaceflight among female space travelers. She happens to be the second Indian-American woman who got the opportunity to go to space after the Late Kalpana Chawla.
Bangalore : When we achieve something in life, it is a sign of glory for us and our well wishers. As this year comes to an  end, we can take a peek at some of  the notable achievements made by Indian Americans.

Soumitra Dutta to Head Cornell’s Business School

Soumitra Dutta, a 48 year old Indian American was appointed as the Dean of Cornell University’s Management School, on July 1, 2012. He is the first Indian origin to be in charge of a top American Business school.

Soumitra Dutta is a Professor of business and technology, who is also the founder and faculty director of a new-media and technology innovation lab at INSEAD’S French Campus.

Soumitra was born to an Indian Air Force doctor in Chandigarh. He is an alumnus of IIT-Delhi campus where he completed his BTech in electrical engineering & computer science securing second rank.

Even though Sumitra has been outside his native for more than 22 years he does not have a Western accent nor does he have the famous European indifference.

Professor Dutta is also involved in policy development activities, both at national and European levels. Apart from being an academician and businessman, he is also the author of many books.

 source:::::siliconindia net
 natarajan

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