A plethora of outstanding Indian Americans and South Asian Americans were named among the 2017 Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors.

The academy Dec. 12 announced 155 renowned academic inventors as Fellows, including over a dozen who are Indian or South Asian American.

"I am incredibly proud to welcome our 2017 Fellows to the Academy," said NAI president Paul Sanberg in a statement. "These accomplished individuals represent the pinnacle of achievement at the intersection of academia and invention––their discoveries have changed the way we view the world. They epitomize the triumph of a university culture that celebrates patents, licensing, and commercialization, and we look forward to engaging their talents to further support academic innovation."

Included in the Fellows list are Vijayakumar Bhagavatula of Carnegie Mellon University, Susmita Bose of Washington State University, Prabir K. Dutta of the Ohio State University, Suresh V. Garimella of Purdue University, Subramanian S. Iyer of UCLA, Rakesh K. Jain of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, Aravinda Kar of the University of Central Florida, Kishor C. Mehta of Texas Tech University, Bhubaneswar Mishra of New York University, Mariappan P. Paranthaman of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, Nirmala Ramanujam of Duke University, Subhash L. Shinde of the University of Notre Dame, and Krishna P. Singh of the University of Pennsylvania.

"Congratulations to the exceptional academic inventors who comprise the 2017 class of NAI Fellows," said Shirley Malcom, head of the Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, who also served as a member of the selection committee, in a statement. "The NAI Fellows Program plays a vital role in bringing to the forefront the essential scientific and economic contributions of our nation's inventors."

With the election of the 2017 class there are now 912 NAI Fellows, representing over 250 research universities and governmental and non-profit research institutes. The 2017 Fellows are named inventors on nearly 6,000 issued U.S. patents, bringing the collective patents held by all NAI Fellows to more than 32,000 issued U.S. patents, NAI said in a news release.

Election to NAI Fellow status is the highest professional accolade bestowed to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and welfare of society, NAI said.

The new Fellows April 5, 2018, will inducted as part of the Seventh Annual NAI Conference in Washington, D.C.

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